Crossing to the north bank

Gass opens May 14 with frost and labor:

white frost. Three hunters went over very early to the north side of the river. All the rest of the men were employed in collecting our horses and taking over the baggage.

By noon the horses and baggage were across, and the party camped at

the remains of an ancient village on the north side of the Koos-koos-ke river

. Clark and Lewis give the same move with surveyor’s measures: the river about 150 yards wide and extremely rapid; the old habitation a circle some 30 feet across, sunk about four feet, with an earthen wall. Ordway is the enlisted confirmation:

we took our baggage and Swam our horses across the river to the N. Side and mooved a Short distance down the river and Encamped in a Smooth bottom partly covred with young pitch pine in order to stay untill we can cross the mountains

They were settling in to wait out Bitterroot snow. Gass on the 15th says they expected to remain a month.

Bears, and who counted them

Ordway names the hunters: Collins two bear “of the white kind,” Labiche three. Gass, not naming them, reports two at midday and three more by evening,

all of the grizly kind

. Lewis and Clark have Collins’s pair in the morning — one fat male, one lean female with cubs — and Labiche later with a female and two cubs. Lewis uses the mixed colors (black, bay, white-tipped) to argue that the “variagated bear” here is one species, not twenty. Clark adds the Chopunnish valuation: killing one of those animals ranks with killing an enemy in the field. The claws of Collins’s bears went to Hohastillpilp.

Gelding, two methods

Gass records the operation without naming a surgeon:

In the afternoon we had an operation performed on seven of our horses, to render them more peaceable; which was done by one of the natives upon all but one.

Lewis and Clark explain why. The stallions would not trade even at two for one, “Cut each other very much,” and had to be castrated. A Chopunnish man present offered to cut them without tying the cord, scraping it clean first; Drewyer gelded two in the usual way. The next day Clark found those cut by Drewyer the most swollen. That is not Gass noticing a craft the captains ignored — the captains wrote the method; Gass wrote the count.

Stone and pine boughs

They gave bear meat to about fifteen Chopunnish at camp. Gass describes layered hot stones, meat, and brush, covered like a small coal pit, needing about an hour and a half. Clark and Lewis give the fuller procedure: river stones on a brisk fire, pine boughs, flitches of bear, more boughs, a little water, earth four inches deep, about three hours. Lewis tasted it and found it more tender than roast or boiled meat, “but the strong flavor of the pine distroyed it for my pallate.” Ordway’s comparison is the enlisted key:

they cooked it in the Same manner as they Swet their commass roots

The six-thumbed scalp, May 15

The trophy is Gass’s May 15, not May 14. While the party put up sail-cloth and grass shelters, a visitor

had round his neck the scalp of an Indian, with six thumbs and four fingers of the other Indians he had killed in battle, of the Sho-sho-ne, or Snake nation.

Gass adds that the Chopunnish and Shoshone “have been long at war and destroyed a great many of each other in a few years past,” then describes the war-mallet — a club with a wooden or stone head, the stone heads covered with leather and sinew. A printer’s footnote in the 1807 Pittsburgh edition (David McKeehan) compares a similar stone head later seen near the Allegheny; that note is McKeehan’s, not a field sentence. Ordway on the 15th does not mention the scalp. He has a white bear chased on horseback and not killed, a shelter over the old cellar “so as in case of an alarm we can jump in the celler and defend ourSelves,” a bowery for the officers to write in, and five gallons of bear oil kegged for the mountains. Lewis that day is still on bear species, deer-head decoys, and the swollen geldings.

Read across four pens, these two days are the making of Camp Chopunnish: a defensive hollow on the Clearwater, horses cut so they would travel, bear oil for the snow, and one ethnographic page in Gass that the captains, busy with chiefs, species, and surgery, did not write.

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The Corps did not travel through Shawnee towns on the Missouri. The journals still name the Shawnee twice, and both mentions are worth keeping straight.

