07 - Lewis and Clark Pt. 4 : The Long and Winding Road

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 final part of our series on the expedition, the Corps makes it to their destination and we will hear about what became of a few key members of the party as well as the captains. Let's take a puff and finish the story of the Corps of Discovery.

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Lewis and Clark Pt. 1: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2568436/episodes/18444526

Lewis and Clark Pt. 2

:https://www.buzzsprout.com/2568436/episodes/18462525

Lewis and Clark Pt. 3

:https://www.buzzsprout.com/2568436/episodes/18473281

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Thumbnail Attribution: https://www.vecteezy.com/free-vector/lewis-and-clark">Lewis And Clark Vectors by Vecteezy</a>

Transcript

Wes 0:34

Welcome to or welcome back to the Stonedate Podcast. I'm Wes, and today we'll be talking about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. And this is part four and the last part of our Lewis and Clark series. If you need to catch up, there'll be links below for the first three parts. When we left the Corps, they were with the friendly tribe, the Salish. And today we'll be taking it all the way to the Pacific coast, and we'll finish up talking about what came to be of the captains and a few other key members of the party. But before we do that, we're gonna spark one up, so to speak. And today I'm gonna be having another vape. Uh it's a session vape. I get it from True Leaf, and if I'm not mistaken, I believe Session is just a brand connected to True Leaf. I tried to look up and see where they were located, their headquarters, but I really wasn't able to find anything. I found Sessions with an S, but that's in Canada, and that's not what we're talking about. But the strain that I have is called Lemon Fresh, and it's a live uh live resin, all in one disposable vape. Uh what it says online is Lemon Fresh delivers sharp, zesty citrus flavors accented with subtle herbal undertones for a bright, aromatic smoke. Each draw is flavorful and smooth, engaging in a palette fully. The effects are energizing and uplifting for the mind while relaxing the body, perfect for creative pursuits, social sessions, or daytime enjoyment. Lemon Fresh balances bold, refreshing flavor with approachable potency for a consistently flavorful, high quality experience. Alright, and I did want to look a second and just look into the difference between a vape high and a cannabis, you know, a flower high. And what it says online is vaping cannabis typically produces a stronger, faster, but shorter lasting high compared to smoking flour, which offers a more gradual, layered, and longer lasting experience. The differences are primarily due to the concentration of THC and the presence of full spectrum of plant compounds. And I do generally lean towards uh smoking. I prefer to smoke rather than to vape, but I I vape too, I'm not against it. I do believe that it gives you a clearer high and a little bit less stoned kind of feeling to it. Uh but again the strain I'm smoking is limit fresh, and it looks like the THC level in this is gonna be 74.43%. And uh, you know, you don't really have to do anything, just open it up out of the package and uh take a pull. Alright. Definitely has like a hint, uh like a lemon hint to it. I don't know how to describe it. Zesty, I guess. So we're gonna start off September 6, 1805, as they're setting down the Bitterroot Valley. The expedition made ten miles in camp with nothing to eat but grouse and some berries. They were out of flour and only had a little corn and some portable soup Lewis purchased in Philadelphia. For the next three days, the descent to the wide and beautiful Bitterroot Valley was relatively easy. The corps made twenty-two miles on the seventh, twenty-three miles on the eighth, and twenty-one miles on the ninth. But as they marched, the men kept looking at the snow covered mountains to the west. Sergeant Patrick Gass described it as the most terrible mountains I've ever beheld. On the ninth, the party camped at a junction of the stream coming into the west from today's Lolo Creek. Old Toby had informed Lewis that this is the place the party

