Closed Captions Audio Described

U.S. Forest Service archaeologist Tony Farque discusses the Corps of Discovery's winter at Fort Clatsop and their misunderstandings of Columbia River trade practices. He explains the sophisticated Chinookan trading network based on dentalia shells and reciprocal exchange, contrasting it with the expedition's perception of local tribes as thieves. Farque covers the captains' isolation from regional peoples and missed opportunities for meaningful cultural exchange.

Transcript

0:08 Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to welcome you to the Corps of Discovery II. This is a mobile outdoor exhibit sponsored by the National Park Service and other sponsors that you are you just have to take my, my word for it that they're on this black panel right here. I would like to welcome you that. This is a commemoration that's of the bicentennial of the
0:33 Lewis and Clark Original Corps of Discovery. And we are doing by land, what Lewis and Clark did by water, which is to travel out to the Pacific Coast and back to Missouri. So 1806, 200 years ago, Lewis and Clark and the expedition were on their way back to Saint Louis, Missouri. And so are we. And along the way, we're stopping in different towns that have requested us to come to the community.
0:57 And Grand Ronde has graciously welcomed us with open arms. So we're very thankful to your kindness This morning we have a wonderful treat for you. Mr Tony Farque is with the United States Forest Service and he is gonna talk to you about Lewis and Clark and what they missed in Oregon. A little bit about Tony. He's an archaeologist with the US Forest Service.
1:20 He has been presenting Lewis and Clark for three years now and teaching in Oregon, Washington and Idaho school with the help of several grants. So without further ado, please welcome Tony Farque. Hello. Hello, how are you doing? Good to see you. Thanks for coming down, you guys. All right. Can you hear me in the back? Hello, mic. Hello, mic. Is it on? How are you?
1:44 We got a lot to talk about and we're have precious short time, don't we? All right. Well, Lewis and Clark were on quite an adventure. 28 months. How do you pack for an 8000 mile camping trip? There's lots of things you can talk about with these guys. What I'm gonna talk about today is what happened to them while, while they were in Oregon, they had problems in Oregon. This gentleman says they hated Oregon.
2:08 They had some unfortunate experiences in Oregon. We're gonna talk about that today. That would be a good thing to discuss. Ok. We'll jump right into it. Are you ready? All right up on this table. I have the replica artifacts and some old things also which the Corps of Discovery would have had with them. Of course, they were making a lot of maps, big coins. They were trading to the tribes with which doesn't work, don't worry. And over here trade goods.
2:33 They might have been settling down with, in the lodge of one of the chiefs to make some trade to try to make food or the things they needed. They were pretty much out of supplies when they got to Oregon, weren't they? Ok. Well, what happened is they were coming into Oregon. A lot of interesting things they had been through some very hard times, hadn't they coming into Oregon? They came through over the rocky mountains. What happened? They had to eat their horses, they ate dogs, they ate their shoes,
2:58 they ate their candles. They pretty much were starving. Things were not going well were they? They had planned to go from their first winter's camp at Fort Mandan all the way to the Pacific coast and clear back to Saint Louis in that same summer, they had no idea how difficult it was gonna be and they staggered out of those mountains, realized they weren't going to get to the Pacific and all the way back because they had taken way too much time
3:23 to come through the mountains. 144 miles. A very difficult travel was hard going for sure. They ran out of food. Most of their supplies. They were, and they were sick and exhausted. They were just about starving. Of course, they came down into Oregon. The Nez Perce had taken care of them, fed them, brought them back to the health a little bit. They began to eat dog with the Nez Perce again, except for Clark and
3:47 Sacagawea of course, would never eat dog because she's Shoshone and they believe they were descended from wolves. So it'd be like being a cannibal. Right. So she couldn't eat dog right at all. But the men were starting to feel better. They built their canoes, they shot down the rivers and these guys had, had quite a bit of difficulty on their trip, hadn't they, They come all the way over to the plains. They thought they understood
4:11 the tribes, they had their medals. Thomas Jefferson, of course, the great president who sent them on this journey, our only genius president, we will ever suffer in this country. In my opinion, had a great vision and he sent these people off to try to look for nations of Indian tribes, establish peace through trade with the Indian tribes and set
4:35 up a nice trading network for the United States. And he called that his vision was to establish an empire of liberty across this country. An interesting idea, Jefferson, his idea of an empire of liberty was to have small little communities, little farming based communities which related to each other and traded with each other
4:59 and not have a big, strong, centralized government. You'd be very surprised today with where this country has gone. I'm sure of that. So he thought these guys would be, have fun. They were well prepared. Merriwether Lewis, of course, had prepared for three years with Jefferson a year and a half of very intensive study, how to take records.
