05 - Lewis and Clark Pt. 2 : Black Buffalo Soldier

Spring of 1803, after the United States acquired the Louisiana Territory, two men set out with a crew of roughly 33 men to see what the country had purchased.  Meriwether Lewis and William Clark would captain a group of hunters, trappers, and would be mountain men on this journey. In the second part of our series on the expedition, the Corps makes it's way across the country encountering several native tribes and adds several new members. Along with a native Shoshone woman who helped the party immensely. Come chill with me and hear part two of the Corps of Discovery's journey. 

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Lewis and Clark Pt. 01: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2568436/episodes/18444526

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Thumbnails Attribution: https://www.vecteezy.com/free-photos/lewis-and-clark">Lewis And Clark Stock photos by Vecteezy</a>

Transcript

Wes 0:34

Welcome back to the Stone Date Podcast. I'm Wes, and today we'll be talking about the Lewis and Clark expedition. And this is the second part of our Lewis and Clark series. If you need to catch up, there'll be links below for the first part. And I believe when we left the core glass, they were working their asses off trying to make it to the Pacific. And basically, they had just left for their journey. Not too much setup here, but I did want to burn one before, so let's do that. Today I'm going to be smoking something I rolled myself. I packed a cone. I'm not really I can roll a joint, but I do a lot of cones. Since I moved to Arizona, all I do is cones, they're super convenient. I like the way they burn, I like the mouthpiece on the end, and they don't take too long. I mean, compared to you know uh the length it takes to roll a joint anyway. But the brand that I'm smoking today is uh Abundant Pure Premium Cannabis, uh Abundant Organics possibly possibly. They are, I believe they're a house brand of the true leaf that I go to mostly here in Maricopa. So uh I believe they're considered like a top tier of their house brands, if that's even such a thing. Uh but what it says about this, Jomo, uh meaning joy of missing out. And I did buy this a sativa. It says on top sativa, it says Jomo sativa whole flour, but then this whole uh the description is about an indicodominant hybrid. It says Jomo is an indicodominant hybrid, celebrated for its powerful euphoric and uplifting effects paired with deep physical relaxation. Across of GMO and Sugar Shack, this strain delivers complex flavor experience, savory garlic, and earthy spice from GMO balanced with sweet sugary finish from sugary jack. The result is a rich aromatic smoke that satisfies both connoisseurs and casual smokers alike. The high begins with a surge of cerebral happiness and calm focus, quickly followed by warm body yeast that melts away tension without sedating the mind. It's a versatile strain, ideal for unwinding after a long day, enhancing mood, or simply appreciating the moment and peace. And it doesn't really say much about the flavors on this. I tried to look it up on Leafly, but it wasn't on there. So anyway, that's what I'm smoking. I know they say in the description that it's an Indica, but I have been smoking it all day, and I wouldn't say that I feel tired. So anyway, I bought it as a Tiva, and that's what I'll be smoking today. So slide it up. If you want to leave a comment or send an email, let me know what you're smoking when you're listening to the show. Maybe I'll check that out.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

It's not bad though. It's got a nice flavor. I like the way it breaks up.

Wes 3:06

So we're gonna be picking up July 4th. So on July 4th, the men pulled ashore to the mouth of a creek