The Meat

Wes 4:08

would leave the Bitter Root and head almost straight west up Lolo Creek and over the mountains. This was an ordeal that every man had dreaded. The morning of september tenth, Lewis sent out all the hunters. They returned with four deers, a beaver, and three grouse. Private John Coulter brought back three Indians from a tribe that lived across the mountains. They were almost certainly Nez Perce. They were in pursuit of a band of Shoshones that had stolen of their horses. One of the three agreed to remain with the Americans, and he told the captains it would be five to six days before he would get to his people. The night of september tenth, two horses trayed. It wasn't until three PM the next day that they were caught and the expedition can finally go up Lolo Creek on the Nez Perce Trail. The Indians had volunteered, they got impatient and took off. The party made seven miles and camped. The following morning, Lewis's horse strayed, and he remained back to search for it while Clark proceeded with the party. The expedition made it down to today's Pack Creek and camped, and on September 14th it rained, held, and snowed, and on top of the weather, old Toby got lost. Fucking Toby. On the fifteenth, old Toby recognized his mistake and led the men to today's Wendover Ridge on the north side of the river. It was a steep ascent and several horses slipped and crashed down to hills. The horses carrying Clark's field desk rolled down the mountain for forty yards, and then got lodged against a tree, and the desk was smashed, but the horse was okay. When the party reached the ridgeline there was no water. There were some 7,000 feet in elevation using snow, the men made soup out of the remains of the cold kills from the previous day. Snow soup. Mmm. Clark wrote, From this mountain I could observe high rugged mountains in every direction as far as I could see, and there was no way the expedition was going to cross them in two more days. September seventeenth was the worst day so far on the expedition. It snowed all day, piling six to eight inches deep. The pine trees were covered with snow that fell on the men when they passed and brushed the limbs. Clark wrote in his journal, I've been wet and as cold in every part as I ever was in my life. The party made thirteen miles and the captains ordered the second colt killed. The corps made only ten miles the following day, mostly due to the near starvation horses straying off during the night. With insufficient supper, they were forced to kill the last colt. The captains decided that Clark would go out with six hunters and the following morning provide provisions for the preceding party under Lewis's command. Lewis and the men made eighteen miles that day, september eighteenth, and the following morning Lewis could see the end of the mountains. The plane appeared to be about sixty miles away, and Lewis and the men pressed on. In addition to traveling issues, several of the men were sick with dysentery, and nearly all of them had the problem of venereal diseases we talked about in the last episode contracted by the Shoshone women. The following day, Lewis saw the great part of a horse Captain Clark had killed with a note saying he planned to proceed as fast as possible to the plains, where he intended to hunt until Lewis got there. The men made a hearty meal, but as they were eating, Lewis received news that one of his pack horses with his lobe was missing. The lobe was Lewis's winter clothes, so he sent Private LaPage, who was responsible for the horse anyway, to go back and search for it. LePage returned at 3 PM without the horse, so Lewis sent two of his best woodsmen to search for him, and they did return with the horse. On september twenty first, Lewis finally made it to one of Clark's campsites, and six miles later they stopped and made camp themselves. The next morning, after about two miles of travel, the men met Private Reuben Field, a member of Clark's party, who Clark had sent to meet Lewis with some dried fish and roots obtained by the Nez Perse. Field said that the Indian village was some seven miles further west, and that Clark had made a friendly contact with the Nez Perse and had been able to get food for them. After eating, the party proceeded to a village of eighteen lodges and made it there around 5 PM on the 22nd. Private Field told Lewis that Clark was at the second village gathering info for the Nez Perse. That night, Clark joined Lewis accompanied by Twisted Hare, a Nez Perse chief in his mid-sixties. Clark informed Lewis that there were two villages in the area. Twisted Hare had drawn him up a mat on white elk skin and told him about the country to the west. Twisted Hare was right. The expedition was within ten days of the falls of the Columbia and a couple of weeks from the ocean. But the captains had learned that either Indian estimates of distances were too optimistic or the Indians traveled a lot faster than white men. Over the next couple of days, the captains handed out medals to Twisted Hair and three lesser chiefs, along