Robert Carriker

Still Exploring, Still Learning in 1806

Observations of the Lewis and Clark Expedition between the Columbia and the Bitterroot Range

It was midmorning — eleven o'clock, to be exact — on the final day of April in 1806 when the members of the Corps of Discovery turned their backs forever on the Columbia River. The River of the West had been in their thoughts since at least mid-August 1805, when they made direct inquiries of Shoshone tribesmen near Lemhi Pass. Now, after having reached the Pacific Ocean and enduring a dreary winter spent squeezed between the river and the coast, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and their traveling troupe of thirty-odd explorers looked toward the east and St. Louis and packed their horses for a "voyage through the plains."¹

The last of the canoes had been disposed of several days earlier, and the herd of horses the Corps recruited had reached its maximum of twenty-three early that morning.² Their objective was to revisit the Nez Perce camps located adjacent to the Kooskooske (Clearwater) River, and their means to that end would be "a good road which passed from the columbia ... to the entrance of the Kooskooske...." The Walla Walla Indians, their hosts for the past three days, had informed Lewis and Clark that the trail was level and "there were a plenty of deer and Antelopes on the road, with good water and grass."³

Moving quickly — covering as many as twenty-six miles per day — the captains nevertheless took time to record their impressions of the increasingly familiar landscape. At first, the Walla Walla River seemed hemmed in by "large banks of pure sand which appear to have been drifted up by the wind of the hight of 15 or 20 feet...." After traveling fourteen miles on "an open level sandy plain," they found the land "covered with aromatic shrubs hurbatious plants and a short grass [bluegrass or wild rye]." Although neither Lewis nor Clark knew the term "shrub-steppe vegetation zone," they were attempting to describe it. Moreover, Lewis eventually recognized that they had left the environment of the Columbia River for that which scholars would later term the Columbia River Basin. He commented that the amount of timber on the creeks was "at least 20 fold more than on the Columbia river itself" and even described various subspecies of birch, hawthorn, currents, sumac, willow, lily, violets, cress, and bulrush. It was, he said, the first time in two weeks — since they had camped at The Dalles of the Columbia River — that they "had the pleasure once more to find an abundance of good wood for the purpose of making ourselves comfortable fires."⁴

The shrub-steppe vegetation zone that the Lewis and Clark Expedition crossed on May 2, 1806, is typically level, with sandy soil, and interspersed with shrubs and short grass. Most of the trail route in present-day southeastern Washington has been planted in commercial crops. Shown here is that area near Patit Creek in present-day eastern Washington where Lewis and Clark were on May 2, 1806. Notes

OHS neg., OrHi 92336

Clark, for his part, clinically noted that the

... the narrow bottoms of this Creek is fertile. tho' the plains are pore & Sandy. the hills of the Creek are generally abrupt and rocky. there is Some timber on this Creek. it consists of Cotton wood, birch, the Crimson haw, red willow, Sweet willow, Choke Cherry, yellow Current, goose berry, white berried honey suckle, rose bushes, Seven bark, Shoemate &c. &c.

Four days later, Clark described cottonwoods and willows, the underbrush, and the fertility of the plains, comparing them with what he had seen during the first day out from the Columbia River.⁵ Glimpsing the Blue Mountains in the distance on May 2 gave Lewis an even firmer sense of environmental change.⁶

Once they left the Columbia, it did not take long for the members of the expedition to be reminded that they were heading in the direction of home and the Missouri River. On the first full day beyond the river, Lewis confided to his journal that "I see very little difference between the apparent face of the country here and that of the plains of the Missouri..." except, he added, "these are not enlivened by the vast herds of buffaloe Elk &c which ornament the other." Nor, it turned out, would they find much wildlife in general. Lewis sent out four hunters on May 1, two on foot and two on horseback, the guide having informed them that they would find game all the way to the Clearwater River. By day's end, however, the larder had been enriched by only one beaver and one deer, though cranes, ducks, and sage grouse had all been seen. The next day it was the reverse: the hunters killed a single duck but observed deer at a distance, along with "much appearance of beaver and otter along these creeks." The following day was worse: "we divided the last of our dryed meat at dinner ... as well as the balance of our dogs.... we made but a scant supper and had not anything for tomorrow...." The Corps had to wait for breakfast until they reached a small village of six "miserably poor" families on the Snake River.⁷ The Walla Wallas' promise that "there were a plenty of deer and Antelopes on the road" had not proved true.