On 16 November 1803, after crossing the Mississippi, Meriwether Lewis found Shawnee and Delaware people camped at the upper habitation on the opposite shore:

we found here som[e] Shawnees and Delewars incamped; one of the Shawnees a respectable looking Indian offered me three beverskins for my dog with which he appeared much pleased

That is an Ohio–Mississippi encounter, not a Missouri-river council. Lewis refused the trade. The dog is Seaman.

The second mention is only a comparison. In the long Shoshone ethnography of 19 August 1805 Lewis wrote that Shoshone complexion was “much that of the Siouxs or darker than the Minnetares mandands or Shawnees.” No Shawnee person is on that hillside. The name is a yardstick in Lewis’s head.

A synthesis that claimed the Shawnee were absent from the corpus was describing an empty tag set, not the journals.

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No Chippewa (Ojibwe) town sits on the expedition’s track. The journals still use the name, always at second hand or as a comparison.

At Fort Mandan on 14 November 1804 Clark noted Cree visitors and the language he assigned them:

The Crrirstinoes are abt. 300 men Speak the Chipaway-Language, the live near Fort De peare

On 28 February and 18 March 1805 the Chippewa appear in reports of killings on the Assiniboine — Cameron’s revenge, Teton talk, “the Chipaways latterly” — news that reached the Mandan villages, not a meeting on the Missouri.

The fullest passage is from Fort Clatsop, 27 January 1806, where Lewis (Clark copying) compared northwestern plant medicine to Chippewa practice:

particularly so among the Chippeways who I believe to be better skilled in the uce of those simples than any nation of Savages in North America.

“Savages” is Lewis’s word. The comparison is Atlantic-world knowledge he brought west, not a Pacific encounter. The earlier “note on absence” described missing tags, not missing ink.

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The Yakama (also rendered historically as Yakima) are one of the great Sahaptin-speaking nations of the Columbia Plateau, whose homelands stretch across the dry, salmon-rich country of what is now south-central Washington state. Yet within the surviving record of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Yakama appear only fleetingly. Of the thousands of journal entries kept by the captains and their literate enlisted men, only a single tagged passage in this corpus identifies the Yakama by name — and even that identification is partly an editorial gloss applied by modern historians to a moment when the captains themselves did not always distinguish among the Plateau peoples crowding the riverbanks to observe them.

This brevity is itself historically significant. The Corps of Discovery passed through the edge of Yakama country during a period of swift downstream travel, when the explorers were focused on reaching the Pacific before winter. Their ethnographic attention was thinner here than it had been among the Mandan or the Shoshone, and the journal record reflects that compression.

The Single Documented Encounter: October 16, 1805

The one entry in this corpus tagging the Yakama records the expedition’s arrival at the confluence of the Snake (then called Lewis’s River) and the Columbia, near present-day Pasco, Washington. After the punishing descent of the Snake, the captains had at last reached the great “River of the West” that they had crossed the continent to find. Clark wrote on that day:

We arrived at the junction of this river and the Columbia which joins from the N.W.

The geographic moment was momentous — Clark estimated the Columbia at this point to be about 960 yards wide — but it was equally a moment of human encounter. The summary entry for October 16, 1805, notes that hundreds of Native people from the Yakama, Wanapum, and other Plateau nations gathered at the confluence to observe the strangers. The riverside camps were stacked with prodigious quantities of dried salmon, the staple commodity of Plateau life and the foundation of the regional trade economy that linked the interior to the coast.

What the Journals Do — and Do Not — Say

It is important to be candid about the limits of the documentary record here. The captains did not, in this entry, leave us a detailed Yakama vocabulary, a Yakama chief’s name, or an extended description of Yakama dress, governance, or custom comparable to what they produced for the Mandan or the Nez Perce. The identification of “Yakama” among the gathered crowd reflects modern ethnohistorical reconstruction as much as the captains’ own naming. The expedition’s journalists at this stage were generally lumping together the Plateau peoples they met under broader designations, and the more careful Columbia River ethnography in the journals tends to focus on groups encountered slightly downstream — the Wanapum, Walla Walla, Umatilla, and the Wishram-Wasco at the Dalles.