with shirts, knives, handkerchiefs, and tobacco. These trifles did not satisfy. At the end of the second day, the Nezpers indicated that they were no longer going to feed the expedition for free. The captains traded their diminishing supply for more roots, berries, and dried fish. Though Clark had warned Lewis about overeating the roots and berries, Lewis and his men gorged themselves anyway and got sick as shit. Most of the party went violently ill for a week, with dysentery producing acute diarrhea and vomiting. Yeah, these guys were just shitting and puking all over the place. So Clark gave out plenty of Russian pills, and they were taking mercury and and uh chlorine, I believe. The sickness was probably the result of a change of diet from all meat to all roots and dry berries, and the bacteria on salmon uh did not help at all either. By the twenty-seventh, most of the men were still sick, including Lewis, and not until the thirtieth could Clark report that men were recuperating, but they were still on the dried fish and root diet. The Nezperce could have easily taken advantage of this. They could have killed all the men and taken all the weapons, but apparently, thanks to a Nezperse woman who had been captured by Blackfeet and sold to white traders from Canada, they did not try to do anything nefarious. She had told the warriors that the white men were the people who helped me and do not hurt them. So the expedition absolutely owed more to native women than either captain ever acknowledged. During the week Lewis was on his back, Clark moved the camp to the junction of the North Fork of the clear water with the main stream, where there were p ponderosa pines of sufficient size to make canoes. Twisted Hare had shown Clark the Indian method of canoe making, putting them over a slow burning fire trench to burn out the trunks. Twisted Hare also promised to look after the expedition's herd of thirty eight horses until the Americans came back in the spring. The captains had assumed when they got out of the mountains that they would be in a country with ample supply of deer and elk, but they were wrong about that. Fish and roots purchased from the Nez Perse remained their diet. On october fourth, Lewis was still sick. By the sixth, the canoes were finished. Clark had them put in the water and loaded, and at three PM the party set out. The river was swift with many bad rapids, but the party made twenty miles nevertheless, headed towards the Pacific. I will say that Lewis and Clark must have been some good captains. The men never sold, lashed out, demanded to retreat, or insisted on some alternative route. When the captains decided to take great risks at times, no man protested. They had built an unquestioning trust in themselves. The core of Discovery was a tough, superbly disciplined family. On october thirteenth, the party came to a very bad place in which the water is confined to a channel of about twenty yards between rugged rocks at a distance of a mile. Though the men should have probably portaged this section, they decided to go through it, and they fucking made it. Clark accorded that Captain Lewis with two canoes set out past down the rapid. The others soon followed and we passed over the bad rapids safe. The rapids were certainly rough. The dugout canoes they were in overturned and grounded on rocks, they sprung leaks, and supplies were both lost and damaged, but the captains ran the rapids anyway. I think they were just trying to get to their destination. And old Toby he must have been frightened by the rapids because he took off in the middle of the night without any pay. October fourteenth, the expedition swept on towards the junction of the snake and the Columbia, passing through the canyon like snake on into present day Washington, where the great Columbian plain offered a barren landscape. Along the way, the expedition passed many Indian villages. The natives were members of the extended Nezpers nation. The Indians were hospitable, partly because of twisted hair and the other Nezpers chief named Tetoharski. There is a T in the middle of that, and I may not always say it. Went ahead to reassure the village that the white men were friendly. Sacajawea's baby also helped, because they didn't imagine anyone would bring a baby on a war party. And not wanting to waste time sending out hunters, the captains purchased dogs to have some meat instead of fish and roots. Ugh, eating dogs. But it wasn't semen. Semen was fine. Around the campfire later that night, Lewis gave his speech to the natives and handed out medals with Jefferson's likeness. He urged the Indians to make peace with the neighbors and promised them trade goods. And I guess they had an issue with natives stealing small items. And the captains didn't like it. Most of the items again, they were small, but they were trade goods, and the trade goods were diminishing fast, and that was their capital. Still, the spirits were high. At night around the fire, Private Crusette would bring out his violin to the delight of the men who would dance