The Meat

Wes 3:15

some 15 yards wide. They named this Independence Creek. Whoa, almost got me. They stopped for the night at a site in the old Candace Indian town and distributed an extra gill to the men. At sunset, they fired the cannon, and it was the first fourth of the July celebration west of the Mississippi River. On July 8th, there was a minor Indian scare, but nothing came of it. On the night of July 11th, Private Alexander Willard went to sleep on his post, and he was later tried and sentenced to a hundred lashes each day for four days. On July 21st, the party reached the mouth of the Platte River. 640 miles, the expedition had not seen one Indian. And they did mention the Indian scare. I don't know if they found out that it was an Indian scare or not, because they said they didn't see an Indian, but we're gonna go with it. Per Jefferson's main objectives, the national tribes, uh for the national tribes, Lewis was to establish American sovereignty, peace, and trading empire in which the warriors would put down their weapons and take on traps. The previous year, Lewis had purchased beads, brass buttons, tomahawks, axes, scissors, mirrors, tobaccos, vermilion paint, and whiskey while in Philadelphia and St. Louis as gifts for the tribes. Rifles, balls, and powder were the most desired items, but Lewis wanted to demonstrate what the men could do with the Kentucky long rifle, but he was not able to provide the Indians with weapons due to their limited space and they just didn't want to arm the natives. August second, eighteen oh four, a party of Otos and a few Missouri arrived at camp, accompanied by a few a French trader and translator. The captains gave the Indians some tobacco and support, flour and bill, and in return the Indians gave them watermelons. The next morning, the expedition had his first meeting with the Indians. It took Lewis nearly a half hour to deliver his speech and have it translated, and he opened by advising the warriors to be wise and look to the true interests of their people. Lewis informed them that the Missouri River country now belonged to the United States, and everyone was bound to obey the commands of their great chief and president, who is now their only great father. Then came some threats, like the great father would stop all trade coming to the river if they displeased him, and without European trade, the Otos would suffer a severe setback, especially with their neighbors having guns and powder. Lewis concluded the captain's distributed presents. The Odo chiefs acknowledged that they had heard that Lewis and what Lewis had said, promised to follow his good advice, and they were happy to have their new father that could be depended on. Then they requested some powder and whiskey. Lewis met the request, providing a canister of powder, fifty balls, and a bottle of whiskey. He also shot off his air gun. Yes, an air gun. A 46 caliber Girondini air rifle, to be more specific, that the party had brought along with them. It had been designed for the Austrian army, and it was deadly, but it took around 1,500 pumps to fill it with enough for 30 shots, and I'm not sure all 30 would be deadly. And could you imagine just setting there in war trying to pump this fucking thing 1,500 times? The Indians departed as the expedition proceeded on. That night, Private Moses B. Reed told the captains they had left his knife back at the council site, and they gave him permission to retrieve it. Three days later, Reed had not returned. The captains believed he had deserted and selected Druyard along with three other men to go seek and find Reed. Druyard was gone ten days, and by August 17th, he had brought back Reed along with a delegation of chiefs from the Otos, including Little Thief and Big Horse. The court martial was formed. Reed was sentenced to uh run the gauntlet four times through the party. Each man with nine switches should punish him. That amounted to about 500 lashes. In addition, Reed was discharged from the permanent party. He had given up his rifle and the privilege