Remembering the Missouri River region evoked good thoughts for Lewis and Clark, not only because St. Louis lay in that direction but also because it was on the Missouri that they had formed the Corps of Discovery into a workable unit. On the banks of the Missouri they had pushed and pulled their boats through snags and sawyers and had first practiced the arts of Indian diplomacy. Best of all, the captains remembered the Missouri River as a laboratory where they had discovered flora and fauna new to them and sometimes also new to science. They learned to "read" the river as well as the landscape changes associated with it. They perfected those skills during the long journey from Fort Mandan to the Pacific Ocean in 1805 and took them to an even a higher level during their long term at Fort Clatsop — more than one hundred days beginning on December 7, 1805 — as Clark worked on his maps and Lewis wrote extended "biographies" about plants and animals.⁸

This map shows the route of the Corps of Discovery between early October 1805 and late May 1806, including Sergeant Ordway's exploration.

Dean A. Shapiro

If remembering the Missouri River elicited pleasure among the members of the Corps, the captains of the expedition enjoyed a similar anticipation as they re-entered the Nez Perce country. Refusing to consider that the list of environmental goals they had received from President Thomas Jefferson were fulfilled when they reached the Pacific Ocean, Lewis and Clark planned to record their impressions of the Nez Perce territory with the same ardor they had previously exhibited on the trip west. What local food sources, for example, satisfied the Nez Perce, and to what extent was the quality or quantity of it influenced by the weather and terrain — bluffs, canyons, and watercourses — in which they lived? More importantly, what did tribal geographers know about the lands located north and south of their homeland, areas that Lewis and Clark, who traveled east and west, had had no chance to explore?

Lewis and clark knew from past experience that once they reached the Nez Perce camps they would find a contradictory landscape of heavily forested mountains juxtaposed against steep, barren hillsides that dropped precipitously to the Clearwater River. They had seen it all before, in September and October of 1805 on their way west. Environmental change in all forms had been the frequent companion of the Corps ever since they had set out from Fort Mandan in April 1805. First, the Missouri River surprised them when it coursed through a cut-up country en route to the Great Falls. Then, the Missouri abruptly ended at the Three Forks in a pleasant valley surrounded by impressive mountains. After crossing the Bitterroot range of the Rocky Mountains at Lemhi, Lost Trail, and Lolo passes, the Corps encountered a vast dry region followed by the rain shadow of the Cascade Mountains and the wet coastal region. Now they were retracing their steps going east, and they thought they knew what to expect with regard to the environment in their immediate future.

Having completed the six-day march over the "good road" between the Walla Walla village and the Clearwater River by May 4, Lewis and Clark were astonished to find the Nez Perce nearly starved. Lewis noted that "the natives in this quarter were much distressed for food in the course of the last winter; they were compelled to collect the moss which grows on the pine which they boiled and eat...." They had also cut down the trees to get at the pinecone seeds and the "succulent or inner bark."⁹ In the fall of 1805, Lewis and Clark had considered the Nez Perces well fed and appreciated their generosity in offering dried salmon, berries, camas bulbs, cous (a member of the carrot family), and what Pvt. Joseph Whitehouse vaguely called "wild potatoes."¹⁰ The land of the Nez Perce was bountiful as well as beautiful, but times, and the seasons, had changed. During their time with the Nez Perces in 1806, the Corps of Discovery would constantly be on the search for sustenance.

The Natives' life cycle revolved around hunting, digging roots during the spring, fishing for salmon in the summer and fall, and sometimes pursuing buffalo in the Three Forks area of present-day Montana. In the winter, the most difficult time for the tribe, they stalked deer and elk that had been pushed out of the mountains by heavy snows but otherwise had few supplements to the food they had managed to store. Lewis and Clark arrived at the unfortunate time between the end of the winter hunting season and the beginning of the spring salmon season. In Lewis's opinion, "those poor wretches ... scarcely taist meat once a month."¹¹

The site of Camp Chopunnish, on the far shore of the Clearwater River, was still identifiable as late as 1902. Today, the site is part of a working sawmill at Kamiah, Idaho.