and sing music I guess sing to the music. And the Indians watched a bit and then they would start their own dance. The following day the party reached the junction with the Columbia, the first white men to be on the river east of the Cascades. They camped for two nights. Clark investigated the Columbia for about ten miles upstream, and by now the signs that Pacific wasn't far away had to be evident. October twenty third The expedition came to the beginning of a spectacular but dangerous stretch of the river that extended some fifty five miles. At the mouth of today's Deschutes River, from just above the falls, the captains went off in different directions to examine the surrounding countryside and the falls. The captains decided that only a twenty foot drop would have to be portaged. They were able to hire local Indians and their horses to help with the heavier items. Other places they managed to lower canoes through the rapids using elk skin ropes while packing the baggage on a portage. Indians gathered on the riverbanks to watch the men. Lewis visited the village where he observed his first Chinookan canoe made of pine, remarkably light, wide in the middle and tapering at each end, with cross pieces at the gunnels that made the craft surprisingly strong and skillfully carved animal figures on the bow. Lewis was able to exchange the expedition's smallest canoe for one after he agreed to throw in a hatchet and a few trinkets. The captains had learned that they had been passing into a country of people with different culture and language from any they had previously encountered. They were Chinookan, and the Nez Perce were at Perse. I hope I'm saying that right. I kept saying Peirce went in my head. Um but it's Nez Perce. But anyway, they were at war with the Chinooks. Twisted Hare told them the night that he had heard the relatives of the Chinookan people living further down the river intended to kill the Americans when they arrived, and the captains examined the rifles and made certain every man had a hundred rounds of ammunition. The following day, Twisted Hare and Tetoharski said they had decided to return home. They explained that the Chinooks would surely kill them if they had the chance. Besides, they could not speak their language, so they couldn't help his interpreters. The captains persuaded them to stay two more days until the expedition had gotten below the next falls, which were about two miles downstream. The next feta falls is called the Dallies, and I believe it's dalleys D A L L E S, I don't know how to say that shit. Began with a short and narrow, quarter mile long stretch in which the river was constricted to a mere forty five yards width. The captains explored the banks and agreed that no portage of the heavy canoes was possible over the rocky ledges. They decided to send the men that could not swim by land carrying the most valuable articles, while the swimmers ran the fall in the canoes, bringing the heavy and less valuable baggage with them. So by the standards of today's canoeists, this was a class V rapid, meaning it could not be run even in a modern canoe specially designed for white water. And the natives, they were expert canoeists themselves, and they did not believe Lewis and Clark could do this. They gathered by the hundreds on the riverbanks to watch the white men drown themselves and be ready to have grab abandoned equipment. But to the astonishment of the Indians, the Americans made the run without incident. Below the short narrows was a relatively calm three mile stretch. Along the bank there were Indian villages with wooden houses, the first wooden homes the captains had seen since they left St. Charles 17 months earlier. And the story of the Class V Rapid, I did hear at least a podcast talk about uh, you know, supposedly some guy stood up and took a bow after doing that, like kind of got a stand in ovation almost. The next river obstacle was the long narrows, where the riverbank narrowed from fifty to a hundred yards for some three miles. Fifty to a hundred, it doesn't sound like it's narrowing. Maybe it's a hundred to fifty, or I'm I just don't know my river talk well. Again, Indians gathered on the banks to await the inevitable disaster. Again, the canoes made the passage safely. Below the narrows where a river widened, the party made camp on a high point of rocks. They called it Fort Rock Camp. Hmm, creative name, guys. On the site of today's city named the Dallas, Oregon. There they stayed for three days to make repairs to the canoes, dry the baggage, and do some hunting. Lewis made celestial observations and the men had a parting smoke with Twisted Hair and Tetoharski. This was probably for the best because several occasions the captains had to restrain the men from killing a few local Indians for their petty thefts. On october thirtieth, eighteen oh five, the party set out again to a point two miles above the last great drop, the Cascades of the Columbia, where they made camp. Lewis took a party of five men to go visit a nearby Indian town. At the village he got