of standing guard and would also be sent back to St. Louis in the spring. That evening, to celebrate Captain Lewis' thirtieth birthday, an extra jam of whiskey per man went around, and the fiddle came out and the men danced around the campfire till nearly midnight. The next morning, Clark was astonished when Big Horse showed up naked to emphasize his poverty. They gave us a tobacco paint and beads, and these gifts obviously made little impressions on the Chiefs and Warriors. What are they gonna say? Uh I know you're you're you're doing bad here, but go here, go paint your dick, put some beads on it, and smoke some tobacco. I don't know how that was supposed to help. The captains gave the chiefs and the warriors a dram of whiskey each and brought out their magic show, including the air gun, a magnifying glass, and a telescope and some other items. But the Otos did not come to be awed, they had come for goods. So they went away unhappy. Still, Little Thief indicated that he would go back to Washington in the spring. So the captain's first venture as frontier diplomats had some success. Things might be different with the Sioux. August twentieth, Sergeant Charles Floyd died, most likely due to peritonitis, resulting from an infected appendix that had been peripherated or ruptured. He had been ill the past few days and Lewis found nothing effective to treat it. Sergeant Floyd was the first U.S. soldier to die west of the Mississippi and the only man to die on the expedition. And that's pretty wild. I think eventually there was about forty or forty-five guys. The main corps was like thirty or thirty-three. I don't know. I'll have the number later. The captains had him buried along with honors of the war and fixed a red cedar post over his grave with his name, title, and the date. They also named the river they were on, Floyd's River and the bluff Sergeant Floyd's Bluff. On August 26th and 27th, Private George Shannon, the youngest member of the party, never returned from a hunt. The captains grew concerned and sent out John Coulter to look for him with no luck. Then they sent out Druyard and he too reported failure. The twenty-seventh, the party approached today's Yankton, South Dakota, and they were now in territory of the Yankton Sioux. Lewis ordered the prairie set afire as a signal to the Yanktons, inviting them to council. And a few hours later, a teenage Yankton boy swam out to one of the pirogues. The expedition pulled ashore and two more teenage boys appeared. Through Mr. Dorian, they said the large camp of Yanktons were camped nearby. The captains delegated Sergeant Pryor and Mr. Dorian to go to the camp and invite the chiefs to come to council at Calamet Bluffs, near present Gavins Point Dam in Nebraska side. August 29th, the corps was in the camp of Calamet Bluffs. At four PM, Mr. Dorian showed up on the opposite bank at the head of the party with some seventy Yankton warriors. By 10 a.m. the captain sent a canoe to bring them over, and with Dorian interpreting, Lewis gave his basic Indian speech. And when he finished, the chief said they would respond in the morning. Afterwards, the Indian boys showed off their skills with bows and arrows. Just asked myself at dus. They built three fires in the center of the camp and danced the music of the deer hoof rattles and a drum. In the morning the chiefs gave their reply. They needed some powder, ball, and whiskey, but the captains weren't able to meet those needs. They were able to leave Dorian for the winter. He could arrange peace for the other tribes and organize an expedition to Washington in the spring. They gave the chiefs some tobacco and Dorian a bottle of whiskey, and despite the Yankton's disappointment with the presidents, the first encounter with the Sioux ended in a hopeful note. And how about that man? This guy meets the corps, travels with them, then they could convince him to live with these other people when he's gonna live with them all winter long and travel with them to Washington.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

