Enlistment and Mess Assignment
Silas Goodrich first appears in the expedition record on May 26, 1804, when Captain Meriwether Lewis issued his Detachment Orders organizing the permanent party into messes. Goodrich was assigned to the squad commanded by Sergeant John Ordway, listed alongside William Bratton, John Colter, Moses Reed, Alexander Willard, William Warner, John Potts, and Hugh Hall. He would remain a private for the duration of the journey, but his particular skill — fishing — would earn him repeated mention in the captains’ journals.
The Fisherman of the Corps
Goodrich’s reputation as the expedition’s most reliable angler is established at the Great Falls of the Missouri in June 1805. On June 15, 1805, while recuperating along the river, Lewis recorded one of the most affectionate descriptions of Goodrich at his craft:
I amused myself in fishing, and sleeping away the fortiegues of yesterday. I caught a number of very fine trout which I made Goodrich dry; goodrich also caught about two douzen and several small cat of a yellow colour which would weigh about 4 lbs.
Throughout the expedition, when fish needed catching, Goodrich was the man assigned to the line. His name became so associated with the activity that an island encountered by Lewis on the descent of the Yellowstone-Missouri in 1806 was called “Goodriches Island” — Lewis noted on July 30, 1806, that the party “arrived this evening at an island about 2 ms. above Goodriches Island and encamped on it’s N. E. side.”
Service on the Outbound Journey
Goodrich’s name surfaces only intermittently in 1804 — chiefly in roster entries such as Clark’s October 13, 1804 record of the court-martial of John Newman, where the mess assignments are reiterated. During the difficult passages of 1805, Goodrich appears as part of the working detachments. On June 10, 11, and 12, 1805, he was among the small parties Lewis led ahead during the explorations near Maria’s River and the Great Falls, present when Lewis fell violently ill and was forced to brew his choke-cherry decoction. On August 20, 1805, near the Shoshone camps on the Lemhi, Lewis set three men — likely including Goodrich among the working details of those days — to constructing a cache for baggage that the party intended to leave behind before crossing the Continental Divide. Goodrich was also among those caching baggage and outfitting horses on August 24, 1805.
Illness at Fort Clatsop
Goodrich’s most personal appearance in the journals concerns his health. At Fort Clatsop he contracted syphilis from a Chinookan woman, an episode Lewis recorded with clinical frankness on January 27, 1806:
Goodrich has recovered from the Louis veneri which he contracted from an amorous contact with a Chinnook damsel. I cured him as I did Gibson last winter by the uce of murcury.
Lewis’s optimism proved premature. On February 27, 1806, Clark noted that “Goodrich & McNeal who have the Pox are recovering fast, the former nearly well.” By March 8, 1806, both captains independently recorded that Goodrich and McNeal had recovered sufficiently for Lewis to direct them “to desist from the uce of mercury.” Yet the disease’s persistence is suggested by Lewis’s later note on July 2, 1806, as the party prepared to split at Travelers’ Rest: “Goodrich and McNeal are both very unwell with the pox which they contracted last winter” — implying a relapse or chronic condition that mercury treatment had not fully cured.
The Return Journey: Trade and Errands
On the return up the Columbia, Goodrich was repeatedly entrusted with diplomatic and trading errands among the Plateau peoples. On April 16, 1806, Clark sent him with Drewyer to the Skilloot village to invite Indians to trade horses. In May 1806, while the expedition waited at Camp Chopunnish for the snows of the Bitterroots to melt, Goodrich made several trips to nearby Nez Perce villages. On May 21, 1806, Clark recorded that “Serjt. Ordway, Goodrich, & Willard” went to the Nez Perce villages, and on May 22 Lewis noted their return “with a good store of roots and bread.” On May 25, 1806, Goodrich went “to the 2d village to purchase roots a fiew of which he precured,” reporting that most of the men were away hunting or fishing on the Snake River.
On May 28, 1806, Lewis sent Goodrich to the village of the Broken Arm:
We sent Goodrich to the village of the broken arm this morning he returned in the evening with some roots bread and a parsel of goats-hair for making our saddle pads.
The mountain-goat hair Goodrich procured would be used to stuff the pack saddles for the impending Bitterroot crossing. On May 31, 1806, Clark recorded that “Goodrich and Willard visited the indian Village this morning,” with Willard returning carrying a bear skin Clark had purchased — leading to a remarkable conversation with the Nez Perce about the species and color phases of bears in the region. On June 7, 1806, Goodrich was again among those crossing the river to trade with the Nez Perce, this time accompanying two young chiefs, Sergeant Gass, McNeal, Whitehouse, and Charbonneau. He and Whitehouse stayed overnight in the village while the others returned at 2 p.m.
The Great Falls Detachment
When the captains divided the party at Travelers’ Rest on July 1, 1806, Goodrich was assigned to Lewis’s contingent. Clark’s journal lists the men accompanying Lewis: “G. Drewyer, Sergt. Gass, Jo. & R. Fields, Frazier & Werner, and Thompson Goodrich & McNear as far as the Falls of Missouri.” Lewis explained the plan in his own entry that day:
I determined to go with a small party by the most direct rout to the falls of the Missouri, there to leave Thompson McNeal and goodrich to prepare carriages and geer for the purpose of transporting the canoes and baggage over the portage.
While Lewis took six volunteers up the Marias to test its northern reach, Goodrich, Hugh McNeal, and John Thompson remained at the Great Falls portage, preparing the gear that would carry the canoes and baggage around the cataracts when Sergeant Ordway’s detachment arrived from the Jefferson River. Goodrich rejoined the larger party at the mouth of the Yellowstone, and on August 12, 1806, Clark recorded the long-awaited reunion of the three detachments.
A Quiet Record
Silas Goodrich’s name appears in roughly thirty journal entries, but his voice is never heard. The captains record him almost exclusively in the third person, doing the work assigned: catching trout, drying meat, trading at villages, taking mercury, building portage carriages. The journal record offers no information about his life before or after the expedition. What it does preserve is a portrait of a steady, reliable private — the man Lewis turned to when the party needed fish, when goat hair had to be procured for saddle pads, or when a small detachment had to be left at a critical portage to await the rest of the Corps.