OHS neg., OrHi 92388

Unfortunately, the same snows that made hunting so difficult also prevented the expedition from crossing to the Missouri River drainage on the eastern side of Lolo Pass. Knowledgeable Natives estimated that the Corps would be delayed for at least a month waiting for the snow to melt sufficiently to allow a crossing.¹² Clark soon referred to the Bitterroots as an "icy barier."¹³ Facing a long wait, the captains established a semipermanent camp on the north bank of the Clearwater River at present-day Kamiah, Idaho. It had pasturage for the horse herd and prospects for hunting in the nearby mountains. "Camp Chopunnish," a name not used by Lewis and Clark but favored by historians since 1893, became home for the expedition for twenty-eight days, from May 14 to June 10, 1806.¹⁴

Lewis came to appreciate the benefits of not only Camp Chopunnish but also the Nez Perce homeland:

The country along the rocky mountains for several hundred miles in length and about 50 in width is level extreemely fertile and in many parts covered with a tall and open growth of the longleafed pine. near the watercourses the hills are steep and lofty tho' are covered with a good soil not remarkably stony and possess more timber than the level country. the botton lands on the watercourses are reather narrow and confined tho' fertile & seldom inundated. this country would form an extensive settlement; the climate appears quite as mild as that of similar latitude on the Atlantic coast if not more so and it cannot be otherwise than healthy; it possesses a fine dry pure air. the grass and many plants are now upwards of knee high. I have no doubt but this tract of country if cultivated would produce in great abundance every article essentially necessary to the comfort and subsistence of civillized man. to it's present inhabitants nature seems to have dealt with a liberal hand, for she has distributed a great variety of esculent plants over the face of the country which furnish them a plentifull store of provision; these are acquired with but little toil, and when prepared after the method of the natives afford not only a nutricious but an agreeable food.¹⁵

Cataloging nature's "liberal hand" occupied a large portion of Lewis's time. Paul Cutright's research indicates that approximately one-quarter, or about fifty, of the dried preserved specimens constituting the whole collection for the expedition were taken in Idaho on the return journey.¹⁶ Oddly, Lewis wrote very little about such activity in his journal.

In spite of the country's fertility, finding food daily for the thirty-odd members of the expedition proved difficult. The Corps of Discovery had arrived at the Nez Perce camps hungry: "We continued about two hours and eat the last of our dried meat," wrote Patrick Gass on May 3, "and are altogether without other provisions, as our stock of dogs is exhausted, and we can kill no game in these plains."¹⁷ And they stayed hungry. Camas or other local roots would not do; they made the men sick to their stomachs. Anyway, the men wanted meat. Dog meat had become part of the men's diet in October 1805, when the expedition first met the Nez Perces, but an incident on their first day back with the tribe on the return journey demonstrated to Lewis that if his men wished to consume canine camp scavengers they would open themselves to contempt. "While at dinner an Indian fellow veryy impertinently threw a poor half starved puppy nearly into my plait by way of derision for our eating dogs and laughed very heartily at his own impertinence," wrote Lewis. The captain responded immediately by threatening to tomahawk the man, after which "the fellow withdrew." Lewis characterized his men as being exceedingly anxious to "return to the fat plains of the Missouri...."¹⁸

In a less confrontational manner and almost by accident, Clark initiated a medical practice that provided an occasional horse as payment. On some days Clark met as many as forty "patients." Lewis consoled himself for the deception that Clark was a medical doctor by confiding that "we take care to give them no article which can possibly oinjure them." Simultaneously, Lewis proposed an exchange with the Nez Perces of a "horse in reather low order for a young horse in tolerable order with a view to kill."¹⁹ When a chief agreed, Lewis considered it "a much greater act of hospitality than we have witnessed from any nation or tribe since we have passed the Rocky mountains." Inasmuch as "these people had been liberal with us with rispect to provision," Lewis continued, "I directed the men not to croud their lodge [in] surch of food in the manner hunger has compelled them to do at most lodges we have passed."²⁰

Trading for food produced spotty results because the Nez Perces had little food to barter and the men of the expedition had almost nothing to offer that enticed the Natives. Stockpiling familiar roots — necessary provisions for the trip across the Bitterroots — kept the men and Sacagawea busy, however. "Sahcargarmeah geathered a quantity of the roots of a speceis of fennel which we found very agreeable food," noted Lewis. "[T]he flavor of this root is not unlike annis seed, and they dispell the wind which the roots called Cows [cous] and quawmash [camas] are apt to create particularly the latter."²¹ Yet, gathering unfamiliar native roots could be dangerous. As Lewis wrote, "we would make the men collect these roots themselves but there are several speceis of hemlock which are so much like the cows that it is difficult to discriminate them from the cows and we are affraid that they might poison themselves." He was correct to be concerned.²²

