The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark

  XVIII

  _FORT CLATSOP BY THE SEA_

  December had now arrived, and southwest storms broke upon the coastwith tremendous force. Off Cape Disappointment, the surges dashed tothe height of the masthead of a ship, with most terrific roaring. Awinter encampment could no longer be delayed.

  "Deer, elk, good skin, good meat," said the Chinook Indians, inpantomime, pointing across the bay to the south.

  Accordingly, thither the eggshell boats were guided, across thetempestuous Columbia, to the little river Netul, now the Lewis andClark, ten miles from the ocean.

  Beside a spring branch, in a thick grove of lofty firs about twohundred yards from the water, the leather tent was set up and bigfires built, while all hands fell to clearing a space for the wintercabins.

  In four days the logs were rolled up, Boonsboro fashion, into sheltersfor the winter. "The foinest puncheons I iver saw," said Patrick Gass,head carpenter, as he set to splitting boards out of the surroundingfirs.

  By Christmas seven cabins were covered and the floors laid. The chinkswere filled with clay, and fir-log fires were set roaring in thecapacious chimneys that filled an entire end of each cabin. OnChristmas day they moved in, wet blankets and all, with rounds offirearms and Christmas salutes.

  The leather tent, soaked for days, fell to pieces. The heavy canistersof powder, every one of which had been under the water in many arecent capsize, were consigned in safety to the powder-house.

  On New Year's Eve the palisades were done, and the gates were closedat sunset.

  The first winter-home of civilised people on the Columbia has anabiding charm, not unlike that of Plymouth or Jamestown.

  Back through the mists of one hundred years we see gangs of elk,chased by hunters through cranberry bogs, "that shook for the space ofhalf an acre."

  Their soundless footfalls were lost in beds of brown pine needles andcushions of moss. The firing of guns reverberated through the dimgloom like a piece of ordnance.

  It was from such a trip as this that the hunters returned on the 16thof December, reporting elk. All hands set to work carrying up the meatfrom the loaded boats, skinning and cutting and hanging it up in smallpieces in the meathouse, to be smoked by a slow bark fire. But inspite of every precaution, the meat began to spoil.

  "We must have salt," said Captain Lewis.

  In a few days, five men were dispatched with five kettles to build acairn for the manufacture of salt from seawater.

  Already Clark had examined the coast with this in view, and thesalt-makers' camp was established near Tillamook Head, about fifteenmiles southwest of the fort where the old cairn stands to this day.Here the men built "a neat, close camp, convenient to wood, saltwater and the fresh waters of the Clatsop River, within a hundredpaces of the ocean," and kept the kettles boiling day and night.

  On that trip to the coast, while the cabins were building, CaptainClark visited the Clatsops, and purchased some rude householdfurniture, cranberries, mats, and the skin of a panther, seven feetfrom tip to tip, to cover their puncheon floor.

  Other utensils were easily fashioned. Seated on puncheon stools,before the log-fire of the winter night, the men carved cedar cups,spoons, plates, and dreamed of homes across the continent.

  In just such a little log cabin as this, Shannon saw his mother inOhio woods; Patrick Gass pictured his father, with his pipe, atWellsburg, West Virginia; Sergeant Ordway crossed again the familiarthreshold at Hebron, New Hampshire. Clark recalled Mulberry Hill, andLewis,--his mind was fixed on Charlottesville, or the walls expandedinto Monticello and the White House.

  "Mak' some pleasurement now," begged the Frenchmen, "w'en BonhommeCruzatte tune up hees fidelle for de dance."

  Tales were told and plans were made. Toward midnight these Sinbads ofthe forest fell asleep, on their beds of fir boughs, lulled by thebrook, the whispering of the pines, and the falling of the winterrain.

  This was not like winter rain in eastern climates, but soft and warmas April. The grass grew green, Spring flowers opened in December. Themoist Japan wind gives Oregon the temperature of England.

  "I most sincerely regret the loss of my thermometer," said Lewis. "Iam confident this climate is much milder than the same latitude on theAtlantic. I never experienced so warm a winter."