What the entry does establish, with primary-source authority, are three things. First, the Yakama were physically present at the Snake-Columbia confluence in October 1805, gathering with neighbors to look upon the expedition. Second, the salmon economy of the Yakama and their riverine neighbors was visibly enormous, with dried fish stacked in quantities that astonished the explorers. Third, the encounter was peaceable and curious rather than hostile — the Plateau peoples came to watch and to trade, not to oppose.

The Salmon Economy

Although the journals here do not elaborate on Yakama practices specifically, the observation of “enormous quantities of dried salmon at the riverside camps” is an ethnographic note about Plateau life. The Yakama, like their Sahaptin- and Salish-speaking neighbors, organized much of the year around the salmon runs of the Columbia and its tributaries — including the Yakima River, which empties into the Columbia not far above the confluence the expedition was now descending. Dried salmon was both subsistence and currency, traded eastward over the Cascades and the Rockies and downriver toward the coast. The captains’ brief notation, taken at face value, confirms the scale of this economy at the very moment of first sustained Euro-American contact.

Narrators and Sources

The single entry tagged for the Yakama in this corpus is a summary entry for October 16, 1805, anchored by a brief direct quotation from William Clark. No journal passage from Lewis, Ordway, Gass, Whitehouse, or Floyd is included in the tagged material here that names the Yakama specifically. Readers who wish to deepen the picture should consult the broader Plateau-encounter entries from mid-October 1805 onward, where the captains’ attention to riverine peoples — not always carefully sorted by nation — produces a richer composite portrait.

A Note on Sparse Sources

This biographical synthesis must acknowledge candidly that the Lewis and Clark record, as represented in the entries provided, gives us only a single, glancing view of the Yakama nation. The Yakama do not reappear as a named group in the tagged corpus during the expedition’s winter at Fort Clatsop or on the return journey in the spring of 1806, when the explorers retraced their path up the Columbia and through the Plateau. This silence is not evidence of Yakama absence from the historical landscape — it is evidence of the limits of the captains’ ethnographic precision when traveling fast and tired through unfamiliar country whose peoples spoke related Sahaptin languages and shared overlapping ranges.

Any fuller portrait of the Yakama nation in 1805–1806 must therefore draw on sources beyond the expedition journals: on Yakama oral tradition, on later nineteenth-century ethnography, and on the comparative record of the neighboring Plateau peoples whom the captains did describe at greater length. Within the strict bounds of the journal record offered here, the Yakama remain a name attached to a crowd at a great river junction — present, watching, fishing, trading, and bearing witness to the Corps of Discovery’s first sight of the Columbia.

Conclusion

The Yakama enter and exit the Lewis and Clark journals in a single moment on October 16, 1805, at the confluence of the Snake and the Columbia. The captains recorded the geography with care and the salmon with astonishment, but the Yakama themselves are visible only as part of the gathered Plateau crowd. From this slender documentary thread we can confirm Yakama presence at the confluence, peaceable curiosity, and participation in the great salmon economy of the mid-Columbia — but little more. The expedition’s brevity here is a reminder that the journals, for all their richness, are an incomplete witness to the Native nations whose country they crossed.

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The Council and the Chain of Six Languages

All three writers fix on the same logistical marvel: that communication with the Salish required relay through a half-dozen tongues. Clark, the senior author, frames it as a difficulty of office:

we assembled the Chiefs & warriers and Spoke to them (with much dificuely as what we Said had to pass through Several languajes before it got in to theirs, which is a gugling kind of languaje Spoken much thro the fhrought)

Ordway and Whitehouse echo the observation almost verbatim — “all that we Say has to go through 6 languages before it gits to them,” Whitehouse writes, while Ordway gives “Six languages, and hard to make them understand.” The repetition strongly suggests that the enlisted men either compared notes with one another or absorbed the figure from a shared evening conversation in camp. The number six is precise enough that it almost certainly originated in the officers’ calculation — English to French (Drouillard or Charbonneau), French to Hidatsa (Sacagawea), Hidatsa to Shoshone, Shoshone to a Shoshone boy living among the Salish, and finally to Salish — and was then circulated.