In the end, the men of the expedition subsisted in the unique location of the Nez Perce homeland by acquiring digestible roots such as onions and by eating dogs, "horse beef," an occasional deer, squirrel, or pheasant, and a modest amount of bear meat.²³ Hunters killed five bears during the first twenty-four hours at Camp Chopunnish.²⁴ Both grizzly bears and black bears inhabited the bluff and canyon country between the mountains and the Clearwater River, a situation that at first confused the captains.²⁵ The expedition had seen only one black bear during all their time at Fort Clatsop, but now the hunters brought in enough bear meat to permit sharing with the Natives. The expedition cooks watched, then imitated, the technique of the Nez Perce chefs as they steamed two shoulders and a ham:

they immediately prepared a brisk fire of dry wood on which they threw a parsel of smooth stones from the river, when the fire had birnt down and heated the stones they placed them level and laid on a parsel of pine boughs; after this they poared on a small quantity of water and covered the whoe over with <about> earth to the debth of four inches. in this situation they suffered it to remain about 3 hours when they took it out. I taisted of this meat and found it much more tender than that which we had roasted or boiled.

Henceforth, expedition cooks probably left out the pine boughs because Lewis complained about "the strong flavor of the pine" having ruined his taste buds.²⁶

Although the men of the expedition had figured out how to scavenge for food in the Nez Perce homeland, the terrain still bewildered them with its diversity. Lewis noted: "here we have summer spring and winter within the short space of 15 or 20 miles." The air on the top of "the river hills or high plain forms a distinct climate, the air is much colder, and vegitation is not as forward by at least 15 or perhaps 20 days," while "the rains which fall in the river bottoms are snows on the plain." Yet, "at the distance of fifteen miles from the river and on the Eastern border of this plain the Rocky Mountains commence and present us with winter at it's utmost extreem. the snow is yet many feet deep even near the base of these mountains."²⁷

As early as May 6, the captains exhibited curiosity about not only the Nez Perce homeland but also the tribe's neighbors. At the camp of Cut Nose, Lewis and Clark met three men from the "Skeets-so-mish who reside at the falls of a Small river dischargeing itself into the Columbia on its East Side to the South of the enterance of Clarks river." This is probably a reference to the Coeur d'Alene tribe's camp on the Spokane River near present-day Post Falls in northern Idaho. "Clark's river" might be the Pend Oreille River. Always the cartographer, Clark followed local intelligence and included on one of his maps a river that could possibly be the Spokane, the Colville, the Kootenai, or even the Clark's Fork and a lake that could represent either Lake Coeur d'Alene or Lake Pend Oreille or a combination of both. Clark's assigned names are confusing to follow, probably because he wrote his journal entry before he had further discussion with the Indians to clarify details.²⁸

This view of Lewiston, Idaho, taken about 1885 from a hill above the town shows the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake rivers.

OHS neg., CN 007760

In the meantime, Lewis pulled out the copy of Aaron Arrowsmith's 1802 map that the expedition carried with them and renamed Arrowsmith's "great Lake river," a hypothetical watercourse that Lewis said Arrowsmith attributed to fur trader Peter Fidler. Lewis even referred to information he had received from Columbia River tribes who, in turn, had received their intelligence from regional tribesmen who came to The Dalles twice a year to fish for salmon. His conclusion was that the "river here called Clark's river is that which we have heretofore called the Flathead river, I have thus named it in honour of my worthy friend and fellow traveler Capt. Clark."²⁹

The point is not that Clark and Lewis combined to vex future scholars but that conjectural geography was something that each of them liked to practice, theorize about, and imagine. That they were on their way home did not cause them to believe that all possible geographic lessons had been learned and that their time with the Nez Perces was a period of no consequence beyond making mundane preparations for crossing Lolo Pass. The previous fall, they had rushed through the Nez Perce homeland because their gaze was on the distant Pacific Ocean. Now they had a forced respite in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and they were making the most of it.