5:22 William Clark was brought along to kind of lead the men do the map making. He was a collector of people. Of course, Lewis was kind of a,
5:31 a loner, wasn't he? And he had days, which didn't go very well. If he had those blue days and when it gets cloudy, like in an Oregon winter sometimes doesn't go too well. Lewis had trouble in Oregon, that's for sure. All right, they're coming down the river in their canoes. They're headed down towards the ocean. They don't know how far it's going to be. They reached the place where the great trading fairs have just ended.
5:56 The Dalles Oregon, the Columbia river was not dammed. The great George Aguilar has written a good book called When The River Ran Wild! It's a great book. He's an elder from Warm Springs. He talks about before the Columbia river was dammed. All the rapids and all the salmon that went through those rapids
6:17 and how available they were to the Indian people. The great trading fair that begins in the spring, late spring, early summer and goes through the summer time in the Dalles Oregon
6:32 sometimes swelled to 30,000 Indian people for a couple of months at a time that fair had just ended when Lewis and Clark came down the river, William Clark noticed. However, in one of the villages at Nixlúidix. He noticed in his estimation, over 10,000 pounds of salmon dried, pounded up, prepared in baskets and ready for trade.
6:55 We estimate now over 1 million pounds of salmon a year was processed from what is now the Dalles to Cascade Locks about 20 miles of the Columbia River. Just for trade alone. Quite an industry that's significant. A million pounds of salmon a year for trade. Well, where was it being traded? Some went east
7:19 over the Nez Perce country. A lot of it though, came down the Columbia river. Now, Clark was familiar with Indian people. He had grown up out on the frontier with his older brothers in the Indian wars back east. He knew a little bit about how to deal with the Indian folks. Lewis had trouble dealing with people in general. He was a loner.
7:44 Absolutely the size of group that he would probably go the other way talking to this group. But William Clark could sit down and talk to you. Well, Clark thought as we come down the river, let's make careful records of the tribes. They started keeping the records. Clark was in charge of mapping. Of course, we know that as well, right? He, he was a great map maker of some of the replicas of his maps up here
8:07 and he was an outstanding map maker. They came down the river when they got to the first narrows where the Columbia River narrowed down to 50 yards across from a mile and a half wide and the whole river boiled through that narrows and was a cauldron of swirling water. And the Indians have been out there fishing when the salmon were running,
8:31 it became difficult passage. The Indians didn't run their canoes down that part of the river either. We had 50 Chinook speaking Indian villages from that part of the river. The Dalles all the way to the ocean. It was an alliance of villages
8:54 relating to each other through commerce rather than conflict. This is a significant point here. The first traders came out and said we have Indians out here and their relations as people of the Northwest revolve around trade and commerce rather than around conflict and raiding.
9:17 As all the tribes had been coming across to this point, whole different associations of peoples, different rules completely. Our men were not familiar with those rules. Now these rules have been in place in a long, for a long time. These Chinook speaking Indian villages and they had
9:42 such a reliance on trade. They had a trade based communication where the Chinook
9:51 trading jargon was a language of trade that went from The Dalles all the way to the Pacific Ocean and up the coast, the headman for that whole empire was referred to later on as a king, King Comcomly of the Chinook proper. He was a rich man.
10:12 He was in charge of the Indian money that came down This is the Indian money. The Dentalia shells very, very rare. This was the medium of exchange along the Columbia River. I mean, you could trade your canoe, right. That would be good also. And food and dogs. But the Dentalia shells were the standard
10:36 money. 40 of them, of the small ones, would be worth a canoe, maybe three horses, a few slaves, a couple hundred pounds of salmon. The big ones, much more rare. 20 of these strung up would be worth a lot. You could trade. I think there are accounts of 20 of the large Dentalia
11:00 shells exchange for up to four rifles and rifles were very, very rare at that time. Well, Comcomly had his village out in the Pacific Ocean. The great chief himself, the trade of this money
11:23 came through him. These shells were not located in Oregon. Naturally, they come from Canada. He had great canoes and his people went out in the Pacific Ocean and went in the cold, rough ocean waters all the way to Canada and they traded for the Indian money up there and brought it back.