Where the three diverge is in characterizing the Salish language itself. Clark’s ear hears “a gugling kind of languaje Spoken much thro the fhrought.” Ordway softens this into the more genteel “Stranges language of any we have ever yet seen,” then ventures the era’s favorite ethnographic guess: “we think perhaps that they are the welch Indians.” Whitehouse, working in the same idiom, writes that the Salish “appear to us to have an Empeddiment in their Speech or a brogue or bur on their tongue.” The shared phrase “brogue” between Ordway and Whitehouse — and the parallel “impediment” — again points to overlap, but Whitehouse omits the Welsh hypothesis, suggesting Ordway added his own speculative gloss to material the two had discussed.

Counting Horses, Counting Chiefs

The horse trade is recorded by all three, and the numbers track closely. Clark, who conducted the transactions, writes that he “purchased 11 horses & exchanged 7.” Ordway and Whitehouse both round up to twelve purchased — a small but telling discrepancy that hints they were estimating from observation rather than copying a ledger. Whitehouse adds a detail neither officer nor sergeant records: “we bought 1o or a Dozen pack Saddles from the natives.” Ordway corroborates the saddles in passing (“accommodated us with pack Saddles and chords”) but does not give a count. Whitehouse, often dismissed as the least literary of the journalists, here preserves a quartermaster’s detail his superiors omit.

On the diplomatic side, all three agree that four chiefs were created and given medals, and that two flags were distributed. Whitehouse notes the hoisting of “our large flag this morning,” a ceremonial framing absent from the other accounts. Ordway alone mentions the ravenous camp dogs that “eat several pair of the mens Moccasons” — the kind of domestic vexation a sergeant would feel before a captain would.

What Only Clark Sees

Clark’s entry is the only one to preserve substantive ethnographic description. He records the Salish self-designation — “They Call themselves Eoote-lash-Schute” — and estimates 450 lodges divided into bands ranging across the headwaters of the Columbia and Missouri. He describes hairstyles in careful gendered detail: men “Cewed with otter Skin on each Side falling over the Sholrs forward,” women wearing their hair “loose promisquisly” with long belted shirts to the ankle. He notes that the principal chief presented him with “a Dressed Brarow, otter & two Goat & antilope Skins” — gifts the enlisted men do not mention.

The register difference is instructive. Clark writes as the responsible ethnographer of record, cataloging political structure, dress, and gift exchange. Ordway and Whitehouse, working from the same day’s events, retain what struck enlisted ears: the strange phonology, the hungry dogs, the count of pack saddles, the lame horses swapped away. Taken together, the three entries form a layered record in which official ethnography, sergeant’s logistics, and private’s observation each preserve what the others let fall.

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An earlier version of this page said the diet essay could not be written because no journal entries had been supplied. The published corpus is full of food. What follows is a seasonal sketch from those entries, not a calorie table and not a claim that every narrator ate the same supper.

The lower Missouri, 1804: buffalo and garden produce

By mid-September on the middle Missouri the captains are counting animals in the open country. Lewis’s 17 September 1804 natural-history day sits in a stretch of Clark entries that keep “Buffalow” in the daily kill. Garden produce arrives as gifts, not as a crop the Corps planted. At the Arikara villages on 11 October 1804 Clark recorded that each village “gave us Something to eate in their way, and a fiew bushels of Corn Beens &.” Two days later a chief “gave us 10 bushels of Corn, Some Beens & Simmins.” At Fort Mandan on 22 November he sent Sergeant Pryor for “100 bushels of Corn in ears” from Jessaume and took in about eighty.

Weippe and the Columbia: salmon, camas, dogs, wapato

On 20 September 1805, out of the Bitterroots, Clark’s advance party was fed “a Small piece of Buffalow meat, Some dried Salmon beries & roots” including the onion-like “Pas she co [quamash].” That is the first camas/salmon supper after the mountain crossing, and it made men sick — a fact the Weippe entries record even when this sketch does not linger on it.

On the Columbia, meat often means dogs purchased for fuel-scarce camps. Clark, 22 October 1805: “purchased a Dog for Supper” and “purchd. as much wood as Cooked our dogs this evening.” Lewis, 21 April 1806, still buying dogs to graze horses and eat: “we dined on some dogs which we purchased of these people.”