On May 8, the captains' curiosity took on a new dimension when a Nez Perce elder, Cut Nose, "gave us a sketch of the principall watercourses West of the Rocky Mountains a copy of which I preserved." Of principal interest was the forks or branches of the Lewis (Snake) River. The explorers' question was: Where do the two branches of the Lewis River come together prior to the confluence with the Kooskooskee (Clearwater) River? On the way west in the fall of 1805, when the expedition reached the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake rivers, Clark had speculated as to the source of the southern watercourse, which he called Lewis's River. He quizzed the Indians and wondered if it might not be the same river that he had viewed when he was among the Shoshone Indians in August — what we call the Salmon River today. Natives at the confluence informed him that two days' march up the river there was a fork — perhaps referring to the convergence with the Grand Ronde River, but maybe they meant the Salmon — and after that the river was navigable for sixty miles, "with maney rapids at which places the Indians have fishing camps."³⁰ It would be yet some time before Clark would understand that the Salmon River is a tributary of the Snake, not a branch of it.

In the fall of 1805, when they first tasted Pacific salmon presented by the Nez Perces, the men of the expedition suffered intestinal distress from the oily fish. Probably they ate too much, or they ate it with a side order of roots, either cous or camas. In any case, it was too radical a change for stomachs satisfied with a steady diet of meat. Many of the men fell ill, including Lewis, and Clark commented that fish and roots "disagree with us verry much." Between the fall of 1805 and the spring of 1806, however, most of the men learned to eat fish comfortably. It is too much to say that they longed for salmon as a menu item, but considering their daily hunger they missed it. The captains' desire to replenish the consistently shallow larder merged with the Corps's natural curiosity about the landscape during what Clark called "our Detention in this neighbourhood" when they authorized the expedition's trusted third-in-command, Sgt. John Ordway, to lead an independent command in the vicinity of Camp Chopunnish. On May 27, the captains "sent Sergt. ordway and 2 men this morning over to Lewis's [Snake] river for salmon."³¹ Prospects for success were high: "the dove is cooing which is the signal as the Indians inform us of the approach of the salmon."³²

To try and follow the exploration of Sergeant Ordway and Pvts. Robert Frazer and Peter Weiser is an exercise in historical speculation. Ordway faithfully kept a journal for this exploration — May 27 to June 2, 1806 — as he did for 863 days of the expedition. Unfortunately, his journalistic style was not equal to those of his captains, nor did he record course and distance, so clarity is a problem. Upon his return to St. Louis, Ordway gave his journal to the captains and accepted three hundred dollars in exchange. Nicholas Biddle used Ordway's journal in preparing his 1814 narrative of the expedition. It was then held in the Biddle family archive until it was rediscovered in 1913 and published for the first time three years later.³³ Thus, when the great editors of Lewis and Clark material, Elliott Coues and Reuben Gold Thwaites, did their work at the mergence of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Ordway's contribution slipped between the cracks. Robert Frazer apparently also kept a journal, for he asked the officers for permission to publish it, but it remains lost to this day. While there is no eyewitness testimony to corroborate Ordway's account, there are secondhand summaries written by both Lewis and Clark upon Ordway's return on June 2. In addition, Sgt. Patrick Gass must have had a sergeant-to-sergeant talk with Ordway, for he, too, contributed a pertinent comment.³⁴

Sgt. John Ordway did not actually see the confluence of the Salmon and Snake rivers, but he could surmise that it existed because he visited sites on both rivers by crossing over a series of stark bluffs.

OHS neg., CN 003158

Information supplied by the Nez Perces had caused Lewis and Clark to believe that Ordway's group could find salmon at "the fishing shore at the distance of half a days ride," but a half day turned into three full days before they found fish. At first, they proceeded along present-day Lawyer Creek across an open country, guided by three young Nez Perces. They camped the first night with a chief, and the young men returned. In the morning, "the old chief and an other Indn went with us." Soon timber impeded the route, until they seemed enveloped in high, broken, mountainous country. Ordway wrote that "towards evening we descended a bad hill down on a creek," at the bottom of which they arrived at a village and camped. Historians have only recently begun to investigate the route and locate such references as "a bad hill," but most assuredly the Americans were approaching the Salmon River.³⁵

