This remote stretch of the lower Columbia River shows why much of the Wahkiakum villages were accessed by boat.

Confusions

Historians often consider Lewis and Clark encounters with the Kathlamets as encounters with the Wahkiakum. In the broad scope of tribal history, the difference may indeed be trivial. However, when it comes to the best canoe navigators—see 11 Nov 1805—or “the dirtiest and Stinkingest” village—see 24 March 1806—whether Clark was observing Wahkiakums or Cathlamets may be a point of contention. The captains gave both of these descriptions to people on the south side of the river, which they called Cathlamets, not Wahkiakums.

This website retains the distinction of the two peoples as seen and recorded in the eyes of the captains. The selected Wahkiakum encounters presented below is much shorter than that of the Kathlamets: a brief encounter near Pillar Rock, a trading delegation visiting the yet to be completed Fort Clatsop, and two men wanting to trade dogs for some tobacco on the return journey in spring 1806.

Downstreamers

When considering the full history of the Wahkiakums, not just the microcosm of culture seen by Lewis and Clark, recent historians combine village groupings known to the captains as Cathlamet, Wahkiakums, and perhaps Skilloots into a single linguistic and ethnic division. Silverstein, in the authoritative 1990 Handbook of North American Indians calls the division ‘Cathlamets’. Zenk, Hajda, and Boyd, 2016, call the grouping tgígʷalatkš (Itkigwalatksh) or ‘downstreamers’.² Politically, most of the Wahkiakums and Kathlamets have united with the Clatsops, Chinooks, and Willapas to form the Chinook Indian Tribe/Chinook Nation. Within that group, most members still identify with their specific village heritage.

In their Estimate of the Western Indians, the captains record that “Wack-ki-a-cums reside on the N. Side of the Columbia opposite the Marshey Islands” in eleven houses with a population of 200. In their Lewis and Clark’s Points from Fort Mandan to the Pacific Coast they list two villages and Clark’s maps place them near the present-day towns of Skamakowa (gaɬiášgǝnǝmax̣ix Gatliyashganamakhikh) and Cathlamet (gaɬiaʔišáɬx̣ix Gatliya-ishalkhikh).³ Their namesake village—wáqaiqam—was on Grays Bay. Two more well-known villages were between Skamakowa and Wahkiakum in the Altoona–Pillar Rock area. Until 1947, that area was accessible only by boat and its remoteness enabled several Wahkiakum families to reside on the Columbia until long after all other Chinookan peoples had been removed from the river. Today, gentrification is forcing many Wahkiakums to leave the area.⁴

Selected Encounters

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One of Paul Kane‘s subjects was Tamakoun (his To-ma-quin), a Cascade chief. Ethnographers David and Kathrine French, identify the chief’s son in an earlier sketch by Joseph Drayton, a member of the 1841 Wilkes Expedition.³ Of the child, Wilkes wrote:

Watlala was the name of a key Upper Chinookan village at the Cascades of the Columbia. The name has been extended by many to mean the tribe more often called the Cascades. The captains called them the Shahala, meaning ‘those upriver.’⁵ The natural constriction of the river provided the people with a fishery and a good measure of control over those who traveled up and down the river. As a result, the Cascade Clahclellah village which the expedition visited on 31 October 1805 and 9 April 1806 was a major trade center before and during white contact.

In 1847, artist Paul Kane had time to observe and sketch several Cascade people and the submerged forest above the Cascades. He described the Cascade fishery and their method of collecting tolls from travelers:

We were engaged both days in carrying the parcels of goods across the portage, and dragging the empty boats up by lines. This is a large fishing station, and immense numbers of fish are caught by the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Cascade Indians, who congregate about here in great numbers at the fishing season, which happened at the time of our passing. They gave us a good deal of trouble and uneasiness, as it was only by the utmost vigilance that we could keep them from stealing.⁶

In the fall of 1805 and spring of 1806, the expedition had similar experiences with the Watlala. At that time, the tribe sold their fish not to an English trading company, but to other tribes. Forty years later saw the arrival of Oregon Trail settlers who hired the Cascades to steer their rafts through the rapids. Just a decade after that, a wooden railroad traversed the portage and steamboats on either end ferried passengers and goods along the river.

The 1855 Treaty

In 1855, Cascade leaders signed the 1855 Willamette Valley Treaty which listed the people as the “Wah-lal-la band of Tumwaters.” The treaty was ratified by Congress, and a majority of Cascades were moved to the Grand Ronde Reservation along with many other native nations from western Oregon. Others moved to the Yakama and Warm Springs reservations.

One of the treaty signers, Tumulth, was still at Watlala when Yakamas and Klickitats attacked Fort Rains in an attempt to block white trade through the Cascades of the Columbia. The Cascades maintained their innocence and did not flee when Lt. Philip Sheridan and his dragoons arrived. Sheridan held court and, according to oral tradition, if the defendant had recently fired his gun, he was declared guilty. Sheridan had Tumulth and eight other Cascades hanged. This was the beginning of the Plateau Indian War, Col. Steptoe’s defeat, and Gen. George Wright’s campaign of brutal retribution in Eastern Washington and parts of the Idaho panhandle.⁷

The Cascades Today

Today, the Cascades maintain a fishery at the falls even though river is a reservoir behind Bonneville Dam. In the 1950s, the Bureau of Indian affairs declared the Grand Ronde Tribe assimilated and it was one of many Western Oregon Tribes terminated via the Western Oregon Indian Termination Act (PL 588). Many could not afford to purchase their allotments and had to move from the reservation. The federal government restored the tribe in 1983 leading to a resurgence of culture and community. Although Kiksht, the language of the Upper Chinook no longer has any speakers, the common Chinuk Wawa pigeon spoken among the diverse tribes living at the Grand Ronde Reservation has been preserved and is now taught.⁸