11:45 He was the central banker for this entire trading system all the way on the Columbia River. No wonder they called him a king and he was a clever man rather than having his alliances and his relationships with the neighboring tribes through force and conflict. He did it through trade and relationships.
12:07 He had a large family and many wives, his Children would marry into the head men of other nations. It all became a matter of family and relationships. Very interesting world. So Lewis and Clark arrive in this, they don't know how this works at all. They're used to
12:31 doing their peace parleys. Showing the chief his new father. You've been a chief for 1000 years. Aren't you glad to have a new father? Right. You know, your people have been here for thousands. It didn't always work out too well, but they had the, they had their pattern worked out that didn't work very well. Once they got here, the real disappointment was as they came down the Columbia River.
12:55 And remember now, Lewis and Clark had been surprise visitors and a real curiosity to the tribes in the rocky mountains because they hadn't seen white people before. They hadn't seen Clark's slave York, the big black man that was with them. And they became quite a sideshow, the largest sideshow to travel through native North America. But when they got to the Columbia River and got to the Dalles,
13:19 they were no longer unique. There had been trade going on for a number of years for 15, 14.5 years. Ships had already been coming from Boston in a whole year's journey and anchoring off the coast of Oregon Astoria at Baker Bay and trading for six months at a time with the Indians, they wanted the otter
13:43 skins because those otter skins when taken to China were worth a fortune. So people were leaving Boston with trade goods for the tribes, knives, tobacco axes, glass beads. The blue beads were the chief beads, the tyee beads
14:07 that the tribes in the Northwest wanted the most. William Clark had told Lewis that when they left Lewis didn't believe him. So they're out of blue beads. By the time they got to Oregon, they missed a great opportunity. Had they had another barrel of blue beads, they would have been fairly wealthy. They were pretty well gone. Of course, later, people were mixing the blue beads up with the Indian money and it was becoming rather exciting, wasn't it that nice?
14:32 Like these are not too old, these are new ones. Some of these are old. This is a string of 270 year old Dutch trade beads. So, we've been around for a while. Some of these old beads, these tomahawks were very good trade items. It's actually a pipe. Yes, they had 55 of these when they left. Those are pretty nice. Those were hot items.
14:57 Now they're coming down the river. What do they see? They see trade goods. They see iron kettles, they see Indians with old guns that are worn out. They see Indian women with sailors names tattooed on their arms. James Bowman. They see Indian Children with red hair. There's been quite a bit of trade going on for a long time. They're no longer. The, the,
15:21 the great curiosity that they had been, plus the tribes have seen black sailors before. So York is not even a great curiosity either. Ok. They get to those narrows. Let's get back to where the difficulty of going, shooting down the narrows in the Columbia. They have to go there. The Indians don't run their canoes down there. They set their canoes up.
15:42 If you're coming down from above, they park their canoes, walk around the horrible rapids, rent other canoes or family arrangements. You borrow a canoe and you head on down the river. Now, there's been trade going on for thousands and thousands of years. And here are the rules of the trade. This is something that Lewis and Clark really should have known.
16:06 They didn't know it and it caused them a great deal of trouble. If I and with my friends and my family and my most revered trading partners, we have what we call a balanced trading agreement or balanced reciprocity, you can come into my house and borrow whatever you want because you know,
16:29 I trust you and you leave the appropriate goods behind, very informal. Now, more distant kin and not so familiar. Trading partners have a more generalized trading agreement, generalized reciprocity. It's set up by the headman and in each time we're gonna have our trade, you can't come into my house and take things.
16:51 But your head man, your chief and my head man, or head woman, my chief or chieftess, will determine what the goods are and we, but it's pretty friendly. Now, here's somebody who comes in sometimes and takes my kids away and sells them as slaves from way far away. Right. He's not part of the inner circle.