On May 29, for the third day in a row, Ordway's crew got soaked by rain. There were no salmon on the Salmon River when they got there, and Ordway mistakenly assumed the watercourse was a fork of the Snake. Then, in a surprise, "Frazer got 2 Spanish mill dollars from a squaw for an old razer." Ordway speculated that "they got them from the Snake Indians who live near the Spanish country to the South." Later, he opined to Patrick Gass that the coins came to the Nez Perces from the necklace of a dead Shoshone. Gass then continued to follow Ordway's line of thought writing in his journal that the Shoshone "do not live very far from New Mexico" and that the tribe got their horses from the Spaniards. Ordway and Gass are to be congratulated for attempting to see their exploration in global terms, but in fact they were virtually clueless about the vast, major Indian trade networks through which the expedition had been passing.³⁶

From the Salmon River shore, Ordway and his party made their way back up to the broken country above, a rise in elevation of about twelve hundred feet, where they "crossed a steep bad hill and ... descended the worst hills we ever saw a road made down." Toward evening they arrived at a "bad rapid" on the Snake River where a chief welcomed them to his lodge. Dinner consisted of "their white bread" and a roasted salmon so big that the famished men could not eat even a quarter of it. Though this hinted of good things to come, the truth was that the Indians "have but fiew Salmon."³⁷ What there was, the Indians took with them in the morning. Ordway and his men had to wait it out, watching the Indians catch salmon "on the opposite shore along the rocks in the whorls & eddys," before making a purchase. Unfortunately, "Some of the young Indians Stole Some of our fish and went away in the night." It was time to leave.

The old chief stayed behind, but the Corps mounted up in the morning and "followed back the same road we went on...."³⁸ With the advice of Indians at several critical junctures, Ordway brought his men — and seventeen mostly spoiled but fat salmon — back to Camp Chopunnish by noon on June 2 after a journey of somewhere between seventy and one hundred miles.

Sgt. John Ordway and his small unit struggled on trails that drop from the bluffs above to the Salmon River below. This view of the Salmon River is between China and Deer creeks.

Courtesy of Robert Carriker

Today, historians disagree on Ordway's route. Among the present-day landforms that have been linked to Ordway's de-scriptions are China Creek, China Garden Creek, Wild Goose Rapids, Deer Creek, Deep Creek, Cottonwood Creek, Cave Gulch, and Maloney Creek. It might have helped if Ordway had given course and distance or drawn a map. What seems to be universally accepted is that Ordway and his men followed present-day Lawyer Creek out of Camp Chopunnish, eventually dropping from the bluffs to the Salmon River below, then meandering along the Salmon for a while before pulling themselves out of the canyon and back to the hills above. They then continued on until they found a way down to the water again, this time at the Snake River. From there they brought the few salmon they had acquired back to the camp on the Clearwater River. It does not appear that Ordway understood that the Salmon River is a separate tributary of the Snake River, not a fork of it, nor was he aware that the Salmon merged with the Snake in the area where he and his men rose away from the Salmon River and crossed over Wapshilla Ridge to the trail down to the Snake River.

There can be no doubt but that Clark followed the story with interest. He estimated the distance to the Snake River at seventy miles, and he understood that there had been a junction of the two rivers, guessing that Ordway had intercepted the Snake River twenty miles below that junction. (He actually intercepted it 15.3 miles below the junction.) Clark noted that Ordway described the east fork of Lewis's River — the Salmon — "as one Continued rapid of about 150 yards wide, its banks are in most places Solid and perpindicular rocks, which rise to a great hight." Moreover, at the site where Ordway finally purchased some fat salmon on the Snake River, "there is a very Considerable rapid, nearly as Great from the information of Sergt. Ordway as the Great Falls of the Columbia," meaning Celilo Falls.³⁹ Ordway's descriptions helped fill out the map that had been forming in Clark's mind since the stay at Fort Clatsop, when Clark had had a chance to lay out all his strip maps and envision the comprehensive, Arrowsmith-like production that he planned someday to produce.

Lewis focused his attention on Ordway's spoiled fish: "these fish were as fat as any I ever saw; sufficiently so to cook themselves without the addition of grease; those which were sound were extremely delicious; their flesh is of a fine rose colour with a small admixture of yellow." Ordway's description of the Natives' "common house at this fishery" that was "built of split timber 150 feet long and 35 feet wide flat at top" also drew Lewis's attention.⁴⁰

The Hungery Creek drainage that the Lewis and Clark Expedition members followed in June 1806 remains today the most rugged portion of the ninety-eight-mile-long Lolo Trail.