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The party wanted salt for flavoring, and needed it for curing meat. No one mentioned it, but they also would rub it into the insides of elk hides to draw moisture out, in preparation for making much-needed clothing and moccasins. On 28 December 1805 the officers detailed three enlisted men—Joseph Field, William Bratton and George Gibson—to proceed to the Ocean and “at Some Convenient place form a Camp and Commence makeing Salt with 5 of the largest Kittles.” Their temporary camp that would have to be somewhat sheltered from winter winds, near to winter deer and elk range, and as far south of the estuary as it could be without requiring them to climb over or around Tillamook Head. It had to be reasonably close to the ocean where seawater—which ancient proto-scientists had regarded as the “sweat of the earth”—could be processed for salt, and correspondingly close to a plentiful source of firewood.

Why didn’t they just set up camp on the Netul River? Well, ocean tides did reach some 30 miles upriver, and more or less affected the salinity of the Netul River (now called the Lewis and Clark River), which was only five miles up the estuary. But the mixture of fresh river water with salt water, introducing between 3 and 5 grams of dissolved salts per litre created a brackish soup ranging between 0.05% to 3% of dissolved salts–not enough for efficient extraction of salt. The crew had to find a place on the coast well away from dilution by the outflow from the Columbia River and “Commence making Salt.”

Making Salt

Properly speaking, a cairn, is a mound of rocks erected as a memorial or marker. The so-called “Salt Cairn” pictured here represents a reasonable guess as to the appearance of the oven the salt makers built.

Willard and Weiser were sent along to help carry the Corps’ five largest kettles. After five days of exploration they finally decided on a location on the beach about 17 miles below the mouth of the Columbia. There was plenty of firewood and fresh water nearby, and several families of congenial Tillamook Indians were their nearest neighbors.

Back at the fort, the rest of their party was without salt for another nine days while the salt camp crew set up camp and got their salt works into gear. Finally, on 5 January 1806 Alexander Willard and Peter Weiser returned with a gallon of sea salt, representing a good day’s production. Lewis found it “excellent, fine, strong, & white.” Clark felt that it was “not So Strong as the rock Salt or that made in Kentucky or the Western parts of the U.States.”

For a month and a half the detail kept the fires going day and night, lugged a total of perhaps 1,400 gallons of water from the surf, and boiled it down to 28 gallons of salt. Twelve gallons, packed in two small ironbound kegs, were set aside for the return trip as far as the mouth of the Marias River, where they had cached a reserve supply.

Today’s Memorial

The site of the salt works, a detached section of Fort Clatsop National Memorial, is now surrounded by a residential district in the resort town of Seaside, Oregon.

By 1900 the salt makers’ oven had long since collapsed into a pile of rocks—a “cairn.” In the 1950s, local historians reassembled the stones into a structure that represents the presumed appearance of the original.

The plaque reads:

On 2 January 1806, the salt works was established by the three “salt makers” of the Lewis & Clark Expedition: Joseph Fields [sic], William Bratten and George Gibson, who remained here until 20 February 1806. These men, assisted at times by hunters and packers, were able during this period to tediously extract approximately four bushels of salt by boiling seawater day and night in five metal “kittles.”

The Expedition had run out of salt before arrival at their winter camp at Fort Clatsop, 10 miles to the northeast, and it was very necessary for curing meat and preparing for the return trip to civilization.

This actual site was established by a committee of the Oregon Historical Society in 1900, on the testimony of Jenny Michel of Seaside, whose Clatsop Indian father remembered seeing the white men boiling water, and had pointed out this place to her when she was a young girl. She was born in this vicinity about 1816 and died in 1905.

Erected by Seaside Lions Club 1955.

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[3 November 1805:] I arrived at the enterance of a river which appeared to Scatter over a Sand bar, the bottom of which I could See quite across and did not appear to be 4 Inches deep in any part; I attempted to wade this Stream and to my astonishment found the bottom a quick Sand, and impassable . . . Capt Lewis and my Self walked up this river about 1½ miles to examine this river which we found to be a verry Considerable Stream Dischargeing its waters through 2 Chanels which forms an Island of about 3 miles in length on the river and 1½ miles wide, composed of Corse Sand which is thrown out of this quick Sand river Compressing the waters of the Columbia and throwing the whole Current of its waters against its Northern banks…This Stream has much the appearance of the River Platt: roleing its quick Sands into the bottoms with great velocity after which it is divided into 2 Chanels by a large Sand bar before mentioned. —Clark

[1 April 1806:] the Indians . . . informed us that the quicksand river which we have heretofore deemed so considerable, only extendes through the Western mountains as far as the S. Western side of mount hood where it takes it’s source . . . several different tribes informed us that it heads at Mount Hood. —Lewis

Nature of the Sediment

Above: Eastern Sandy River mouth as viewed from the Columbia River. Given the size and nature of the Sandy River delta, the channels of the Sandy River have changed since Clark wrote about it. Today, there are two channels. The eastern channel is upstream from the larger main channel and closer to the river’s mouth in 1805.—ed.