17:15 Our arrangement is much different. That is called a negative reciprocity or a negative trading agreement. So, if he comes and takes something from me, what's my obligation? I gotta get even, don't I? And that's been going on for thousands and thousands of years. In fact, if I don't come and make it right, it's a shame on my ancestors. All right.
17:40 So we've got these, Watlala tribes people controlling these rapids. They are some pretty tough bunch of folks. They're the river men who live on the river. The rules are, when you come to the wla you have to pay them a toll to go through their part of the river. That's the rules, right?
18:04 If you don't do that, you don't know the rules and Lewis and Clark had, they're a military outfit, aren't they? They got their guns, they march around, they're pretty sure of themselves. So when they get to this point and the Indians start coming up and looking at the goods they have and maybe pocketing something saying, well, I need to have that
18:28 and this is the rules of exchange for coming through. Their reaction was not very positive. And Lewis and Clark forced their way through, pushed their way through, bullied their way through. So then what you have to do if you break the rules, someone has taken something from you in
18:49 effect by not following the rules and taking passage through your area, you have to under the rules. Take something back, don't you? That's what happened. So, so Lewis in particular characterized in people, the Chinookan people as thieves, not knowing that what they were doing was just following the rules that have been played in place for thousands and thousands of years.
19:13 The Indians looked a lot different. They were shorter. They had their heads, foreheads sloped and flattened. Here's William Clark's drawings that he made of the flattening of the chinook heads. The women had evolved to a place of prominence and trade. Things were much different.
19:34 Very much different. The weather was bad, wasn't it? They get all the way down to the coast, they're pinned down. They've got a bad attitude, a bad feeling for the Indian peoples because they think they're all thieves.
20:00 They speak a strange language. They look different Indian women when they get made up to go out. You know, they put fish oil on them, you know, and they have a different, different uh way making themselves up the weather pins them down and what they get depressed, they start feeling pretty bad
20:24 quickly. What else are they missing? They're missing salt, of course. Right. They got to have some salt. But the main thing they missed as they came down was they missed their boat. What Jefferson had told them when you get there, look out on the Pacific Ocean for the trading ships that are there.
20:46 And Jefferson had given them a letter of credit, kind of like a blank credit card that they had with them signed by the president saying if these gentlemen present this to you, give them what they need and I'll make good. So they were hoping to get out here and find a trading ship still there. But what had happened? They had missed the boat.
21:10 They were about a month too late. They were hung up in the mountains coming through because it was very difficult travel. They lost a lot of three weeks on Meriweather Lewis's experimental boat, which didn't work, it sank and he was totally embarrassed in chagrin. I think the men held that against him. So they got all the way out here and they arrived in the Pacific Ocean in November, the mouth of the Columbia River.
21:34 That's when the worst storms of the year hit. That's why the sailing ships have already gone. Where are they? They're already in Hawaii, right? Good. Resting up with the whole shipload of sea otter furs and maybe some beaver furs resting up before they go to China. Trade those furs for
22:00 gold, silver, jade, porcelain, spices, silk and go home and increase their family fortune 300 times So they, those guys were long gone. Right. What are they gonna do? They're gonna have a vote. They need a, they, they don't have a fort. They have to find a place to live, don't they? While they're here? That'll be good. So, they're going to build a fort.
22:23 They think when out on the coast somewhere, the weather is so bad, they're thinking this is not a good idea. So, they had, they planned to head back up the river, go up the river and build a fort near Mount Hood, maybe 100 miles up where it's drier. But some Clatsop Chinook people come and tell them on the other side of the river from Washington over in Oregon
22:48 swamplands. There's a lot of elk, how these guys are on the first Atkins diet. They've been eating 10 pounds of raw meat a day for a year and a half, haven't they? And they don't, they do not appreciate the richness and a tremendous diversity of the cultures in the Pacific Northwest salmon is one of the greatest foods you could ever have. These guys don't ever appreciate
23:13 the salmon. You can only have this kind or an alliance of peoples, 50 villages in a friendly trade alliance. When you have tremendous resource availability. This was one of the richest places in the world. Agriculture never developed here,
23:35 like in most of the rest of the world, why they didn't need it. The area was full of wonderful bounty, a bounty of food. Wouldn't that be something that kind of interdependence of trade when you have that much salmon coming up, your river system
23:57 gives you stability amongst groups. It, it does. That's what, that's what they have. They really had a version of what Thomas Jefferson had thought they should seek was that empire of liberty, equality, tradeability. It can only come in a resource rich area.