Wapato is the root that stands in for bread on the lower Columbia. Clark, 22 November 1805:

we purchased a fiew wappato roots for which we gave armbans, & rings to the old Squar, those roots are equal to the Irish potato, and is a tolerable Substitute for bread

Fort Clatsop and Camp Chopunnish

The Pacific winter is an elk winter when the hunters succeed, and a lean one when they do not. Clark’s mid-December 1805 Fort Clatsop days sit in that rhythm — building, hunting, measuring what came in — not in a single ration figure for the season.

On the return, waiting for snow to leave the Bitterroots, the Chopunnish root harvest is loud enough for Clark to hear from camp. 10 May 1806: “the noise of their women pounding the cows roots remind me of a nail factory,” and the men, he says, have their stomachs full again.

The pattern across these dates is local and seasonal: Mandan-Arikara corn in the cold months on the upper Missouri, buffalo when the plains are open, salmon and camas west of the mountains, dogs and wapato on the Columbia, elk at Clatsop, cowse on the Kooskooske. No one journal-keeper is the commissary for the whole route; Ordway and Gass often log the pot when the captains are writing geography.

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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.

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The Reasons for the Halt

Clark frames the delay practically: the guide reports “that no game is to be found on our rout for a long ways,” so meat must be procured, and the captains use the daylight to take “equal altitudes & Some Inner observations,” fixing latitude at 46° 48′ 28″. Whitehouse echoes the same logic — staying “to take observations, and for the hunters to kill meat to last us across the mountain and for our horses to rest” — and adds the ecological texture none of the others bother with: cottonwood along the creek, choke cherries gathered “in amence quantities” by the natives, elder, willow, serviceberry, and pitch pine on slopes where the snow still “makes them look like the middle of winter.” Gass, briefer, notes the southern peaks “covered with snow and timber” against “prairie hills” to the north, and unlike the others reports the party actually moved roughly twenty miles down the creek — a discrepancy with the captains’ clear statement of a layover that may reflect Gass conflating this entry with the previous day’s travel, or a separate hunting excursion.

The Flathead Encounter, Five Ways

The hunter’s tally illustrates how quickly numbers drifted between journals. Gass records two deer; Ordway and Whitehouse say four deer, a fawn, ducks, and geese; Clark says “4 deer a Beaver & 3 Grouse.” The stolen-horse count varies similarly: Ordway writes 2, Whitehouse 22 (likely a transcription of 2), Lewis 23, Clark 21. The thieves are “Snake” to Ordway, Whitehouse, and Lewis; the pursuers are “flat heads” to the enlisted men and Lewis but “Tushapaw” to Clark — preserving an alternate ethnonym the others drop.

The encounter itself is told most vividly by Lewis:

on first meeting him the Indians were allarmed and prepared for battle with their bows and arrows, but he soon relieved their fears by laying down his gun and advancing towards them.

Ordway and Whitehouse record the same gesture in nearly identical phrasing — “signed to him to lay down his gun he layed it down they then came to him in a friendly manner” (Ordway); “untill he lay down his gun they then came up to him in a friendly manner” (Whitehouse) — a textbook instance of the documented Whitehouse-from-Ordway copying pattern, with Whitehouse expanding rather than altering. Clark alone names the hunter: Colter.

What Only Lewis Preserves

Lewis’s entry is the day’s intelligence document. He alone records the captains’ working geographic hypothesis — that the Bitterroot (which they propose to name “Valley plain river”) runs north along the Rockies and eventually empties into the “Tacootchetessee,” corroborating Hidatsa testimony from the previous winter. He alone notes that Flathead wealth in horses runs “from 20 to a hundred head” per man, and he alone preserves the detail the remaining guide offered about his relations on the Columbia:

some of his relation were at the sea last fall and saw an old whiteman who resided there by himself and who had given them some handkerchiefs such as he saw in our possession.