Geologists have determined the expedition members were witnessing the aftermath of a circa winter 1781–1782 eruption of Mount Hood³ that generated a rapidly-flowing slurry of rock and water (technically termed a “lahar”). The sizeable 1781⁴ eruption of Mount Hood, located some thirty-five miles to the east-southeast of the Sandy River delta, triggered the latest sequence of perhaps hundreds of lahars coming off the southwest flank of the volcano,⁵ correctly noted by Lewis as the “source” of the river. Lahars can have different consistencies, and it appears from the captains’ transcription of Sgt. Pryor’s reconnaissance up the Sandy River that they were witnessing a flow of sand and fine gravel suspended in water, the conditions that form quicksand:

[1 April 1806:] the channel is not more than 50 yds and 6 ft deep . . . the bed of this stream is formed entirely of quicksand . . . The water is turbid and current rapid. —Lewis

Although apparently not part of Pryor’s detachment, Joseph Whitehouse also investigated the upstream portion of the Sandy River. Whitehouse’s next to last entry in his extant paraphrased journal provides additional detail of a river laden with a heavy sediment load:

[1 April 1806:] I went up Quick Sand River about 4 miles . . . full of Islands, and Sands barrs . . . I found this river part of the way up it, [to be] 6 feet deep, & the remainder as far up it as I went, only 6 inches deep of water & 4 inches quick sand.

A Whitehouse original journal entry, and the only indication in the Lewis and Clark journals of this simple test, described a member of the expedition probing the depth of the quicksand, perhaps employing something akin to a setting pole:

[3 November 1805] the mouth of which was filled with quick Sand So that we could run a pole 6 or 8 feet in it.

Whitehouse’s paraphrased journal entry from 3 November 1805, added that this probing revealed the river bed “had no solid bottom,” a practical indication of a river burdened with saturated, uncompacted sediment; the high percentage of water-filled void spaces permitted probing to depths that a more compacted deposit would not allow.

The Sandy River Delta

Mount Hood, which Clark described on 3 November 1805, as “of a Conical form but rugid,” was apparently very active until circa 1793⁶ and there is some indication that its volcanic activity persisted until 1800-1801,⁷ just four to five years prior to the expedition’s arrival. Thus, it is difficult to ascertain how much volcaniclastic sediment (Clark’s “Corse Sand which is thrown out of this quick Sand river”) originated from the initial 1781 Mount Hood eruption versus flows caused by post-1781 events. Either way, lahars that commenced with the 1781 eruption are believed to be the source of the sediment that traveled the entire fifty-four miles down the Sandy River drainage to the Columbia,⁸ creating a 2,500-acre delta that projects nearly two miles into the river. Until the advent of advanced age-dating techniques such as radiocarbon analyses and dendrochronology, the geological observations of the Lewis and Clark expedition at the Sandy River were the best source for deducing the timing of this volcanic event, refining the time frame expressed in Native American oral tradition.⁹

The Cascade Range Volcanoes

Mount Hood was one of the five “stupendious” Cascade Range peaks observed by Lewis and Clark, which Meriwether Lewis described as “conic pointed” and appearing “to lie in the same chain,” although neither captain recognized these mountains as volcanoes. The rapidly-flowing slurries of rock and water (called lahars) that commenced with the 1781 eruption of Mount Hood were the source of the “quick sands” noted by the expedition members at the mouth of the Sandy River.

When the captains summed up their observations about the Columbia River on the return journey, Lewis noted:

[14 April 1806:] the bed [of the river] is principally rock except at the entrance of Labuish’s river [Hood River] which heads in Mount hood and like the quicksand river brings down from thence vast bodies of sand.

Interestingly, Lewis had just correctly identified the other principal conduit by which Mount Hood lahars discharged into the Columbia River, including perhaps the largest single debris avalanche recorded from Mount Hood. This was an outpouring that discharged down the Hood River with enough energy to completely cross the Columbia River, and surge three miles up the White Salmon River.¹⁰ But just like the absence of basalt nomenclature in the journals (despite passing hundreds of miles of volcanic rock exposures), the captains never deduced that Mount Hood or the other Cascade peaks they directly observed (Mounts Adams, Jefferson, St. Helens, and Rainier) were volcanoes. We can now read Meriwether Lewis’s 6 April 1806, summary observation that these “stupendious mountains,” some of them “conic pointed,” appeared “to lie in the same chain” and see clear evidence of the continental arc that forms above a seduction zone of a plunging oceanic tectonic plate, but we must concede in fairness that such a deduction has only become common wisdom over the last few decades. As such, we can forgive the captains that the corps twice passed “among the sleeping giants”¹¹ (borrowing historian Donald Jackson’s clever turn of phrase) unaware they were the very object “worthy of notice” that would have splendidly fulfilled Thomas Jefferson’s instructions to seek “volcanic appearances.”¹²

First-Rate Geological Observers

Upon exiting the Columbia Gorge, the last great unmapped country of their outbound journey, the expedition confronted many weeks of considerable trial, tribulation, and ultimately triumph on their path to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and Clark’s geologic observations from the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake Rivers to the mouth of the Sandy River may be less obvious at first glance than their remarks along the Missouri River, yet some of their most valuable and trenchant notations were made along this route. That many of these observations were made at times of great anticipation and unremitting apprehension is remarkable enough. To have their descriptions of natural phenomena confirmed by subsequent accounts of missionaries and expanded upon by modern scholarly research justifies recognizing the journalists of the corps as first-rate geological observers befitting their command of the aptly-named Corps of Volunteers for North Western Discovery.

