The Journey of Lewis and Clark in United States History by Judith Edwards

Author:Judith Edwards [Edwards, Judith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780766060609
Publisher: Enslow Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2014-07-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

HORSES AND HIGH MOUNTAINS AHEAD

It was good to leave camp and get back on the river. Lewis and Clark had seen signs of natives when they were scouting along the riverbanks. They could see obvious routes, recently traveled. Sap and the soft part of wood and bark were often used for food by the tribes, and it was encouraging to find pine trees with peeled-off bark.

Finding the Shoshone

Navigating the river was increasingly difficult. The men were using their tow lines and poles constantly. On July 19 the party reached a point in the river with “the most remarkable” cliffs Lewis had ever seen.1 The cliffs were twelve hundred feet high, and it seemed as though the river had worn a channel through them for three full miles. Lewis called this passage the Gates of the Rocky Mountains. Though they saw tribal fires near this area, the natives still kept themselves hidden. The good news was that Sacagawea was beginning to recognize the area. She told the captains that this was the river on which her relatives lived. The three forks, where she was captured by the Hidatsa when she was about ten years old, were very nearby, she assured them.2

Lewis and Clark took turns taking parties out across the land to try to make contact with the Shoshone. The boats were having difficulty getting over the rapids, and mosquitoes were again causing great distress. By the time the expedition reached the Three Forks of the Missouri on July 27, game was becoming scarce. Lewis, traveling by land, left a note for Clark near the Big Hole River. He told Clark not to travel the way Lewis’s party was going, but to wait for him there. Unfortunately, a beaver apparently gnawed on the green willow on which Lewis left the note and carted it off. So receiving no notification otherwise, Clark’s party began ascending the swift and dangerous river. Two boats filled with water and one turned over before Lewis caught up with the party and told them to return to the fork they had named the Jefferson. Twenty-one days had passed since the expedition left the Great Falls of the Missouri.

One bright morning, Sacagawea recognized a large outcropping of land, which her people called the Beaver’s Head. She was absolutely sure that the summer camp of her people was just ahead.3 They lived on a river beyond the mountains, now called the Lemhi River.

By now there had been four ranges of mountains since the expedition left the Great Falls camp. Lewis, walking with George Drouillard and Privates McNeal and Shields across a level plain, saw a native riding on horseback toward them. This was the first person the expedition had encountered in fourteen hundred miles. Though two miles away, Lewis could see that the tribesman was dressed differently from other people they had met. He must be a Shoshone! The passage in the journals in which Lewis describes the meeting is more suspenseful than any Western movie. Four men are marching across a plain, with the sole purpose of finding the Shoshone Indians.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.