And he just looks at that plan and he's like, Oh, that sounds like a logical thing to do.

Wes 10:52

By mid-September, the expedition had reached the short grass prairie of the drier high plains, just east of the Rockies. There were herds of elk, deer were plentiful, as were the birds. Buffalo became a common sight as well. The men pointed out a goat which no one could identify, and Clark recorded the plums were most delicious he had ever tasted, and the grapes were plentiful and finely flavored. Early on September 3rd, Coulter went to find Shannon again. When the men had moved the killboat upriver and took tremendous effort, they had tow ropes that they literally had to drag this freaking boat, because the amount of effort each man consumed up to nine pounds of meat a day, and extremely lean meat compared to beef, along with whatever fruit the area afforded and some cornmeal. With all this, they were still hungry. September 7th, 1804, they walked to a small village of prairie dogs. This animal was new to science. The captives gave the animal its first formal description and eventually caught one to send it back to Jefferson. September 11th, as a corresponded Shannon sitting on the river brink. He was extremely weak and near starving. He ate some jerky meat and he told his story. He was sure the boat was ahead, so he was chasing after it for sixteen fucking days. He ran out of bullets after four days. He had managed to kill one rabbit by stabbing it with a stick. Other than that, he lived off of grapes and plums for two weeks. He decided to sit on the riverbank and wait on the trading boat coming by of the Mandan villages towards St. Louis. He had his horse as one last resort. Three days later on the 14th, Clark killed a goat. Now the entire time, whenever they had the opportunity, Clark and Lewis were recording all this. Information at the plants, animal life, pretty much everything in every way they could to describe what they were seeing. Over the next week, the expedition sped ahead, making twenty three miles one day, then twenty five and thirty-three the next, then finally shot a coyote and added a mule deer to their list. Sunday, September twenty third, they made twenty miles and made camp. And as they prepared camp, three teenage two ton Sioux swam across, with Druyard exchanging messages via sign. They said they were a band of eighty lodges camped in the mouth of the next river and a second band of sixty lodges a short distance from that. The captains gave him some tobacco and told them to inform the chiefs that the expedition would come up tomorrow for counsel. And the next morning they proceeded upriver and ran into Coulter. He ran up to them shouting an Indian had stolen his horse. They drew your sign and using Pierre Crusette to translate. They told the Indians to come in pe they come in peace, but were not afraid to fight. They said the horse was sent by their new father and would not speak to the Tetons until the horse was returned. The spot where the meeting took place is in present-day Pierre, South Dakota. The captains raised the flagstaff, set the awning, and prepared for council. By 11 AM, three chiefs and many warriors came bearing large quantities of buffalo meat as a gift to the captain's offered pork. Then it was time to talk. And I don't know. I think I'd rather have the buffalo meat. I haven't had a lot of it, but I like pork too. Unfortunately, they quickly discovered that Crusette cannot speak enough language to properly translate. Recognizing this, Lewis cut the speech and went straight to the magic show. Finally, he handed out medals and gifts. By designation, Black Buffalo is the leading chief and gave him a medal and two other small gifts, a red military coat and a cockcat. Cocktail, whatever the hell that is. And the other two chiefs, Partiz and Buffalo Medicine, got medals. The captains felt sure they had completed their part and soon realized there was some discontent amongst the other chiefs, so they invited them to their killboat where things got a little weird after some whiskey. And this does get pretty crazy. They had to force the natives off the boat into a canoe. When it landed, three warriors seized the bowline while another hugged the mast. Partisan pretended to be drunk, staggering up, declaring the gifts weren't sufficient to proceed upriver, and then he demanded a canoe full of presents. Clark then drew his sword and ordered all hands under arms. On the killboat, Lewis ordered the men to prepare for action. The swivel gun was loaded with sixteen musket balls, the blunder buses were loaded with buckshot, the men loaded their rifles and prepared to fire. Some warriors saw this and they backed away, but others strung up their bows and took out arrows from their quivers and began to cock their shotguns. It was a very dramatic moment. If the cannon had fired, there may not have been a Lewis and Clark expedition. Luckily for them, Black Buffalo seized the bowline from the three warriors and motioned to the warriors, hugging the mast to go ashore. Partisans soon joined them. After Clark made some threats through Droyer's sign and Crozette's simple words, three chiefs went out to conference. And that's pretty funny, just talking shit with sign. I think I know the sign for that. Clark finally managed to quiet his emotions and walk over to the chiefs and offer his hand. The chief refused to take it. Clark then turned and ordered his men to join him, and they waded out to the pirogue, where Black Buffalo and two other warriors waited after him, asking to sleep aboard, and Clyde nodded his consent. So in short, the first meeting with the Tetonsu with the Americans did not go good. The following morning, at Black Buffalo's request, the expedition anchored new as near his village, and the captains invited some women and children to come aboard, and Black Buffalo invited Lewis to his place. Black Buffalo insisted on showing Lewis the greatest courtesies, including repeat invitations to take a squall. Lewis remained for another night or so so they could quote show their good dispositions towards us. At dusk, Lewis and Clark were carried with much ceremony on a decorated buffalo robe to the great council lodge in the middle of the village. Fires glowed as women prepared a feast. Slabs of buffalo meat toasted over hot coals. Inside the council, a lodge of seventy elders sat in a circle. Listen to this shit. The Americans sat next to Buffalo Black Buffalo and smoked pipes with the group. Afterwards, Lewis asked Black Buffalo to make peace with the Omaha's. Surely Black Buffalo thought he was mad. Why would he make peace with his enemy for the white man? Then his people had a scalp dance, displayed those recently acquired from the Omaha's. It was the first scalp dance the Americans had ever seen. The dance had broken up at midnight, then Black Buffalo offered the captains and the young men bed partners, but the captains refused. In the morning, as the men were trying to leave, a group of well-armed warriors approached. Black Buffalo came aboard and asked them to stay one more day. Then several warriors grabbed the bowline. Black Buffalo said the warriors just wanted some tobacco, and Lewis said he would not be forced into anything, but finally he threw Black Buffalo some. I believe it was like rolled up like cigarettes for the time. I don't know exactly what it was called. I didn't write that down. And with that, the teeton confrontation was over.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

And the joint's over.