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The Cheif drew me a kind of chart of the river . . . below a large forks [the Snake River joining the mainstem Columbia] . . . the river passed thro’gh the mountains at which place was a great fall of the water passing through the rocks.¹

This was the first information they had gotten about the existence of Celilo Falls, and it proved to be as misleading as the description they had been given of the Great Falls of the Missouri–an ostensibly singular “great fall of water,” “a most tremendious Cataract.” The captains carried Nicholas King’s map of the lower Columbia (based on a map by explorer George Vancouver), but William Broughton of Vancouver’s party, traveling up the Columbia, had failed to reach the Gorge by two miles. No other white men had ever been there when the expedition arrived. The Nez Perce informant may have condensed Celilo Falls² and The Dalles and Cascades beyond them into one location, or Clark’s translation chain may have failed. (Some Nez Perce traveled beyond Celilo and also could have described The Dalles.) So, when the Corps reached Celilo Falls on 22 October 1805, they unknowingly faced a series of four major river obstacles in fifty-some river miles: Celilo Falls, the Short Narrows and Long Narrows that comprise The Dalles and, farther on, the Cascades of the Columbia.

Deschutes River

Meanwhile, on 21 October 1805 their attention was drawn first to a wide river entering the Columbia from the south, which they eventually learned was called Towarnehiooks by the Indians. Their word meant “enemies,” which was appropriate because their mortal enemies, the Paiutes, lived along its banks. Lewis and Clark explored it a few miles up, soon encountering “a verry Considerable rapid” which Clark described as “an emence body of water Compressd in a narrow Chanel of about 200 yds in width, fomeing over rocks many of which presented their tops above the water.” On their return upriver in April 1806 the captains named it “Clark’s River,” but soon reconsidered that. On 6 May 1806 Lewis decided to reserve Clark’s name for the long tributary of the Columbia that now bears three names–Bitterroot, Clark Fork, and Pend Oreille—and designated this one by its Indian name. But that one didn’t last long either. French-Canadian engagés and traders who began arriving a decade or so later dubbed it Des Chutes—literally, “The Falls,” now spelled Deschutes. The oft-repeated explanation was that the French name referred not to the numerous falls on the lower Towarnehiooks/Clark River, but to the Great Falls five miles below its mouth on the Columbia.

Celilo Falls

The fall salmon run was ending when the Corps arrived at the Great Falls of the Columbia, several miles below the mouth of Towarnehiooks, with some native people still at the river, fishing with gigs and nets and processing their salmon harvest.

Landing on the Columbia’s north side, the expedition had to settle for dog-meat because “the Indians [were] not verry fond of Selling their good fish.” A better trade was made when Lewis exchanged one dugout, a hatchet, and some smaller items, for a high-prowed Columbia River model. The captains instantly recognized how well designed the Indian canoes were for local river conditions. They were “neeter made than any I have ever Seen,” Clark wrote, “and Calculated to ride the waves, and carry emence burthens.” They were “dug thin and are suported by cross pieces of about 1 inch diamuter tied with Strong bark thro’ holes in the sides.”

The next day, 23 October 1805, amid clouds of Fleas attracted by fish skins, men of the Corps crossed the canoes to the Oregon side. They stripped off their clothes so they were able to brush fleas from their bodies, and hauled the empty canoes over a 475-yard portage around Celilo Falls. After paddling down the stretch later known as the “Short Narrows,” they eased the boats down the 8-foot “Great Rapid” with elk-hide ropes prepared especially for just such a purpose. The passage was completed by three o’clock in the afternoon, and camp established below the falls.

Ever since leaving Nez Perce country, the Corps had been accompanied by chiefs Twisted Hair and Tetoharsky, who had volunteered to introduce them to Columbia River tribes. On the 23rd, the chiefs had warned that they “over herd the Indians from below Say they would try to kill us.” The captains ordered the men to check their weapons, and distributed enough ammunition to top off each man’s supply at 100 rounds. The next morning, the chiefs said that, past Celilo Falls, they could no longer speak the languages and, further, were at war with local tribes, so they would be leaving. The captains convinced them to stay for two days, intending to help negotiate a peace treaty.

1806 Return

Headed upstream on 21 April 1806, most of the Corps camped on the north side of the river opposite the island’s west end. The men were somewhat scattered, most of the company leading the ten pack horses they had so far bought, the rest manning the two remaining canoes. While here, Lewis purchased one more horse “for a trifle”–the equivalent, he said, of ten shillings in Virginia currency.

Food was still scarce for native and traveler alike. So was firewood. Lewis characterized the local natives as “poor, dirty, proud, haughty, inhospitable, parsimonious and faithless in every rispect,” and he felt it advisable to treat them menacingly. Out of spite he ordered the spare paddles and poles to be burned in an evening bonfire–a vindictive gesture in this treeless desert where fuel wood was generally non-existent.

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No Journal Entries

Transcription: Captain Lewis arrived at this port on Friday last. We are informed that he has brought barges &c on a new construction, that can be taken in pieces for the purpose of passing carrying-places; and that he and captain Clark will start in a few days on their expedition to the Westward.

The second sentence refers to Lewis’s “experiment,” the 30-foot-long iron-framed, hide-covered collapsible boat Lewis himself had designed, and the construction of which he had personally supervised at Harpers Ferry the previous spring. It was a matter of great pride and high expectations.

Lewis’s account of making his way downriver over the seemingly endless riffles and visits to towns soon ended. He described a visit to Grave Creek Mound, a major Indian burial mound below Wheeling, as well as a stop at Marietta. But four days after leaving Marietta and having routinely recorded towns visited, river conditions, and distances traveled until then, Lewis abruptly discontinued his Eastern Journal. The last entry is dated 18 September 1803.