Courtesy of Robert Carriker

Everything that Ordway told Clark encouraged him to speculate about a water route from Lemhi Pass to the Columbia River. The information came at just the right moment, too. On May 31, Clark had finished a map of the Snake River as the Nez Perces understood it, which he had been forming during the previous two days.⁴¹ It called into question again the idea of the "South branch" of the Snake River — that is, the section below the merge with the Salmon — and of the "East branch," which is the Salmon. On June 6, after Ordway's return, Clark quizzed the Nez Perces again about their geographic knowledge. This time no map resulted — that had happened on May 8 — but Clark was able to write the tribal names for certain watercourses. Clark, however, renamed them according to his own inclinations: Dearborn River, Sun River, Marias River, Musselshell River, Yellowstone River, Little Missouri River, Knife River, and Cannonball River.⁴² It was all information that Clark would digest in St. Louis upon his return.

All of this information called for a follow-up exploration, but not at that time. It was now June, and the snow on the Lolo Trail appeared to the captains to be conquerable. The day following Ordway's return to camp, the captains learned that "today the Indians dispatched an express over the mountains to travelers rest...." The response was predictable: "the mountains being practicable for this express we thought it probable that we could also pass...."⁴³ There was work to do, a pass to be crossed, a journey to be completed. Ordway's information would be set aside, someday to be dredged up again by Clark, when he would take into account all that he and his companions had learned about the new lands they had seen since their diversion from the Columbia River in late April 1806. The journal record shows that the portion of the return journey between the Columbia River and the Lolo Trail was one of the most productive learning experiences of the entire expedition.

Notes

^1.� Meriwether Lewis, April 29, 1806, in Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001), 7:181.

^2.� The Corps left Fort Clatsop on March 23, 1806, in six vessels: three dugouts constructed in Idaho in September and October 1805 from ponderosa pine plus Indian canoes acquired from the Celilo, Cathlamet, and Clatsop. Preferring horses, Lewis and Clark cut up two canoes for firewood at The Dalles and sold the remaining four on April 21 and 24, 1806. Purchasing the horse herd began on April 18, 1806.

^3.� Lewis, April 27, 1806, in Moulton, ed., Journals, 7:174.

^4.� Lewis, April 30, May 1, 1806, in ibid., 7:187-8, 196.

^5.� Clark, April 30, May 3, 1806, in ibid., 7:189-90, 203. Moulton determined that the captains observed, among other species and subspecies, Sandberg (or western) bluegrass, wild hyacinth, green-banded mariposa lily, big seed lomatium, ternate, or nineleaf lomatium, cous, water birch, black hawthorn, golden currant, smooth sumac, basin wildrye, corn grass, bulrush, Pacific willow, red osier dogwood, yellow willow, Columbia River willow, scrub birch, northwest willow, dogtooth violet, bluebells, winter cress, and cow parsnip.

^6.� Lewis, May 2, 1806, in ibid., 7:199.

^7.� Lewis, May 1, 2–4, 1806, Clark, May 1, 1806, in ibid., 7:196, 197–8, 200, 203, 205.

^8.� According to Paul Cutright, Lewis employed roughly sixty technical terms at Fort Clatsop to describe for science thirty-five local plant species, developing a special interest in trees and edible plants. He collected, in addition, fourteen plants for return to St. Louis. Lewis also identified about one hundred species and subspecies of mammals, birds, fishes, and insects native to the lower Columbia, a quarter of which were then new to science. Paul Cutright, Pioneering Naturalists (1969; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 258.

^9.� Lewis, May 8, 1806, in Moulton, ed., Journals, 7:227.

^10.� Joseph Whitehouse, September 24, 1805, in ibid., 11:331.

^11.� Lewis, May 14, 1806, in ibid., 7:257

^12.� Patrick Gass, May 8, 1806, in ibid., 10:223.

^13.� Clark, May 17, 1806, in ibid., 7:268.

^14.� See Elliott Coues, ed., History of the Expedition Under the Command of Lewis and Clark (New York: Francis P. Harper, 1893), 3:1010n2.

^15.� Lewis, May 9, 1806, in Moulton, ed., Journals, 7:233–234. See also Lewis, May 7, 1806, in ibid., 7:221.

^16.� Paul Russell Cutright. "Meriwether Lewis: Botanist," Oregon Historical Quarterly 69 (June 1968): 148–70.

^17.� Gass, May 3, 1806, in Moulton, ed., Journals, 10:221.

^18.� Lewis, May 5, 7, 1806, in ibid., 7:210, 222.