a friendly reception. The Indians gave him berries, nuts, and fish to eat, but due to the language barrier he wasn't able to get any information from them. On november first and second, the party made its way through the final barrier. At times the men had to portage the canoes and baggage, and at other places it was possible to just run the canoes through using the elkskin ropes to lower them into the water. After this, the banks were covered with spruce, ash, and alder. Migrating waterfowl were everywhere. Fog was frequent and often thick. Many days the party could not set out until afternoon. Indians were frequent and their villages dotted the banks. November second, the expedition passed the mouth of the Sandy River, which had been the highest point upriver reached by a European or American explorer. The following day, it reached the present day Vancouver, Washington, and camped opposite the mouth of the Willamette River. Here is where the map of the West and East came together. November fourth, several canoe loads of Indians from the village upstream came down to visit. They were apparently friendly, but they did show off their weaponry, and that included war axes, spears, bows and arrows, and some pistols. They smoked with the natives and afterwards there was a pipe stolen. And uh I believe Clark got upset. I only typed he, but it says he searched the Indians, but I believe it's Clark. And on top of that, Druyer's capote was also stolen. And a capote was a long blanket coat. It was hooded and made of heavy wool, popular in the Canadian fur trade. And they didn't fight the natives over this, but Clark did say we became much displeased in these fellows. Hmm, it's kind of funny. At this time the expedition was making more than thirty miles a day on the lower Columbia. On november fifth, they met their first coastal canoe, a flotilla. They actually saw four of them, and the next day they saw another one. The following morning and mid afternoon a shout went up in his journal and Clark scribbled out Ocean in view, oh the joy. The men dug in, putting everything into making it to the ocean, and they made thirty four miles that day before making a miserable rainy camp for the night. And Clark had been a bit premature about this. When he had seen was the Columbian estuary, not the ocean. For the next week or more they were pinned down by the tide, the waves, and the wind, and Point Ellis. It rained for eleven days. Fires were hard to start and difficult to maintain. They tried to keep their spirits up, but the weather, as bad as it was, the happiness didn't last long. They had to be rescued by the Clatsop Indians, the Chinookan people living south bank of the estuary. They sold the men roots and fish. Back on november thirteenth, the captain sent private Coulter, Willard, and Shannon to explore the shoreline between Point Ellis and see if there was a better campsite to be found. The next day, Coulter returned to report that there was a sandy beach in the bay beyond the point, inland, and there was game in the area. The captains agreed that Lewis would lead the advance party to the site while Clark arranged to move the camp as soon as the weather permitted. This is when the corps made it to the coast, near present day Camp Disappointment, Washington, on november fifteenth, eighteen oh five. Camp Disappointment, I wonder what that story is all about. I have to look into it. By november seventeenth, Lewis had joined Clark on the beach and the party would occupy for the next week. Lewis and Clark both carved their names into a tree, but Clark also carved by land of the U States in eighteen oh four and eighteen oh five, and they stayed for about two weeks exploring. By november thirtieth, the captains were finished with the coast and were unable to decide where the camp should be. So they took it to a vote, and York and Sacagoia both voted. And this was the first time a vote was held in the Pacific Northwest and also the first time in American history that a black slave and a woman voted. They voted on the Oregon side, and the expedition made their camp, Fort Clatsop, and stayed in the area until march eighteen oh six. And so this is when we're gonna leave the expedition story. They made it to the Pacific, and this is what the expedition was all about, connecting the East and the West. And there was no all water route, and this wasn't the best news, but they did make it, and it took them a year and a half to make it to the Pacific and around six months to make it back. They encountered several native tribes on the return journey, but they did make it back, except for Coulter. I did want to take a minute and talk about a few of the men and how their lives panned out after returning home. There were a total of forty five men that were part of the expedition and thirty three of them were corps members who went the entire journey. We won't go over every corps member, but here are a few I have info on. Starting with Sacagawea. Her and her husband and her son stayed with the Hadatza for a few years before returning