First Encounter at Ross’s Hole
The Flathead Salish — called “Tushepaws,” “Flatheads,” or “Ootlashshoots” in the journals — first entered the expedition’s record indirectly. On August 31, 1805, William Clark noted that the Lemhi Shoshone country was being burned to gather the bands together, including “a Band of the Flatheads to go to the Missouri where They intend passing the winter near the Buffalow.” The Salish were thus known to the captains by reputation before they were known by sight.
The actual meeting came in the Bitterroot Valley at a place later called Ross’s Hole, recorded in the consolidated entry of September 4, 1805:
Those people received us friendly, threw white robes over our Shoulders and smoked in the pipes of peace.
That same summary entry preserves Joseph Whitehouse’s striking observation that the Salish language sounded “as if they had an Impediment in their Speech or a brogue on their Tongue” — a phonetic impression that several party members commented upon. The encounter was decisive: the Salish supplied horses crucial to the looming crossing of the Bitterroots and shared route information with the expedition.
Horses, Wealth, and Hospitality
What impressed the captains immediately was the Salish horse wealth. On September 10, 1805, Meriwether Lewis recorded that three Flathead men met one of his hunters up Travellers Rest Creek:
the Indians were mounted on very fine horses of which the Flatheads have a great abundance; that is, each man in the nation possesses from 20 to a hundred head.
This abundance would be remembered all the way to the Pacific and back. The next day, September 11, 1805, Clark reported the party setting out “accompanied by the flat head or Tushapaws Indians,” with their guide leading them up Travellers Rest Creek toward the mountains.
Naming the River and the Hard Crossing
The captains named the major river of the valley after the nation. On September 9, 1805, Lewis described proceeding “down the Flathead river,” a wide prairie valley five to six miles across, timbered chiefly with longleaf pine. By September 14, 1805, Clark was crossing weirs the Salish had built:
we Crossd. Glade Creek above its mouth, at a place the Tushepaws or Flat head Indians have made 2 wears across to Catch Sammon and have but latterly left the place… this river we Call Flathead River.
That same day the party was forced to kill a colt for food, naming the tributary Colt Killed Creek — a measure of how thin provisions had grown after leaving Salish hospitality.
Linguistic Kin Across the Plateau
The Salish language haunted the expedition’s ear. Far down the Columbia, on October 27, 1805, Clark drew an explicit linguistic connection while compiling vocabularies of the Eneeshur and Echeloot:
the language of those above having great Similarity with those tribes of flat heads we have passed all have the Clucking tone anexed which is predomint.
On September 21, 1805, struggling out of the Bitterroots toward the Nez Perce, Clark recorded a Salish-speaking informant who drew him “a Chart of the river & nations below.” And on November 4, 1805, near the lower Columbia, Clark even applied the term loosely to a village of head-flatteners — “a village 200 men of Flatheads of 25 houses” — illustrating how the captains conflated head-flattening practice with the Salish ethnonym, though the Bitterroot Salish themselves did not flatten heads.
Mapping a Continent
The Flathead River and the Salish encounter became central to the expedition’s geographic synthesis. At Fort Clatsop on February 14, 1806, Lewis described the great map Clark had completed three days earlier:
the Missouri Jefferson’s river the S. E. branch of the Columbia, Kooskooske and Columbia from the entrance of the S. E. fork to the pacific Ocean as well as a part of Flathead river and our tract across the Rocky Mountains are laid down by celestial observation and survey.
Clark’s parallel entry the same day used the name “Clark’s river” for the same drainage — the captains were in the process of renaming the Flathead River for Clark even as they finalized the map. Both names appear interchangeably in the spring 1806 entries.
Return Journey: The Flathead River Camp
Eastbound in May 1806, the party reached the Flathead/Clark’s River again. On May 13, 1806, Clark proceeded “down the Creek to the Flat head River,” noting again the Nez Perce horse wealth that mirrored what they had seen among the Salish: “50 or 60 or a Hundred head is not unusial for an individual to possess.” On May 14, 1806, the corps crossed the Flathead — “rapid and about 150 yards wide” — and made camp at an old Indian house pit, settling in to wait out the snowpack.
Through late spring the river itself dominates the journals. On June 7, 1806, Clark observed that “The Flat Head river is about 150 yards wide at this place and discharges a vast body of water,” and on June 9, 1806, that the Cut Nose chief “borrowed a horse and rode down the flathead river a fiew miles to take Some young Eagles.”
News from the Ootelashshoots
The most specific reference to a particular Salish band comes from Lewis on June 3, 1806, while waiting at Camp Chopunnish:
today the Indians dispatched an express over the mountains to travellers rest or the neighbourhood of that Creek on Clark’s river in order to learn from the Oote-lash-shoots a band of the Flatheads who have wintered there, the occurrences that have taken place on the East side of the mountains during that season. this is the band which we first met with on that river.
This identifies the Ross’s Hole party of September 1805 as the Ootelashshoots, and shows how thoroughly the Nez Perce information network connected the Salish wintering grounds to the Columbia plateau.
Reunion at Travellers Rest
By July 1, 1806, Clark had returned with the party to “Clark’s river” — the Flathead — at Travellers Rest, where Lewis and Clark divided their forces for the homeward exploration. The Salish-named river thus served as the geographic hinge of the expedition: entry point to the Bitterroot crossing in 1805 and departure point for two divided commands in 1806. Clark would refer back to “Clarks river” again in entries of July 5 and August 12, 1806, when at last reuniting with Lewis below the mountains.
Other Encounters and Trade
The April–May 1806 entries also record incidental contacts as the corps moved up the Columbia among related plateau peoples. On April 18, 1806, Lewis noted Chilluckkittequaws guests; on April 20, 1806, Clark sat “half frozed at this inhospitable Village” trying unsuccessfully to barter for horses. On May 6, 1806, both captains recorded meeting “three men of a nation Called the Skeetsso-mish” — the Coeur d’Alene, a Salish-speaking people — who lived at a falls north of the Nez Perce. The same day Lewis exchanged horses with We-ark-koomt and observed that “sore eyes is an universal complaint with all the natives we have seen on the west side of the Rocky mountains.”
The Limits of the Record
The expedition’s direct contact with the Bitterroot Salish themselves was brief — essentially the days surrounding September 4–11, 1805, plus the imagined return contact via the Ootelashshoots express in June 1806. Most of the journal references catalogued under “Flathead” actually refer to the river the captains named for the nation, or to the linguistic and cultural family the captains imperfectly grouped under that label. The Salish oral tradition referenced in the September 4 summary preserves a fuller account of the Ross’s Hole meeting from the Salish side; the journals themselves are comparatively sparse, dominated by the practical facts of horses, generosity, and the white robes laid over the strangers’ shoulders.