  But about the last of January there came a snow at Clatsop, fourinches thick, and icicles hung from the houses during the day.

  "A real touch of winter," said Lewis. "The breath is perceptible inour room by the fire." Like all Oregon snow it disappeared in aweek--and then it was Spring.

  In the centre of the officer's cabin, a fir stump, sawed off smooth andflat for a table, was covered with maps and papers. Books were writtenin that winter of 1805-6, voluminous records of Oregon plants andtrees, birds, beasts, and fishes. They had named rivers and measuredmountains, and after wandering more than Homer's heroes, the explorerswere ready now to carry a new geography to the States. And here, aseverywhere, Lewis was busy with his vocabularies, learning the Chinookjargon.

  As never before, all the men became scientists. Even Captain Clark'sblack man took an interest and reported some fabulous finds.

  The houses were dry and comfortable, and within, they had a plentifulsupply of elk and salt, "excellent, white, and fine, but not so strongas the rock salt, or that made in Kentucky."

  Meal time was always interesting. Very often the Captains caughtthemselves asking: "Charboneau, when will dinner be ready?"

  All day the firelight flickered on Sacajawea's hair, as she sat makingmoccasins, crooning a song in her soft Indian monotone. This was,perhaps, the happiest winter Sacajawea ever knew, with baby Touissanttoddling around her on the puncheon floor, pulling her shawl aroundhis chubby face, or tumbling over his own cradle. The modest Shoshoneprincess never dreamed how the presence of her child and herself gavea touch of domesticity to that Oregon winter.

  Now and then Indian women came to see Sacajawea, sitting all daywithout a word, watching her every motion.

  Sometimes Sacajawea helped Charboneau, with his spits, turning slowlybefore the fire, or with his elk's tongues or sausage or beaver'stails. Sometimes she made trapper's butter, boiling up the marrow ofthe shank bones with a sprinkle of salt.

  In the short days darkness came on at four o'clock, and the last ofthe candles were soon exhausted. Then the moulds were brought andcandles were made of elk tallow, until a heap, shining and white, wereready for the winter evenings.

  "We have had trouble enough with those thieving Chinooks," saidCaptain Lewis. "Without a special permit, they are to be excluded fromthe fort."

  The Indians heard it. Did a knock resound at the gate, "No Chinook!"was the quick accompaniment.

  "Who, then?" demanded the sentinel, gun in hand.

  "Clatsop," answered Coboway's people entering with roots andcranberries.

  Or, "Cathlamets," answered an up-river tribe with rush bags of wapatoon their backs. Roots of the edible thistle--white and crisp as acarrot, sweet as sugar, the roasted root of the fern, resembling thedough of wheat, and roots of licorice, varied the monotonous fare.

  These supplies were very welcome, but the purchase money, that was theproblem.

  President Jefferson had given to Captain Lewis an unlimited letter ofcredit on the United States, but such a letter would not buy fromthese Indians even a bushel of wapato.

  The Cathlamets would trade for fishhooks. The Clatsops preferredbeads, knives, or an old file.

  No wonder they valued an old file: the finest work of their beautifulcanoes was often done with a chisel fashioned from an old file. Lewisand Clark had frequent occasion to admire their skill in managingthese little boats, often out-riding the waves in the most tumultuousseas.

  Ashore, these canoe-Indians waddled and rolled like tipsy sailors.Afloat, straight and trim as horse-Indians of the prairie, each deftChinook glided to his seat along the unrocking boats, and striking upthe paddlers' "Ho-ha-ho-ha-ho-ha-" went rowing all their lives, untiltheir arms grew long and st
rong, their legs shrunk short and crooked,and their heads became abnormally intelligent.

  Nor were these coast Indians lacking in courage,--they sometimesventured into the sea in their wonderful canoes, and harpooned thegreat whale and towed him in.

  When it came to prices for their beautiful skins of sea-otter, almostnothing would do. Clark offered a watch, a handkerchief, an Americandollar, and a bunch of red beads for a single skin.