Why he stopped keeping the journal isn’t known. From 18 September until the 11 November 1803 arrival at Fort Massac on the lower Ohio, there is a gap. It is most unfortunate that there is not a daily log of what happened during this interim. Much must be pieced together from other sources, some must be deduced from evidence, and some facts remain a mystery. Information regarding Lewis’s visits at Maysville and Cincinnati; his stop at Big Bone Lick for fossil specimens for President Jefferson; his arrival at Louisville and meeting with Clark; his estimate of the men Clark had recruited; the Corps’ thirteen-day stay at the Falls of the Ohio and why it was delayed there that long; the departure from Clarksville; and the other towns the explorers visited between the Falls and Fort Massac–all remains fragmentary or unknown to this day.

So much more would be known if Lewis had maintained his journal or if Clark had begun a journal upon leaving the Falls. This foreshadowed Lewis’s journal keeping practices on the expedition–gaps for weeks and months at a time–but was uncharacteristic of Clark, who rather faithfully kept a journal or memorandum book while on trips. If he did keep a journal or any notes of the trip down the Ohio they have never been found nor their existence even hinted at.

What we do know after 18 September 18 is that the lower on the Ohio that Lewis descended, the more navigable the river became, even if still very low. About 24 September 1803, Lewis arrived at Maysville and on the 28 September 1803 he reached Cincinnati. He spent a week at the future Queen City, resting the men, visiting old friends, learning about and viewing animal bones and fossils from Big Bone Lick courtesy of Dr. William Goforth, and writing to Jefferson and Clark. On 1 October 1803, he dispatched the boats to Big Bone Lick, and then followed himself three days later via land. Lewis noted in his letter of 3 October 1803 to the President that the low water would require the barge three days to travel the fifty-three river miles to the lick, while he would spend less than a day going the seventeen land miles. Several days were apparently spent at Big Bone Lick in collecting specimens for Jefferson. Unfortunately, they never made it to him. The following year, sitting in crates on a boat at the Natchez dock, they sank in the Mississippi River.²

Why the Delay?

The Clark home known as “Mulberry Hill,” built under the supervision of Jonathan and George, William’s older brothers in 1783-84, by slaves who included Old York, the father of William Clark’s personal slave, who was also called York. The rest of the Clark family, including 14-year-old William, arrived here in March 1785. In 1799 William inherited the house from his father, and in 1803 sold it to Jonathan. It remained in the Clark family until its collapse in the early 1900s. This photo was taken about 1890.

The 15 October 1803 edition of the Louisville Farmer’s Library newspaper reported Lewis’s arrival the day before. The report was reprinted by the Lexington Kentucky Gazette and it is this source that survives today: “LOUISVILLE–Captain Lewis arrived at this port on [14 October 1803] . . . he and captain Clark will start in a few days on their expedition to the Westward.” More than “a few days” passed, however, before the foundation of the Corps began their journey west. It wasn’t until 26 October 1803, thirteen days after Lewis’s arrival, that they left.³

Why the delay? A few days became a week and a week became almost two weeks. Did something happen to the barge in going through the Falls? Thomas Rodney went through the Falls three days after Lewis and Clark in a bateau with less than half that boat’s draft. He described a terrifying trip through the churning, rock-strewn channel–even with James Patten, the Falls’ most experienced pilot, guiding the craft.⁴ Did William Clark perhaps suffer a bout of illness? Soon after leaving, Clark fell ill not once, but twice. It’s possible, but he doesn’t reference his illness on the Ohio and Mississippi as being relapses of an earlier malady.⁵ Perhaps more time to evaluate and enlist the recruits? That’s unlikely. Clark had enlisted three of “the best woodsmen & Hunters, of young men in this part of the Countrey” by the time Lewis arrived, and the other “Nine Young Men from Kentucky” were enlisted from 15 October 1803 to 20 October 1803.⁶ Was the delay another of Lewis’s emerging trends of procrastinating or staying somewhere longer than he stated he intended? Maybe one day we’ll know.

Tasks

While at the Falls of the Ohio, Lewis and Clark are known to have spent their time enlisting the other six members of the “Nine Young Men,” making other preparations, and visiting.

From their base at Clarksville, the captains went back and forth between the Clark farm and Louisville. On the evening of 17 October 1803, they visited Rodney on his boat tied up at the Louisville waterfront and enjoyed a glass of wine with him.⁷ They most likely ventured out to Jonathan Clark’s Trough Spring estate and to Locust Grove, home of Clark sister and brother-in-law, Lucy and William Croghan.

Over the Falls

The French explorer General George Henri Victor Collot (1750-1825) came to America in 1796 on a secret mission to investigate the possibilities of inciting settlers on the western frontier to rebel against the U.S. government and join the French empire. On orders of Arthur St. Clair, the American governor of the Northwest Territory, Collot was arrested for espionage when he reached Cahokia, and was deported.

As recounted in his book, Voyage dans Amerique Septentrionale (Voyage in North America), Collot’s description of the “Rapids or Falls” of the Ohio at Louisville suggests the difficulties and dangers Lewis and Clark may have encountered in October 1803. They, like Collot, were obliged to hire a pilot to avoid the hazards:

Near the fall the islands and rocks by which it is formed take up nearly three quarters of the bed of the river, and fill up and obstruct all the side on the southeast; the waters have no other passage in dry seasons than on the side of the north-west, but as they are much confined, and the plane over which they roll is very shelving, and they have to make their way across every obstacle, they rush along with the greatest impetuosity and violence.

On the side which is obstructed there are only five or six inches of water, and often the bank of stones is dry. In the channel where the boats pass, the depth of water varies, but is never less than from four to five feet: this depth would become more than sufficient to pass at all times with security, if the windings of the channel were not so abrupt and numerous, and the current so strong; but in the present state of the passage, the pilot has scarcely time to steer, or the boat to change its direction.⁸

Despite the pilot’s skill and attention, Collot’s boat struck a rock and scraped off three feet of the keel. “In the season of floods,” Collot remarked, “these inconveniences disappear, and during eight months in the year there is water enough to pass the double channel with all kinds of boats.”⁹

The so-called Falls of the Ohio consisted of a series of rapids and cascades that dropped the river a total of twenty-four feet in two miles.