Wes 17:47

October 20th, in present-day Fort Lincoln State Park, North Dakota, Private Crizette was the first to encounter a grizzly bear. They had heard about grizzlies from the natives. They knew the Indians rarely fucked with them, and when they did, they dressed for war. Clark had seen footprints from the grizzly earlier, and the expedition was eager to find one. Crizette was lucky. Lewis wrote, he wounded him, but being alarmed at the formidable appearance of the bear, he left his tomahawk and gun. Crisette returned later for his items. Beginning in October, as the corps made its way through present north northern South Dakota, it passed numerous abandoned villages. These had once been home to the Aricara tribe, about 30,000 strong in the year of the U.S. won independence, but the tribe had been rapidly reduced by a smallpox epidemic, and by the 1780s there was only about 6,000 left. What had been 18 villages was now three. October 8th, the killboat passed a three mile long island home to the three Ariquera villages that were still alive, and some 2,000 Indians lined the banks, watching the boat progress to the head of the island, and then watched the men make camp. Lewis selected two voyagers who spoke the Aricera language and the two soldiers then paddled across in a pirogue to meet the Indians. Clark stayed in camp, prepared for both peace or war. From what he knew, or what he thought he knew, the Rickeras were farmers oppressed by the Sioux, and that was not true. They traded mutually with the Sioux. He knew the Rickoras were at war with the Mandans, and Lewis's view, if the Rickeras could be broken away from the Sioux, if they made peace with the Mandans, the whole balance of power would shift. The Sioux would be isolated and excluded from the U.S. trade empire. And he received a warm welcome from the Rickeras. He met George Gravelines, a trader who had been living with the Ericaras for thirteen years and was an invaluable source of information on the upper Missouri country, and he was able to communicate accurately with the Erica. A large part of the problem with the Sioux was the lack of adequate and complete translation. The next morning, Clark was astonished to see bullboats brought to the bank, and these were boats made each of a single buffalo hide stretched over a bowl-shaped willow frame. They brought with them some chiefs and some warriors, and Pierre Antoine Tableau. Tableau was a fur trader from Montreal and educated from Quebec. He lived in Illinois, then Missouri, and then with the Eriquera. He was an outstanding translator, and the council was put off until the following day due to difficulties with wind, just whipping up sand and making a roar. The following morning, October 10th, Tableau came over first. After smoking and exchanging some presents, Lewis stood and began his basic Indian speech with grave lines interpreting, accepting American sovereignty, make peace with the Mandans, shun the Sioux, and trade with the American merchants, and it's basically what he was trying to convey. If they did as told, they would be protected by their new father. And when Lewis finished, a detail fired three shots from the bow swivel gun. Then the captain brought out gifts. They were vermilion paint, pewter looking glasses, four hundred needles. How would they know that? Broadcloth, beads, combs, razors, nine pairs of scissors. Again, who fucking wrote that down? Nine pairs. Not ten. No, not ten. We're only giving them nine pairs. Knives, uh tomahawks and more. No whiskey though. The captains offered it, but their rigorous said no. They actually was ashamed with in uh Lewis and Clark and remarking that they were surprised that their father would present them with liquor, and that would make them act like fools. Despite Tableau's warning, the captains made Crow at rest the first chief, on their assumption that every tribe had a single leader, and made Hawk's father and Chief Hay second chiefs to the other villages. For the chiefs there were military coats, cock tats, medals, and American flags, and after presents they shot off their air gun. The council broke up and the chiefs promised to consult with the warriors and respond in the morning. That afternoon the men visited the villages and York was a sensation. The Rickers had never seen a black man. York played with the children. The soldiers meanwhile enjoyed some favors from the Erica women, often encouraged to do so by their husbands, who believed that they would catch some power from the white man for such intercourse, transmitted to them through their wives. One warrior invited York to his lodge and offered him up to his wife and guarded the entrance during the act. York was said to be big medicine. Whether secret powers could be had from such intercourse doesn't seem to be true, but what was exchanged from their hospitality was venereal diseases, which was rampant in the villages and passed to the men of the expedition. October 30th, Crow at Rest returned to make his answer to the captain's proposal. He said his heart was glad to have a new father, and the road was open to the expedition and would always be open. He also asked the captains to make peace between his people and the Mandans. One of the chiefs agreed to go on board and make a trip to the Mandans to talk in council sponsored by the American peacekeeping delegation, and on the thirteenth, Clark and Lewis were confronted with a severe disciplinary problem. Former Private Moses Reed, the deserter, was a grousing, malcontented soldier who wanted to poison the mind of