  "No! No!" in stentorian tone--"_Tyee ka-mo-suck,--chief beads_,"--themost common sort of large blue glass beads, the precious money of thatcountry. Chiefs hung them on their bosoms, squaws bound them on theirankles, pretty maidens hung them in their hair. But Lewis and Clarkhad only a few and must reserve them for most pressing necessity.

  Since that May morning when Captain Robert Gray discovered theColumbia River, fourteen years before, the Chinook Indians had learnedthe value of furs. Once they handed over their skins, and took withouta murmur what the Boston skippers chose to give. Now, a hundred shipsupon that shore had taught them craft.

  One of old King Comcomly's people had a robe of sea-otter, "the fur ofwhich was the most beautiful we had ever seen." In vain Lewis offeredeverything he had, nothing would purchase the treasured cloak but thebelt of blue beads worn by Sacajawea.

  On every hand among these coast tribes were blankets, sailor-clothes,guns,--old Revolutionary muskets mended for this trade,--powder andball, the powder in little japanned tin flasks in which the traderssold it.

  In what Clark calls "a guggling kind of language spoken mostly throughthe throat," with much pantomime and some English, conversation wascarried on.

  "Who are these traders?" asked Captain Lewis.

  Old Comcomly, King of the Chinooks, on the north side, and TyeeCoboway, Chief of the Clatsops, on the south bank of the Columbia,tried to remember, and counted on their fingers,--

  "Haley, three masts, stays some time," "Tallamon not a trader,""Callalamet has a wooden leg," "Davidson, no trader, hunts elk,""Skelley, long time ago, only one eye."

  And then there were "Youens, Swipton, Mackey, Washington, Mesship,Jackson, Balch," all traders with three-masted ships whose names arenot identified by any Atlantic list.

  The one translated Washington by Lewis and Clark may have beenOckington of the _Belle Savage_, 1801, or Tawnington, both of whom areknown to have been on the coast in those years.

  In fact, no complete record was ever kept of the ships that swarmedaround the Horn and up the Pacific, in those infant years of ourrepublic, 1787 to 1820. While Europe clustered around the theatre ofNapoleonic wars, every harbour of New England had its fur ships andwhalers out, flying the Stars and Stripes around the world.

  "What do they say?" inquired Lewis, still pressing investigation.Proud of their acquirements, every Chinook and Clatsop in the nationcould recall some word or phrase.

  "Musket, powder, shot, knife, file, heave the lead, damned rascal!"

  No wonder Lewis and Clark laughed, these mother words on the savagetongue were like voices out of the very deep, calling from the ships.

  "One hyas tyee ship--great chief ship--Moore, four masts, three cowson board."

  "Which way did he go?"

  The Indians pantomimed along the northwest coast.

  "From which," says Lewis, "I infer there must be settlements in thatdirection."

  The great desire, almost necessity, now, seemed to be to wait untilsome ship appeared upon the shore from which to replenish their almostexhausted stores.

  Whenever the boats went in and out of Meriwether Bay they passed theMemeloose Illahee, the dead country of the Clatsops. Before 1800, asnear as Lewis and Clark could ascertain, several hundred of theClatsops died suddenly of a disease that appeared to be smallpox, thesame undoubtedly that cut down Black Bird and his Omahas, rolling onwest and north where the Hudson's Bay traders traced it to the bordersof the Arctic.

  In Haley's Bay one hundred canoes in one place bespoke the decimationof the Chinooks, all slumbering now in that almost priceless carvedcoffin, the Chinook canoe, with gifts around them and feet to thesunset, ready to drift on an unknown voyage.

  There was a time when Indian campfires stretched from Walla Walla tothe sea, when fortifications were erected, and when Indian flintfactories supplied the weapons of countless warriors. But they aregone. The first settlers found sloughs and bayous lined with burialcanoes, until the dead were more than the living. No Indians knewwhose bones they were, "those old, old, old people." Red children andwhite tumbled them out of the cedar coffins and carried away the deadmen's treasures.

  "There was mourning along the rivers. A quietness came over the land."Stone hammers, flint chips, and arrows lie under the forests, andembers of fires two centuries old.

  The native tribes were disappearing before the white man came, and thedestruction of property with the dead kept the survivors alwaysimpoverished.