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The Skilloots were an Upper Chinookan group that spoke the Clackamas dialect of the Chinookan language. They were located on both sides of the Columbia River above and below the mouth of the Cowlitz. At first, the captains applied the name over a much wider area, perhaps misinterpreting a similar Chinookan expression meaning ‘look at him!’. Cape Horn, a few miles east of Washougal, was named sqúlips, and could be the origin of the tribe’s name.¹ In 1806, captains estimated the people’s population to be 2500 souls.²

The Winship Expedition

On 26 May 1810, the storied ship Albatross captained by Nathan Winship and first-mate William Smith crossed the Columbia River bar intent on being the first to establish a trading post in what would become the Oregon territory. Up the river, past Lewis and Clark’s Dismal Nitch, the party anchored their big ship, and continued up the river to a summer village site of the Skilloot called qániak, Conniac or Konnaack. They had with them twenty-five Kanakas, Hawaiian laborers, a practice successfully employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company at Cowlitz Farm and Fort Vancouver. An extensive bottom on the south side of the Columbia displayed the first oak trees they had seen since entering the river, so they named the cliff at the upper end Oak Point. On 26 March 1806, Captain Lewis and Captain Clark had named the flat Fanny’s Bottom.³

When the Winship party’s main building had been raised to a height of ten feet and their crops planted, the Columbia River flooded the site forcing them to float their logs down the river and build on higher ground. The watchful Chinook were not pleased with the trader’s choice of location and told them that the Chinook people’s traditional role as intermediaries was being ignored. Both sides were called to arms and Captain Winship came to understand that the post could not be defended once the Albatross left the river. After just three weeks in existence, the trading post was abandoned. When the ship returned the next year, William Smith was now at the helm, and he discovered that the presence of Astor Company’s Fort Astoria signaled the end the Winship Brothers’ plans on the Columbia.⁴

Final Years at Oak Point

The Konnaack Skilloot would never become significant traders and in 1851, Skilloots on both sides of the river ceded their lands in a treaty negotiated by Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Oregon Territory, Anson Dart. In return, they were given gifts and allowed to live and hunt on their traditional lands at Oak Point.⁵

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Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics, Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. All rights reserved.

The members of the Corps of Discovery must have hoped to hear a rattlesnake’s warning in time to avoid the strike.

It had been a long, exhausting day, filled with a succession of curious adventures, any one of which might have turned into misfortune instead of enchantment. Meriwether Lewis returned to the camp after dark that night, “much fortiegued, but eat a hearty supper and took a good night’s rest.” The next morning he awoke to find “a large rattlesnake coiled on the leaning trunk of a tree under the shade of which I had been lying at the distance of about ten feet.”

It certainly wasn’t the first rattlesnake seen on the trip, but he killed this one, and took time to study it. “They do not differ in colours,” he observed, “from the rattlesnakes common to the middle Atlantic states, but considerably in the form and figures of those colours.” Actually, he had found a new species, later designated viridis viridis, of the genus Crotalus. Crotalus is Greek for “little bell,” referring to the rattly bell with which this reptile warns creatures it deems threatening. The species name, viridis, a form of the Latin word for “green,” refers to the greenish-gray tinge around the dark brown markings on the snake’s back. The common name for Crotalus viridis viridis is prairie rattlesnake. The similar reptile he had seen back home in the middle Atlantic states could have been one of three species of the timber rattlesnake, C. horridus horridus, the canebrake rattlesnake, C. horridus atricaudatus, or the largest of all rattlesnakes, the Eastern diamondback, C. adamateus, which is said to reach from six to nine feet in length.

Counting ‘Scuta’

The men saw only a few rattlesnakes while traversing the Columbia Plateau the autumn of 1805 because, Lewis surmised, the season was so far advanced. “Nor do I know,” he concluded, “whether they are of either of the four speceis found in the different parts of the United states, or of that species before mentioned . . . the prairie rattler . . . peculiar to the upper parts of the Missouri and it’s branches.” It is not clear what other species he was referring to, but it is possible that they were the Northern Pacific rattlesnake, now classified as C. viridis oreganus; the timber rattlesnake, C. horridus horridus; and the canebrake rattlesnake, C. atricaudatus (ay-tree-cow-DAY-tus, meaning “tough as steel”).

On this specimen Lewis counted “176 scuta on the abdomen and 17 half formed scuta on the tale.” Herpetologists don’t use the term scuta today, but call those parts ventral [belly] scales. The number of ventral scales corresponds to the number of vertebrae. Those on the tail are called subcaudal—beneath the tail—scales.¹ Scutella, properly speaking today, are large, heavy scales found on the back of the rattlesnake’s head.²

Where did Lewis learn to count “scuta”? From one of his pre-expedition mentors in Philadelphia, such as Benjamin Smith Barton? From Thomas Jefferson, who was also something of a naturalist? From childhood rambles near his homes in Virginia and Georgia?

Or did he glean it from the reference work published in London in 1764, Owen’s Dictionary, which was in their portable library? There, the “Rattle-snake” was described as:

a genus of serpents, having scuta that cover the whole under-surface of the body and tail, and having the extremity of the body terminated by a kind of rattle, formed of a series of urceolated [urn-shaped] articulations, which are moveable, and make noise. Of this serpent, there are two species, the greater one with scuta of the abdomen a hundred and seventy-two, of the tail twenty-one; and the lesser rattle-snake, having the scuta of the abdomen a hundred and sixty-five, of the tail twenty-eight. The larger is a very terrible, and at its full growth, a very large serpent, growing to eight feet in length, with a proportionable thickness . . . . This serpent is frequent in the woods of America: the bite is fatal, but it is easy to avoid it, the creature being sluggish, unless provoked, and giving notice before it bites by shaking its rattle.