Whitehouse, by contrast, captures something Lewis does not — the guide’s own admission of the limits of his knowledge: “our guide tells us that these waters runs in to Mackinzees River as near as they can give an account, but he is not acquainted that way. So we go the road he knows.” That single sentence quietly registers how thin the geographic thread had become.

Small Diplomacy

Clark records the gift exchange most fully — “a ring fish hook & tied a pece of ribin in the hare of each” plus Lewis’s gift of “a Steel & a little Powder to make fire” — while Lewis simply notes “a few small articles.” Two Flatheads rode on through the night after their stolen horses; the third stayed on as guide, and with him the Corps acquired both a route through the mountains and the first secondhand report of European contact on the Pacific coast.

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English Translation

"The behavior of the Americans in society, and their way of life, have so little connection to ours, that in searching to gather all the differences relative to this country here [France], I must not neglect to speak of them. He [the American] stays honest every time we meet, and reaches out willingly to shake hands. The compliments given during this demonstration of friendship are ‘hello, Sir, how are you doing today? I hope that you are well; I am fortunate to see you.’ Someone who arrives to greet everyone this way then does a tour of the group. The most distinguished of them, however, arrive without spectacle; an officer never takes the hand of his general first, it must be the latter who offers. Anyway, the manners are absolutely lax: one leans on their neighbor without thinking, puts his elbows on the table at dinner. That which is often in France a proof of bad education or too much freedom is here the result of a natural education. The Americans pass most of their lives at the table. Their exterior announces nonchalance and modesty, and one is surprised to see that despite their apparent dullness, these people fight as they do and support a war having formed and even disciplined troops like they have. Who would believe that an American, who doesn’t dare to leave his home during a rainy day, the moment he has a musket on his shoulder faces all the toughest dangers and turns? That there is not a man in American that by 30 years old has not used a gun? But returning to their way of life: there is every day a lunch including tea with milk, coffee, butter on toasted bread (that they call toast), and several light slices of ham, beef, or even salted fish. The lunch takes paces at a soldier’s house, and they drink until dinnertime. The first service for that meal is made of a large quantity of beef and almost all roasts and vegetables come with butter. The second service is pastries. There are cakes and puddings of different types. The dessert isn’t just cheese and fruits. We drink wine from Noadère from the start of dinner. The other drinks are beer and cider, served in silver or ceramic vases. He who is thirsty drinks once, then passes it to his neighbor. It would be a great dishonor in France to serve one’s own glass as such, but in America a man would come across as uncivil if he refused to drink after someone offered; moreover, the frequent cheers that one makes at the table force everyone to restart this ceremony. There is no meal that fails to discuss General Washington, the United States, the happy alliance between France and America, the company itself, and finally their particular accomplishments. A man who forms a friendship with you attacks you from one side of the table and helps you from the other, saying ‘sir would you like to drink a glass of wine with me?’ And it must happen as such; all this makes the meals very long. At any effort to remove the tablecloth or put away a few bottles, that is when the big decisions are struck. A place setting in America would appear extraordinary in France. The table is covered by a tablecloth that serves as napkins at the same time. It is normally big enough to go over the edges all around, and everyone wipes their hands right in front of himself (unfortunately it doesn’t get changed very often). Instead of spoons and forks, everyone is given a small iron or steel fork with two tines on a wood handle and a large knife round on the end, which is used to pick up what is on the plate, and everyone eats with the same knife. When one has eaten enough, they cross the two utensils on their plate and that’s a sign they’re looking to be excused. It is roughly the same for the coffee and tea: when one doesn’t want any more, they turn over the spoon on the cup. One is surprised when leaving the table and passing through a room to find that wine from Madeira, which is drunk right up until teatime, which is usually between six and seven hours. This lasts until the moment where everyone goes back to the table for soup, which is served in the same small room as dinner and takes you until it is time to go to bed and start it all again fresh the next day. Such is the life that an unfortunate soul, led by coincidence or curiosity, finds in a town in America. The more one is commended, the better he is treated. In the army, since it is never possible to have any lemon, they substitute it with a mix of rum and water, which is called "Grog;" or rum, water, and sugar, which is called "Taudy." If one leaves the house to visit anyone, they will find something to drink everywhere, and they are obligated to accept it under any circumstances. This way of living exists not only among the well-off, but also among the peasants. There is not a soldier or even a negro in America who doesn’t have tea two times a day or who doesn’t have Grog at lunch. A large portion of the women smoke like the men; however, I have not seen anyone with a pipe at their mouth who was not 30 or 35 years old. An American, after drinking, while on his way somewhere, never comes across a house or a stream without stopping. The women don’t appear in the morning, and we never see them getting ready for the day. They arrive at dinnertime where they are hosting. At dessert, they leave the table only to return when it’s time for the tea that they made themselves, and they serve it to everyone because apparently there is no gallantry among the men. The women have a very proper demeanor, albeit with an attitude of familiarity. The young women are extended the greatest liberties; they choose they husband, with whom they live with enough to get to know them well enough to marry. Also, all the marriages are happy. There is no example in America, or at least very few, that a woman strays from her duties. If an unmarried woman faces trouble, often she is given excessive help, but in general they are perfectly wise, and aside from a few who lose themselves, we can use them as models and truthfully say that vice has not reached here."