at least one other member of the expedition, Private John Newman. He agitated him about a blankety blank captain I don't know why I wrote blankety blank, and how unfair they were. Newman succumbed to the poison and lashed out at the captains, who had him and Reed arrested. In court, Newman was sentenced to seventy-five lashes on bare back and to be discarded from the permanent party. The sentence was ordered the next day, and they further ordered Newman to join the Frenchman in the canoes as a laboring hand. Reed would be banished and they would send him back in the spring. October twenty fourth, the expedition was well north of present-day Bismarck and approaching the Mandan villages. The captains knew the Mandans were the center of the Northern Plains trade, attracting Indians from vast distances. At trading time in the late summer, the river villages were crowded with crows, Cheyennes, Kiowas, Arapahos, along with the whites of the Northern West Company, the Hudson Bay Company, and the St. Louis businessmen. Nowhere else could one see a single glance at diversity and colorful styles of the Indians of the plains. There were two Mandam villages, the lower one led by Big White and his second chief little Raven. Further upriver there was a second village led by Black Cat and Raven Man Chief. On the Knife River, there was three Hidatsa villages, one of these led by Black Moccasin, another led by Labor and I don't know, this is spelt weird. B-O-R-G-N, maybe it's a silent G. It means one eye, I think. He was a military chieftain of great reputation. The Mandans hunted buffalo on horseback, but they did not ride out on war parties ranging to the Rockies like the Hidatsa did. As they moved north, the expedition began to see abandoned Mandan villages that had been decimated by smallpox. And with Gravelines translating, Lewis introduced Big White to the Rikera chief. They smoked a pipe, then the captains and gravelines and the Rikura chief accompanied Big White to his village. Peace between the two tribes seemed possible. October 26, Lewis and Gravelines walked to the village while Clark stayed on the boat. Lewis received a warm welcome. Meanwhile, a trader from the second Mandan village named Renee Josam paid a visit to Clark. Jossam had been living with the Mandans for fifteen years and participated fully in their ceremonial and social lives. He had married a Mandan woman and was raising a family in the village. Clark ended up hiring him as he was a useful interpreter and source of information. Relations with the Mandans continued to be excellent. The expedition would spend the next five months as their neighbors. On October 29th, the first formal council was held and Lewis gave his basic Indian speech. When Lewis finished, Clark introduced the Arika chief who had smoked with the Mandans. On the last day of October, Black Cat invited Clark to his lodge to hear what he had to say. He said the Indians heard that the Corps was coming. They were expecting great presence. They were disappointed and dissatisfied, not so much himself, but his village was. Still, he would go meet their great father in Washington in the spring. The captain's quarters for the winter were Fort Mandan, which was located on the north bank of the Missouri, some seven miles below the mouth of the knife and directly opposite the lower Mandan village. Work on it began November 3rd. November 4th, 1804, Clark recorded that he had been visited by Frenchman by the name of Charbonot, Toussaint Charbonneau. He was French Canadian, about 45 years old. He once worked for the Northwest Company, but now he lived with the Hadatsa as an independent trader. His wives or squaws were Shoshone from a band that lived in the Rocky Mountains at the headwater of the Missouri. They were teenagers who had been captured by the Hadatsa raiding party four years earlier, and Charbonneau had won them in a bet with the warriors who had captured them. The captains eagerly accepted Charbonneau's offer to sign on as interpreter, not so much for himself, but because of his wives, who spoke the language of the mountain tribes. The wives could speak Hadatsa to Charbonneau, who could talk French to Druyard, who could pass it on to the captains in English. So on the spot they signed up Charbonneau and one of his wives, and he chose his six-month pregnant wife, Sacagawea. So just a second, I'm going to stop and talk about this young lady's name. I chose to go with Sacagawea because that's what I'm comfortable with. That's all of how I've always said her name. I'm from the South, and I believe nowadays it's mostly accepted as Sakagawea. But the Shoshone, where the young lady's thought to be from originally, pronounce her name Sacagawea today. So mainly for my own comfort, I'm going to stick with this, trying to make a smooth podcast. But I mean no disrespect, and I fully believe that no matter what she's called, the Corps of Discovery very well may not have completed their task without the assistance from this teenage native woman we all know today. December 7th, the Mandan chief came to the fort to report that there were great numbers of buffalo on the hills, a couple miles or so from the river. The chief offered horses and the soldiers joined. Lewis gathered a party of fifteen men and with boat and with barred horses they went to the hunt. Using rifles, Lewis and his men killed eleven buffalo that day. They enjoyed it so much they stayed out all night, apparently sleeping in a buffalo robe in below zero weather. And a buffalo robe was a cured heron bison hide used