24:21 So there's trade for food, tools, religious purposes, medicines. It's all here. But rather than take the time to get to know the Indian people that were here, the Chinook world since they were kind of repulsed by the activity which they interpreted as thief as theft
24:42 and the physical appearance in the language. The men moved across the river to hunt the elk and withdrew and they built Fort Clatsop and spent the winter pretty much alone. They missed out
25:00 on so much. The previous winter they stayed in the plains in North Dakota at Fort Mandan lived as a part of the Indian trade and the world that was going and learned a lot. But by isolating themselves, although they did have time to catch up on their homework
25:24 and Clark, of course, in his great mapmaking determined they were had come 4123 miles. He's like 40 miles off he's an incredible map maker and Lewis caught up on his writing and his measurements and his scientific documentation. They really did not interact with the Indian people out here
25:48 nearly to the degree they had been all the way across. Why do you think they were, felt so bad? You know, it was, it was the weather, but part of it is, I think they were the first tourists in Oregon. They had exceeded their authority. When they crossed the rocky mountains. They were outside the Louisiana purchase. Weren't they,
26:10 weren't they? So, they really had no official standing out here. I think they might have known that a little bit and they were a little bit leery of their position. Well, they were careful. They ran out of salt. They needed some salt. They sent some guys out to get to make salt. That's the story. Everybody knows about. They, they boiled seawater, made 2.5
26:32 bushels of salt. Lewis was craving salt Clark could do without it. Pretty much. They go to see a whale. That's kind of exciting. Right. But they missed getting the whale meat because what they were too late to get there. Their, their timing is so off when they come to Oregon they miss the big trading fair when they come down the river.
26:55 They miss the boat, don't, they, they're too late to catch their ships to get resupplied to send people home. Perhaps they get to the whale too late. They hear about a little bit late. Although it's interesting. Sacagawea, that's how I say her name insists on going and by the way at four o'clock, I'm giving a presentation on Sacagawea all 18 names that I found for her. It'll be, it'll be interesting.
27:20 She decides she needs to go see the whale. They go see this 105 ft whale. Of course, they take great records of it. They don't have much to trade. These guys started out with a whole ship, a big barge, keel boat of trading goods. They're down to two handkerchiefs of trade goods at this time, some buttons, they've got a couple of coats, they can trade,
27:43 they've got some fish hooks and some sewing needles. Basically, they've managed to trade with the Kill- the Tillamook or the Killamook people for enough whale blubber to bring that over. So that gets them through part of the winter. Lewis writes, well, it reminds him of pork when you cook the whale blubber. Now, of course, Charbonneau,
28:08 the French trader who is the owner, not the husband, he wins her in a game or purchases of Sacagawea is their cook. He's the company cook. He doesn't really have that much to cook most. They kill 100 and 53 elk in the Oregon winter. The Indians see them as depleting the resources, taking
28:30 way too much food away for the amount of people that they are there. Very wasteful. They weren't recycling, they're very wasteful. Right. The Indians pretty much stay away. Comcomly doesn't come to visit them and because Lewis in particular
28:54 doesn't feel comfortable with the Chinook people. He orders them all barred from the gates of Fort Clatsop at sundown every night now. So how the Indians, what are the Chinooks think about these folks? First of all, these guys are lost, aren't they? They've come down the river for the first time. Somebody's come, they're called Bostons Americans were called Boston to the Chinook when I talked to the Chinook people today,
29:18 they still call me Boston. You're either King George from England or a Boston from the United States to the Chinook. Those are the first group of Bostons that ever came down the river. That was kind of interesting. They were broke. Actually, they had no trade goods left. They were pretty dirty, their clothes were rotting off. By the time they got here, their elk skins were falling off in the rain.