Original French Text

"Les usages des Américains en société, et leur manière de vivre, ont si peu de rapport avec les nôtres, que cherchant à rassembler les différentes choses relatives à ce pays ici, je ne dois point obmettre [sic.] d’en parler. Il tient à l’honneteté toute[s] les fois qu’on se rencontre, de s’aborder en se donnant et en se secouant mutuellement les mains. Le compliment joint à cette démonstration d’amitié est bonjour, Monsieur, comment vous portez vous aujourd’hui ? Je dédire que vous vous portiez bien ; je suis fortaise_ de vous voir. Quelqu’un qui arrive dans un cercle fait ainsi la ronde. Les gens plus distingués cependant préviennent ordinairement ; un Officier particulier ne prend point le premier la main de son Général, mais celui-ci la lui offre. D’ailleurs les manières sont absolument aidées : on s’appuye [sic] sur son voisin sans cérémonie : on met les coûdes [sic] sur la table à diner ; et cequi [sic] souvent en france c’est une preuve de mauvaise éducation, où de trop de liberté, est ici la suite de l’éducation naturelle. Les Américains passent la plus grande partie de leur vie à table. Leur extérieur annonce la nonchalance et la modeste, et on est étonné de voir avec cette insipidité apparente, ces [???] gens se battre comme els font, soutenir une guerre, avoir formé et même discipliné des troupes comme le sont les leurs qui croirait qu’un Américain qui n’ose pas sortir de chez lui un jour de pluye [sic], du moment qu’il a le mousquet sur l’épaule, affronte les dangers et les tours_ les plus durs ? Qu’il n’y a pas en Amérique un homme de 30 ans qui n’aye [sic] porté les armes ? Mais revenant à leur manière de vivre. Il y a tous les jours un déjeuner composé de thé au lait, de caffé [sic], de beurre sur du pain grillé, qu’on appelle des tostes [sic], et quelques tranches légères de jambon, de bœuf, ou même de poisson salé. À ce déjeuner succède chez un homme aidé [???], qu’on bois jusqu’à l’heure du dîner. Le premier service de ce repas est composé d’une grande quantité de viande et presque toutes rôties et de légumes accommodés au beurre. Le second est en pâtisseries. Ce sont des tourtes et des poudings de différentes espèces. Le dessert n’est ordinairement que de fromages et de fruits. On boit du vin de Noadère_ dès le commencement du diner. Les autres boissons sont de la Bière et du Cidre, servies dans des vases d’argent ou de fayance [sic]. Celui qui a soif bois à même et passe à son voisin. Ce serais une grande malhonneteté en france de prêter ainsi son verre, et en amérique ou passerais pour l’homme le plus incivil, si on refusait de boire après celui qui vous en a offert ; et les santés fréquentes qu’on vous adresse à table, vous obligent de recommencer souvent cette cérémonie. Il n’y a pas de repas où on [???] porte celle du G.al Washington, des États unis, de l’heureuse alliance de la france et de l’amérique, celles de toute la Compagnie, et ensuite les sautés particuliers. Un homme qui vous a pris en amitié vous attaque du bout de la table à l’autre en vous aidant, Monsieur, voulez vous boire un verre de vin avec moi ? Et il faut en passer par là ; cequi [sic] fait que les repas sont extrêmement longs. Au d’effort ou ôte la nape [sic], ou reste avec plusieurs bouteilles, et c’est l’instant où se portent les grands coups. Un couvert mis à l’américaine vous paraîtrais aussi