|
Winter was ending, melting ice on the river and making passage safe. Lewis and Clark planned to send a group downriver to St. Louis with a report for President Jefferson. They spent weeks putting the finishing touches on it — eventually reaching 45,000 words in length. It included suggestions for future Native American relations, details about the rivers that emptied into the Missouri and ways to take over the fur trade from the British.
Their journals, along with specimens of plants and animals, would be shipped. There were live animals too — a magpie and prairie dog reached Jefferson alive.
Finally, the jubilant day came for them to continue their journey westward. It was April 7, 1805. Everything Lewis and Clark learned from the Native Americans led them to believe the Corps would be back east by September 1806.
Not long after breaking camp for the west, the pair were making new discoveries again — the gray wolf, snow goose and creeping juniper, among them. Once beyond present-day New Town, North Dakota, the crew embarked on lands never-before seen by whites — a fact that filled them with awe.
There would be many wonders along this leg of the journey, but also many perils. Grizzly bears would prove themselves a powerful opponent; one chasing an unarmed Lewis into the Missouri before giving up. A fork in the river — where none was reported — would cost them days of scouting. And once they finally wound their way up the Missouri River, the men discovered five waterfalls where one was reported — a tremendous set back.
Moving gear up this stretch of the river was strenuous, backbreaking work that meant many lost days. Sacagawea nearly died from sickness, and Jefferson and Clark’s iron framed-boat — the “great experiment” the men hauled the entire journey — failed to float. The Corps spent nearly two wasted weeks preparing big game
|
In Their Own Words... |
|
The men “appear perfectly to have made up their minds to suceed in the expedition or purish in the attempt. we all believe that we are now about to enter on the most perilous and difficult part of our voyage, yet I see no one repining; all appear ready to met those difficulties which wait us with resolution and becoming fortitude."
~ Lewis writes after the treacherous portage around the falls was complete | | skins to stretch over it and making tar to seal it. The skins, however, didn’t hold, and it leaked. Clark left camp with ten men, in search of trees to make canoes. By the time the men were ready to continue upstream, a month had passed since they'd overcome the Great Falls.
Quietly, once beyond these amazing hurdles, the two co-captains realized they would not make it back to Fort Mandan by winter, as planned. They had hoped to make it over the Rocky Mountains, to the Pacific Ocean and back again, but too much time was lost.
Next: Meeting Sacagawea's People | 