^19.� Ibid.; Lewis, May 10, 1806, in ibid., 7:237.

^20.� Lewis, May 10, 1806, in ibid., 7:238-239. Lewis made a similar comment on May 27; see ibid., 7:290.

^21.� Lewis, May 16, 1806, in ibid., 7:264. Clark noted the propensity of camas roots to make the men flatulent on October 2, 4, 5 and 6, 1805; see, e.g., Moulton, ed., Journals, 5:244.

^22.� Lewis, May 21, 1806, in ibid., 7:275, 276-7n; Cutright, Pioneering Naturalists, 292.

^23.� See, for example, Lewis, May 17, 1806, in Moulton, ed., Journals, 7:267.

^24.� Lewis, May 14, 1806, in ibid., 7:256–7.

^25.� See Lewis, May 31, 1806, in ibid., 7:312–13, copied by Clark on May 25, 1806, in ibid., 7:287–8.

^26.� Lewis, May 14, 1806, in ibid., 7:257. See also Clark, May 16, 1806, in ibid., 7:265.

^27.� Lewis, May 15, 1806, in ibid., 7:262.

^28.� Clark, May 6, 1806, in ibid., 7:217. See also Gary E. Moulton, introduction, in Atlas of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, vol. 1 of Moulton, ed., Journals (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 3–13; David Freeman Hawke, "William Clark and the Mapping of the West," Gateway Heritage 10:3 (1989–90): 4–13; James P. Ronda, " 'A Chart in His Way': Indian Cartography and the Lewis and Clark Expedition," Great Plains Quarterly 4:1 (1984): 43–53.

^29.� Lewis and Clark, May 6, 1806, in Moulton, ed., Journals, 7:216–19; Moulton, ed., Atlas, 10; Elliott Coues, ed., History of the Expedition Under the Command of Lewis and Clark (New York: Dover, 1965) 3:990-3; John Logan Allen, Passage through the Garden (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975).

^30.� Lewis, May 8, 1806, Clark, October 10, 1805, in Moulton, ed., Journals, 7:227, 5:255-6.

^31.� Clark, May 21, 1806, Lewis, May 27, 1806, in ibid., 7:276, 291.

^32.� Weather diary, May 27, 1806, in ibid., 7:321.

^33.� Ibid., 9:xvi–xvii.

^34.� Patrick Gass, June 2, 1806, in ibid., 10:235.

^35.� Lewis, June 2, 1806, Ordway, May 28, 1806, in ibid., 7:327, 9:316. For the opinion of Merle Wells, former director of the Idaho Historical Society, see ibid., 9:316n1. See also John J. Peebles, "The Return of Lewis and Clark," Idaho Yesterdays 10:2 (1966); James Fazio, Across the Snowy Ranges (Moscow, Idaho: Woodland Press, 2001): 138; Robert Carriker, "Remote Trail Sites," in "America Looks West: Lewis and Clark on the Missouri," special issue, Nebraskaland Magazine (August 2002): 92–3.

^36.� Gass, June 2, 1806, in Moulton, ed., Journals, 10:235. See James Ronda, "Frazer's Razor: The Ethnohistory of a Common Object," We Proceeded On 7:3 (1981): 12–13; John Ewers, "The Indian Trade of the Upper Missouri Before Lewis and Clark: An Interpretation," Missouri Historical Society Bulletin 10:2 (1954): 429–46.

^37.� Ordway, May 29, 1806, in Moulton, ed., Journals, 9:316.

^38.� Ordway, May 30- 31, 1806, in ibid., 9:317.

^39.� Clark, June 2, 1806, in ibid., 7:329–30. Ordway probably referred to the rapids opposite Cottonwood Creek. Those rapids are no longer "considerable" due to water control by Hells Canyon Dam, sixty-one miles upriver on the Snake.

^40.� Lewis, June 2, 1806, in ibid., 7:327. The house at the site has long disappeared, of course, but a large, relatively flat, bowl-shaped depression in the shoreline certainly gives the impression that a house of the dimensions noted by Ordway could have fit comfortably.

^41.� Only a fragment survives, but it can be seen in volume 7 of the Moulton edition of the Journals (pp. 316–17).

^42.� Clark, probably June 6, 1806, in Moulton, ed., Journals, 7:342.

^43.� Lewis, June 3, 1806, in ibid., 7:331.

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