fort extraordinaire en france. La table est couverte d’une nape [sic], qui sert en même temps de serviettes. Elle est ordinairement assez grande pour déborder tout autour, et chacun s’essuye devant lui (malheureusement on n’en change pas souvent.) au lieu de cuillières et de fourchettes, on vous donne une petite fourchette de fer où [sic] d’acier à deux branches montée sur un manche de bois où [sic] de corne, et un grand couteau rond par le bout, qui sert à ramasser ce qu’on a sur son assiete [sic] et on le mange avec ce même coûteau. Quand on a assez mangé, on établit ces deux instruments en croix sur son assiete [sic], et c’est un signe que l’on demande grace. Il en est de même pour ( ?) le caffé et le thé, quand on n’en veut plus, ou renverse sa cuillère sur sa tasse vous êtes étonné en sortant de table et répassant dans un sallon [sic] d’y retrouver de vin de Madère et du Lunch/Punch ( ?) dont on boit jusqu’à l’heure du thé et du caffé, qui est ordinairement entre six et sept heures, et dure jusqu’à l’instant où on se remet à table pour souper, ce qui est posées ( ???) la petite pièce du dîner, qui cependant vous conduit jusqu’au moment de se mettre au lis, pour recommencer le lendemain ( ???) de nouveaux fraïs. Telle est la vie à laquelle se trouve obligé un malheureux que le hasard où [sic] la curiosité mène dans une ville d’Amérique, et mieux on est recommandé, mieux on est traité. à l’armée comme on n’est point à portée d’avoir de citron, on supplée ( ?) au lunch/Punch pour du rum mêlé avec de l’eau, qu’on appelle du Grog ; du rum, de l’eau et du sucre. qu’on appelle Taudy. Si vous sortez d’une maison pour aller faire qulques visites, vous trouvez à boire partout, et êtes obligé de vous prêter à la circonstance. Cette manière de vivre existe non seulement chez les gens aisés mais même chez les paysans, il n’y a pas un soldat pas même un Negre en Amérique, qui ne prenne du thé deux fois pas jour, et auquel le Grog sert de Punch/Lunch. Une grande partie des femmes fûme tout comme les hommes ; cependant je n’en ai pas vu la pipe à la bouche qui n’eûssent 30 où [sic] 35 ans. Jamais un Américain aussi d’après cette habitude de boire, lorsqu’il est en route, ne rencontre une maison, ni un ruisseau, sans s’y arrêter. Les femmes ne paraissent point le matin, et on ne les voit jamais à leur toilette. Elles arrivent à l’heure du diner dont elles font les honneurs. Au dessert elles sortent de table pour revenir à l’instant où on prend le thé qu’elles font elles mêmes, et servent pour ainsi dire à tout le monde. Car la galanterie n’est point établie parmi les hommes. Elles ont un maintien très décent, quoiqu’avec l’air de la familiarité. Les jeunes personnes joüissent de la plus grande liberté ; elles choisissent en quelque façon leur maris, avec lesquels elles vivent assez pour les connaître au moment de contracter ; aussi tous les mariages sont ils heureux. Il n’y a point d’exemple où [sic] au moins fort peu en Amérique, qu’une femme se soit écarté de ses devoirs. Si une femme qui n’est pas mariée tourne mal, il lui arrive souvent de donner ( ???) de grands ( ???), mais en général elles sont parfaitement sages, et à l’exception de quelques unes qui s’égarent, on peut les donner toutes pour modèles, et dire avec vérité que le vie [sic] n’est pas parvenu jusqu’ici.

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