by the Native Americans for warmth as blankets and sometimes clothes. The next day the Americans killed nine more buffalo. They ate only the tongues and the wolves got the rest. That day the temperature went down to 45 below zero. It was the coldest it would get all winter, and the winter hadn't even started yet. It was about 13 days away. Winter at Fort Mandam was cold AF, and the average being around four degrees above zero in December. The river was frozen solid enough so that herds of buffalo could cross them without breaking the ice. Lewis wanted to peel a killboat out of the shore for repairs, but it was locked in the ice. Not until February 26th were the party able to get it out to work on it. The garrison at Fort Mandam maintained regular military security with drills, sentry posting challenges, and daily inspections of the weapons, and there were no fights or desertions. The Sioux did end up making a raid on them in mid-February. Clark had gone hunting and killed more meat than he could transport, and when he got back, he told Droyard and three other men to go grab the meat, and a band of Sioux warriors spied the small party. The Indians got away with two sleigh and two knives. However, they were forced to give back a tomahawk and one horse sleigh, and that was about 105 warriors to four white men, so the Americans didn't do too badly in that situation. February 15th, Lewis had a led a party of 24 men to punish the Sioux and Arickara for attacking the Mandans. A few Mandan warriors came along as allies, but the weather was bad, the snow was deep, and the men soon had their feet cut and bleeding by the sharp ice. Lewis founded some abandoned tepees about 30 miles away, and thoroughly exhausted, they slept there. And the next day Lewis insisted on going hunting. The party stayed out for a week and brought back more than a ton of meat. They had 36 deer and 14 elk. They got along fine with the Mandan. The chiefs, captains, and warriors, they caught on one another, went hunting together, traded extensively, enjoyed sexual relations with the same women on a regular basis. They joked and talked about what they knew. The Mandans and Hadats shared their knowledge about the West Country. On New Year's Eve, 1805, half the detachment went to a lower Mandan village at the request of the chief to dance to the music of a tambourine, a sound horn, and a private cassette's fiddle. And from January 3rd to the fifth, the Mandans held a nightly dance of their own. I thought we were talking about this dance earlier. I forgot when it was in the you know in the script here. But when the men arrived, they were ushered to the back of a communal earth lodge, and then the dance began. The music of rattles and drums, old men in the village sat in the circle waiting. Soon the young men and their wives filed in to take their place in the back of the circle. They had a smoking ceremony for the old guys, and as the drumbeat became more insistent and the chanting swelled, one of the young men would approach an old man and beg him to take his wife. Yes, who in turn would appear to the old guy naked. She would lead him by the hand to a place for the business. In the event that the old man failed to gratify the wife, the husband would offer her again and again and throw in a robe if he needed to. And all of this, Clark noted, is to cause the buffalo to come near so that men could kill them. The buffalo dance was thought to be a magnet for wandering herds. And there was a second purpose to the dance. The Mandans also believed that power could be transferred from one man to another through sexual relations. The Mandans contributed the whites great powers and big medicine, so throughout the three days the buffalo dance, the Americans were said to be untiringly zealous in attracting the cow and in transferring power. Lewis has also been doing a great deal of doctrine. On the first day of winter, a Mandam woman brought her child to Lewis, showing him an abscess on the child's back and offered Lewis as much corn as she could carry for some medicine to cure the sore. And Lewis complied. On January 10th, a 13-year-old Mandam boy came to the fort with frozen feet. The captains used the standard treatment soaking the feet in water, and it appeared to work for his men, but for this boy he has too far gone. On January 26th, Clark recorded that Captain Lewis took off the toes of one foot of a boy that got frostbite some time ago. And five days later the captain said he sawed off the boy's toes from the other foot. Just a note that a surgical saw was not listed on the medical kit, but two hand saws were on their item list, and that's a gory visual. Aside from frozen extremities, the most common medical problem was syphilis. It's possible that nearly every man suffered from the disease. As for the captains, they never mentioned taking the standard treatment themselves. At the time, they didn't know how dangerous Mercury was either, and Lewis administered it routinely to his men. That's where we'll leave the party today, just after New Year's Eve 1805. They made it a great distance, but have a lot more to cover and will in part three of the Lewis and Clark series. In the next episode, we get to have a baby. But hey, thanks for tuning in. If you have something to say or a good subject to explore, leave a comment or send an email to stonedatepod at gmail.com. Follow us on Facebook at the Stonedate Podcast with West Rents. And if you prefer YouTube, youtube.com slash at Stonedate Pod. 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