Named, not encountered
No Chippewa (Ojibwe) town sits on the expedition’s track. The journals still use the name, always at second hand or as a comparison.
At Fort Mandan on 14 November 1804 Clark noted Cree visitors and the language he assigned them:
The Crrirstinoes are abt. 300 men Speak the Chipaway-Language, the live near Fort De peare
On 28 February and 18 March 1805 the Chippewa appear in reports of killings on the Assiniboine — Cameron’s revenge, Teton talk, “the Chipaways latterly” — news that reached the Mandan villages, not a meeting on the Missouri.
The fullest passage is from Fort Clatsop, 27 January 1806, where Lewis (Clark copying) compared northwestern plant medicine to Chippewa practice:
particularly so among the Chippeways who I believe to be better skilled in the uce of those simples than any nation of Savages in North America.
“Savages” is Lewis’s word. The comparison is Atlantic-world knowledge he brought west, not a Pacific encounter. The earlier “note on absence” described missing tags, not missing ink.