29:42 Their uniforms were long gone months ago. They were in pretty bad shape. The Indians, they were very, very clean. The Chinook people were in the water all the time as part of their religion, their ceremony to cleanse themselves extremely clean. These guys were probably not that clean. You think these were mountain men from Tennessee and Kentucky. In fact, historians say
30:07 that at this time in American history, fewer than one in 10 Americans took more than one bath a year. So it was kind of a different looking group. So they, they're lost, they're broke. They're kind of smelly. They're not all that clean. And now when, when they're all kicked out of the fort every night at dark, what? They're rude. So, no wonder
30:31 the Indians don't come to them in great numbers and embrace them and have all the parties that they had. The first winter, the first winter. What? Pierre Cruzatte, the wild Frenchman played his fiddle every night. There was big parties. He never plays his fiddle. The whole Oregon winter out of the four months, they're here 100 and 20 days. Plus remember it's raining
30:54 all but 10 or 12 days. It was a winter like January was this year, wasn't it? This is the little ice age. You guys can look that up from 1700 through the civil war. The northern hemisphere got quite colder than it is now, glaciers advanced. That's why when they came through the rocky mountains, there was snow in August. It was a cold old time.
31:18 Well, they managed to get through the winter. They've eaten all the elk they can find, they traded for a few roots. Best they can. The men are sick. Had they lived with the Chinook and taken sweat baths and gone on their lodges. They wouldn't have cramped up and become so sick. Many of the men have real bad muscle cramps from working in the rain and the cold.
31:40 They just wanna go home. One of their canoes gets lost in the ocean in the storm another one is damaged. They're preparing to leave and head back up the river. They only have enough trade goods to trade for one canoe.
32:01 They're still one canoe short Lewis gives the order. We're going to take a canoe. Now, Jefferson has told these guys when they're out here treat the Indian peoples honorably. We want to end up with a whole nation of trade across this country. It will be good. So,
32:25 act respectfully do the right thing. You know,
32:31 a month earlier six elk were left out in the woods being brought back to the fort. Now, the rules in the west are which these guys don't seem to understand. Don't know the rules that causes them trouble when meat is left out after dark. What? It's fair game. Why? Yeah, because
32:56 exactly wolves will get it. So if anybody leaves meat out after dark, it's there for the taking. So the Clatsop Chinook people took that meat. Lewis called him on it and said, listen, you thieves. They're just following the rules, but he called them thieves again. Well, they say, ok, we'll bring you six dogs
33:19 and that made Lewis very happy because he liked to eat dog. And so that did square the relationship at that time. But even though that did happen, Lewis when they need the extra canoe says because they took our six elk, we left out there last month, we're going to take one of their canoes.
33:42 So he so while the captains are thanking Coboway or [alternative name] we call him Coboway today, who was the Clatsop Chinook head person of the, of the Clatsop Chinook people on the Oregon coast. Thanking him for being a pretty good host and he had fed them a little bit, brought them some roots and he was provided the most contact that they did have was a very limited
34:06 while they're doing that and giving him a piece of paper, giving him Fort Clatsop for his own personal retreat to have as a chief, which is kind of nice. They're stealing his canoe. They have men taking his canoe. So here we have the Indian view. These guys show up as paupers. Basically,
34:27 they're kind of rude and kind of dirty and really not that interesting. And they leave, they leave as the thieves and head back up the river. Very interesting. And it's uh pretty remarkable that they were sent out by Jefferson
34:50 to look for an empire of Liberty or to set up relationships where he could help establish one where we can have localized trade, localized stability. They came over the rocky mountains where what men were, men and horses were horses and buffalo hunts and it was just great and grand.
35:13 Everything was that it should be as it should be. They came over down into this world of the salmon people and they probably were in as close to an empire of Liberty has existed at that time anywhere
35:34 and did not recognize it for what it was at all. And left disillusioned and left which with such poor reports of the Indian people here that somebody hadn't been here to see what was going on. You would think people really weren't worth talking to. They were just thieves and scouts. Although they did notice their canoes, they were amazed by their canoes,
35:57 the wonderful cedar hats they had and some of the details of their physical characteristics. The money was interesting. You know, they like the money. They really had a chance. Had they spent the time with the Indian people here to get to know them that winter. Go with Comcomly and his people and find out what their ceremonies were like.