to St. Louis, and she left her son John Baptiste with William Clark to receive a proper education. John Baptiste was around five years old. Historical accounts of her death diverge, with some saying she died of illness in eighteen twelve while Shoshone oral traditions claim she lived much longer after returning to her people in Wyoming and died there in eighteen forty four. John Baptiste, he ended up going back west to California and stayed for two decades, serving a stint as a mission magistrate and prospecting for gold. He eventually settled in Placer County in Northern California, and he was on his way to the goldfields of Montana in May of eighteen sixty six when he fell ill and died near Eastern Oregon Awee River. Aw he, possibly, I'm not sure. John Coulter met fur trappers Forrest Hancock and Joseph Dixon on the return trip and didn't even go back to St. Louis. He stayed with Dixon and Hancock for a time before he became an independent trapper working under Manuel Lisa. Himself and eventually a few other members of the expedition began working under Manuel Lisa's Missouri Fur Company. He died from a brief unspecified illness, possibly John Dis or the Bloody Flux, around may seventh, eighteen twelve, at age thirty eight, while returning to St. Louis finally from the west. After the expedition, George Drewer lived briefly in Cape Girardo, Missouri. He bought some land but later sold it to go back west. He failed to return from a beaver trapping trip in the Three Forks region of the upper Missouri River, where his expedition had already encountered hostilities from the Blackfeet in eighteen ten. A search party later found the remains of him and his horse. He had been beheaded, and his entrails were strewn about in a ritual mutilation. His comrades said that he must have killed several natives before his death, and several of the enlisted men went back west as trappers for, you know, beaver and whatever else they were trapping out there. York, he was denied freedom from Clark and stayed enslaved until possibly eighteen thirty two. Captain Clark said he freed York. He also claimed York felled in the wagon business and died of cholera while returning back to St. Louis. There are legends that suggest he lived amongst the Crow Indians and lived his life out peacefully, but we do not have proof of this. William Clark became a prominent figure in westward expansion after the expedition. He served as governor of the Missouri Territory, superintendent of Indian affairs, and respected military leader. He also helped prepare the expedition's journal for publication. Captain Clark died of natural causes in St. Louis on september first, eighteen thirty eight, at age sixty eight after a brief illness. He was buried with military and Masonic honors on his nephew's farm. Meriwether Lewis was about the worst fate that anyone on the expedition had, though he wasn't decapitated by natives, so maybe not the worst fate, but after returning to St. Louis, Merriweather became governor of Louisiana Territory, but he faced deep debt, depression, and a controversy over his accounts. Feeling the pressure of these political intrigues, along with Jefferson's persistent demands on the journals be finished, caused Captain Lewis to sink into a deep depression. In eighteen oh nine, while traveling to Washington, DC to answer for some of his allegations, Merriweather stopped at an inn in Tennessee, at Grinders Stand or Grinders Tavern, an inn along the Nash's Trace in Tennessee. Captain Merriweather Lewis shot himself october eleventh, eighteen oh nine. Though there are conspiracies that he was murdered, he almost certainly took his own life. Depression ran in his family, and no one that knew him, including Jefferson, thought that any foul play was at hand. And I know I'm not the only person with this belief, but maybe he was just unsatisfied with regular life. Not being in charge of such an important mission or not having a mission at all, maybe that just got to him. Or maybe this is just some armchair psychology. And last but not least, not going into every member because that would be an episode within itself, Sergeant Patrick Gass served over a dozen years in the Army until his battle wounds forced early retirement. He was the longest living member of the corps, dying at age ninety-eight in eighteen seventy. And I guess he didn't have any rush pills or he just got lucky. And that's where we'll leave this story today of early Western exploration. If you guys are curious enough about the return trip, let us know and we'll do a future episode about that. Thanks for tuning in to our four part Lewis and Clark series. 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 Wes Ranson. And if you prefer YouTube, youtube.com slash at Stonedate Pod. I'll have links for these down below, along with our Patreon link. And if you could afford to support the podcast, it is greatly appreciated. We have two tiers at the moment, but just showing up and hanging out every other week is also very much appreciated. Thanks again and have a chill day.