The lesser species of this serpent grows to about seven feet in length, and in most particulars is like the former one, and its bite is equally mischievious.³

The emphasis on size and fearsomeness reflected the popular fascination during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with “charismatic” wild creatures such as this one.

Rattlesnake Bites

A prairie rattlesnake basks in the morning sun at the door of its den, formerly the abode of prairie-dogs.

Meanwhile, Clark and the rest of the Corps were working their way upriver. Clark complained:

the current excessively rapid and dificuelt to assend . . . great numbers of dangerous places, and the fatigue which we have to encounter is incretiatable, the men in the water from morning untill night hauling the cord and boats, walking on sharp rocks and round sliperey stones which alternately cut their feet and throw them down, not with standing all this dificuelty, they go with great cheerfulness, aded to those dificuelties the rattle snakes are inumerable & require great caution to prevent being bitten.

The previous Fourth, 4 July 1804, at Independence Creek near today’s Kansas City, Kansas, Clark reported that “a Snake bit Jo: Fields on the side of the foot which Swelled much.” Captain Lewis quickly applied a poultice of “Barks” to the wound. That would have been powdered “Peruvian Bark,” from the South American cinchona tree. It contains quinine, which would have been effective on malarial fevers, but was useless in any form against rattlesnake venom.

How serious might Field’s injury have been? Laurence Klauber has summarized the symptoms of the bite of a C. viridis viridis:

there is an immediate sensation like the sting of a wasp; there is little or no bleeding; a spreading feeling of numbness, especially at the tongue and lips; the tips of the fingers and toes tingle; there is a tendency to faint, and thereafter to remain in a coma for some time; nausea and vomiting are usually present; swelling begins about ten minutes after the bite, with discoloration, and continues with severe pain for thirty-six to forty-eight hours.⁴

Fortunately, although a rattlesnake bite is traumatic to both body and mind, it is seldom fatal to humans, but merely achieves just what the biter intends: It distracts and immobilizes a creature considered to be a threat to its safety. Five days after Field’s encounter, Sergeant Gass announced, “the man that was snake bitten is become well.”

Herbal Remedy

During the winter at Fort Mandan the explorers learned from Canadian trader Hugh Heney of an Indian topical medicine. In his journal for 28 February 1805, Clark described it as:

. . . a Root and top of a plant presented by Mr. Haney, for the Cure of mad Dogs Snakes &c, and to be found & used as follows vz [viz; videlicet]: . . . this root is found on high lands and asent of hills, the way of useing it is to Scarify the part when bitten to chu or pound an inch or more if the root is Small, and applying it to the bitten part renewing it twice a Day. the bitten person is not to chaw nor Swallow any of the Root for it might have contrary effect.

The plant Heney sent probably was the purple coneflower, Echinacea angustifolia, which is known to have been widely used by Plains Indians in treating various poisonous bites, including that of the rattlesnake.⁵ Commonly called by such names as black sampson, comb plant, and snakeroot, it is still listed in the U.S. Pharmacopeia, and is among the most popular of all botanicals. Notwithstanding its durable and widespread reputation, perhaps based on the psychological potency of its obnoxious flavor, its effect on a rattlesnake bite is no better than Lewis’s “Peruvian barks.” Its range today extends from eastern Minnesota to western Montana, and from Saskatchewan to Texas. Lewis sent a specimen to Jefferson.⁶

Selected Encounters

Rattlesnake sightings and encounters, which began near the Manitou River in Missouri, were evidently too numerous to count, but the men killed at least seventeen before the expedition was over. There were several close calls, too. Lewis “trod within five inches” of one near the Judith River in Montana on 26 May 1805:

but being in motion I passed before he could probably put himself in a striking attitude and fortunately escaped his bite, I struck about with my espontoon being directed in some measure by his nois until I killed him.

Another close call occurred on 12 June 1805, when one of the men cordelling a canoe “cought one by the head in Catch’g hold of a bush on which his head lay reclined.”

On 11 July 1805, at the canoe-building camp upriver from Great Falls, a rattler struck at Private Whitehouse’s leg, but hit only his legging. “I shot it,” the soldier reported, “it was 4 feet 2 Inches long, and 5 Inches and a half around.” A month later, in the vicinity of the Gates of the Mountains, Private Whitehouse reported that:

Capt. Clark was near being bit by a rattle snake which was between his legs as he was Standing on Shore a fishing . . . he killed it and Shot Several others this afternoon.

It’s hard to tell, from these reports just how much danger any man was in. The striking distance of a prairie rattler varies according to several factors, including the species, its position relative to its prey, and how excited it happens to be at the instant of the strike. The principal determinant may be the reptile’s length, for according to Laurence Klauber, a rattler’s strike will rarely extend more than half its length, measured from the front of the anchor coil. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to estimate the actual length of any reptile without counting its ventral scales, and doing that to a snake-on-the-hoof is definitely unwise.