36:19 Imagine William Clark if he'd have been with the King Comcomly and gone in one of those 60 ft Haida freighter canoes up into Canada on a trading mission. What the reports would have been then just would have had the way to connect with the people. It would have been a whole different time, wouldn't it? So they headed up the river
36:43 and guess what their timing was still off. Had they waited another three or four weeks like they had originally planned, they would have come up the river during the salmon harvest. There would have been a bountiful trade going on and the Indians there would have been definitely ready to host them, feed them and have a what the enormous party, which would have been
37:08 what they were looking for. Well, they were too early. So they came down the river, too late. They went up the river too early, like, missed. So instead of coming into celebrations, they found people who were starving and not doing very well. And they went back through the Dalles area and what happened? They forced their way through again. Right. Coming back. Now,
37:32 if I forced my way through once, that's bad enough, isn't it? If I do it a second time, that's really on you. Right. Indians were taking more goods. They took Lewis' dog, Seaman, the big Newfoundland dog. It was by this time, you know, he's kind of depressed anyway, wasn't he? We knew he had problems with, with uh
37:56 fits of melancholy. Jefferson became blue. Lewis has become a dangerous man. Clark is now in charge of the expedition when they leave. Oregon Clark is a leader of men his whole life. He's a collector of people. He loves the interaction. Lewis threatens to burn down Indian villages threatens to punch Indians out,
38:17 roughs them up. And Clark steps forward, starts doctoring the Indian people with the medicines that they have. Clearing up some of the eye ailments they have with the liniments they have that the Corps of Discovery is carrying with them. And it's a good thing he does that because that buys them just enough goodwill
38:39 along with their great superior hunters. George Drouillard, Colter, the Fields brothers, some of the great hunters that are along and they're able to, because the people are so hungry, they're able to trade them for some fresh elk meat and just barely get through and head up where they're going home, aren't they finally? All right. Any questions. What do we have here?
39:02 I got five minutes for questions. Anybody. Yes. Questions. I have a microphone. I'll come around and everyone can hear your question. Does anyone have any questions? You've got one? Where do these shell? Ok. He wants to know about the shells.
39:26 They're off of Vancouver Island. These are little creatures. This is the top of the shell. The animal lives out at the bottom. They live down 70 ft deep in the dark Pacific ocean waters. How did they harvest these? They didn't have scuba gear. A few washed ashore. They had a long set of broom handles that interlocked.
39:49 They would stand up on the ocean in their canoes. Take a, a broom head which was carved out of wood branches into a little head, cedar slats around the edges which when closed up would cause the broom had to pinch these little critters off the bottom of the ocean. They had a cedar plank
40:14 with a hole cut in it that fit down over that broom head, two large stones on the side, they would get down to the bottom and they would plunge 70 ft down that broom head into the sand beds where these little critters were, the weights of those two rocks on the sides would slide that cedar plank down over that broom head, close up
40:37 those bristles and pull them up to the surface. What an amazing technology was here without any metal. And so they traded 'em all the way down. What was the extent of the trade? Good question. These trade items were found all the way over the Missouri
41:01 country. Indian people had a tremendous trade going on. We had, uh, we find turquoise beads in the Columbia river from the southwest. There's Abalone shell from southern California up here. And these trade goods went all the way clear down on the Mississippi river and the Natchez people who were traded with the Aztecs
41:22 through the Caribbean Ocean. Knew of these trade deals, tremendous trade deals. Good questions. Anybody else? Oh, there you go.
41:34 Did they see wolves? They even ate a wolf while they were in Oregon. Yes, there were wolves everywhere. There were bears. They ate over 1000 elk on their trip. They ate a couple of wolves, a couple of eagles, they ate a few coyotes. Lots of, they ate maybe 30 bears. These guys, it's this original meat diet, weren't they? If it wouldn't have been for
41:59 Sacagawea along, they probably would have had trouble without, they didn't have any vegetables. So she was able to recognize some of the roots and foods, which was very, very good. For them, kept them from getting sick. Ok? You guys can walk by these tables on your way out. Don't linger. You wanna look at this stuff, don't linger too long because other people can see it. And we got another presenter coming up. Thank you very much.
42:22 Our next presenter is gonna be coming up on the hour. So.

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Tony Farque on Lewis and Clark in Oregon

Tony Farque

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Tony Farque on Lewis and Clark in Oregon

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