In the Footsteps of Lewis and Clark by Wallace G. Lewis

Author:Wallace G. Lewis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Published: 2010-09-11T04:00:00+00:00

Fig 4.3 Men pulling boats up the Beaverhead River as part of the 1955 Dillon Sesquicentennial Pageant. Photo by Joe Ryburn. Courtesy, Beaverhead County Museum, Dillon, Montana.

Montana did not monopolize dramatizations of the Lewis and Clark story during the sesquicentennial, however. A historical pageant entitled Salmon River Saga, written and directed by Vio Mae Powell, director of speech and drama at Idaho State College in Pocatello, was performed in Salmon, Idaho, on August 20 and 21, 1955, following six weeks of rehearsal. Salmon is north of the location where the Lemhi Shoshone band of Cameahwait (Sacagawea’s brother) was encamped when visited by the Corps of Discovery in August 1805. The company had lingered there for about two weeks while the explorers bargained for horses to carry them over the Bitterroot Mountains. Under the stars at the Lemhi County fairgrounds, with the silhouetted Salmon River Mountains as a “dramatic backdrop,” an impressively large cast combined drama, music, poetry, and narration to tell the story of Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea in the Salmon area. Eight episodes were depicted, beginning with Sacagawea’s abduction by the Minatarees (Hidatsas) and concluding with the Shoshone guide Old Toby leading the expedition over the Bitterroots. The pageant was “acted in pantomime, with actors dubbing in the dialogue over a public address system.” This was the method used in all the large outdoor presentations, including the pageants at Three Forks. At Salmon, the Horace Johnson group of dancers from the Fort Hall Shoshone-Bannock Reservation in eastern Idaho performed “authentic” Indian dances during intermission. Total paid admissions for the two nights amounted to 2,274, and between 500 and 600 schoolchildren were admitted for free, setting a record for attendance at the fairgrounds.40 A newspaper story proudly pointed out that “cars from five states” other than Idaho “were noted on the parking lot within the fairgrounds gates.”41

While historical pageants were the most complex sesquicentennial activities, the schedule included numerous other events spread over the years 1955 and 1956 and planned to correspond to the weeks the expedition was in a particular area. Lewiston, Idaho’s, turn came in the fall of 1955 and featured a three-day “water pageant,” a buffalo barbecue, breakfast with the governors of Idaho and Washington, and a Nez Perce encampment. The featured speaker at a convocation on Friday night, October 7, was Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist A. B. Guthrie Jr., author of The Big Sky and other books about the early West.42 Similar events took place throughout the Clearwater Valley. A barbecue at Kamiah drew 2,000 people, and the winning parade float depicted—significantly—the uncompleted Lewis-Clark Highway route against a backdrop of snow-covered mountains.43

However, not all events were specifically tied to towns or cities in the region. Approximately 1,000 Boy Scouts gathered in Great Falls, Montana, to begin retracing the expedition’s route from the great portage to Astoria, using dugout canoes and packhorses. The Greater Clarkston (Washington) Association sponsored an “automobile caravan” that traveled over the Lewis and Clark route for nine days between Bismarck, North Dakota, and the Oregon coast.

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