Equally important is the speed of the strike. In a series of tests using artificial prey, an adult prairie rattlesnake struck with an average speed of 8.12 feet per second—slower than a prizefighter’s punch.⁷

Lore and Legend

For various reasons, the rattlesnake is surrounded by a large lore of legend. Perhaps it is the reptilian taciturnity, combined with the apparently torpid demeanor, both attributes veiling a supposedly sinister inclination. For instance, there’s the episode at Fort Mandan, wherein René Jusseaume, the French trader Lewis and Clark hired as an interpreter—notwithstanding that his own reputation was not unlike a rattlesnake’s⁸—who prescribed “a small portion of the rattle of the rattle-snake” to hasten Sacagawea‘s parturition. Lewis reported

Having the rattle of a snake by me, I gave it to him and he administered two rings of it to the woman broken in small pieces with the fingers and added to a small quantity of water . . . whether this medicine was truly the cause or not I shall not undertake to determine, but I was informed that she had not taken it more than ten minutes before she brought forth. Perhaps this remedy may be worthy of future experiments, but I must confess that I want faith as to it’s efficacy.

Then there is the story belonging to the copious literature on rattlesnake taming. Among the several hundred questions Nicholas Biddle posed to William Clark during their meeting in April of 1810 was: “Qu: as to tame rattle snakes in Rocky mountains.” His notes on Clark’s answer read as follows:⁹

Among Snake Indians in one of the towns a Snake Indian supposed to have been killed having been wounded & scalped by the Minnetarees of F. de Prairie [Atsinas] arrived having recovered on field of battle & escaped to woods. He brought with him two large rattle snakes whose teeth he had extracted. They were tamed by him wrapped themselves round his body . . . bosom &c . . . . knew him . . . boys amused thems[elve]s with sticks . . . the name of the Snake Indians got by their being remarkable for taming snakes of which they have many in their country.

Indian lore is said to include many such tales, and similar legends abounded in Colonial days, including reports of tamed snakes coming when called—perhaps symbolically triumphing over the serpent in the Garden of Eden.¹⁰

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The mid-river island (foreground) identified as “Phoca” and “Seal rock” on one of William Clark‘s route maps is a compact landslide block that detached from the uppermost Grande Ronde Basalt flow² just below the upper tree line in this image of the Cape Horn headland.

Proceeding rapidly downriver on 2 November 1805 (Clark would estimate making “29 miles to day from the Great Shute”), only in his Elkskin-bound journal course and distance notes is there a mention of a prominent headland known today as Cape Horn on the Washington State side of the Columbia:

Stard. point of rocks of a high clift of black rocks.

Cape Horn is comprised of several lava flows belonging to the Grande Ronde Basalt, including some of the same rock units exposed at the landslide-prone Table Mountain upriver at the Cascades of the Columbia. Of interest to us is one of the basalt flows composing the Ortley Member just below the Highway 14 road level on Cape Horn and how it relates to a curious occurrence of an isolated rock in the river:

[2 November 1805:] passed a rock near the middle of the river, about 100 feet high and 80 feet Diamuter.—Clark

This mid-river island was identified as “Phoca” and “Seal rock” on one of Clark’s route maps,³ but apparently not referenced as such in any of the captains’ journal entries. Geologists studying this small island have determined it is compositionally identical to the afore-mentioned Orley Member flow on the Cape Horn head-land and, thus, represents a compact landslide block that fell hundreds of feet to its present location.⁴

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John Newman (ca. 1785–1838) was a good hunter and “a man of uncommon activity and bodily strength”¹ who said something unforgivable, and under the rules of the Articles of War was expelled from the Army.

A Pennsylvanian, he had transferred from Fort Massac into the expedition in the fall of 1803, and was a good member of the expedition until October 1804. He may have responded to deserter Moses Reed‘s malevolent influence, because on 12 October 1804, both men were confined. Newman’s trial took place the following day, and he was convicted of “having uttered repeated expressions of a highly criminal and mutinous nature; the same having a tendency not only to distroy every principle of military discipline, but also to alienate the affections of the individuals composing this Detachment to their officers, and disaffect them to the service for which they have been so sacredly and solemnly engaged.”²

Despite Newman’s not-guilty plea, the panel of two sergeants and eight privates convicted their peer.³ When Newman’s lashing was given on 14 October, an Arikara chief temporarily traveling with the Corps was present. He begged for mercy to Newman, but listened to the captains’ explanation of why such punishment was the army custom. The chief replied that “examples were necessary & that he himself had made them by Death, but his nation never whiped . . .”⁴

This exchange—”examples were necessary”—helps explain both the harshness and Lewis’s later support of Newman. The captains were making an example of Newman lest the expedition begin to unravel while still in its first year. Reed had deserted in August and now, two months later, they would not tolerate even mutinous talk.

Like Reed, Newman spent the winter in Fort Mandan’s relative safety and returned to St. Louis on the barge (called the ‘boat’ or ‘barge’ but never the ‘keelboat’) in spring 1805. Over that winter, Lewis later wrote, Newman’s constant attempts to atone “induced him to expose himself too much to the intense cold of that climate,”⁵ suffering frostbite that took weeks to heal.

Lewis turned down Newman’s plea to stay on, “deeming it impolitic to relax from the sentence, altho’ he stood acquitted in my mind . . . .”⁶ Even so, on the barge away from the captains, Newman continued “his personal exertions” to hunt and to guarantee the boat’s safety all the way to St. Louis. And so Lewis, when he transmitted the pay roll to Secretary of War Henry Dearborn in January 1807, requested that Newman receive pay through the date of his expulsion. (Lewis proposed taking it from the share of Jean-Baptiste Lepage, Newman’s replacement. Newman did receive partial pay, and a land warrant, and may have settled in Missouri. But he too heeded the lure of the Upper Missouri and trapped in the North and South Dakota during the 1830s. In 1838 he was killed by the Yankton Sioux, who had been friendly towards the Corps.⁷

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