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Blackbird Hill, Nebraska
In his paraphrase of the captains' journals, Nicholas Biddle somewhat expanded Clark's journal entry concerning the event that took place early on the morning of August 11,1804. The boats came to at the foot of a hill on the west side of the Missouri River some eight miles northwest of Blue Lake, Iowa. The two captains and ten of the enlisted men climbed the hill to visit the grave of one of the most notorious and controversial leaders of the Omaha Nation, whose name was Washinga Sahba Blackbird -
Fort Mandan Winter
The captains ordered work to begin on the Corps of Discovery's winter fortification on the second of November, 1804; they completed it on the 27th. The mens' quarters, the storage rooms, and the 16-foot pickets front and back, were designed for defense against hostile Indians, especially the Sioux, who were quite troublesome that winter, although they never attacked the fort. "This place we have named Fort Mandan," Lewis recorded, "in honour of our Neighbours" the kind Mandan Indians. -
Lewis's Documentation of Grouse
"met with great numbers of Grouse or prarie hens as they are called by the English traders of the N.W.2 these birds appeared to be mating; the note of the male is kuck, kuck, kuck, coo, coo, coo. the first part of the note both male and female use when flying. the male also dubbs [drums with his wings] something like the pheasant, but by no means as loud." -
Meeting the Salish
ince arriving at the headwaters of the Missouri River, and reaching the Continental Divide at today's Lemhi Pass on August 12, 1805, the men of the expedition had met Sacagawea's people, the Shoshone Indians, confirmed the Indians' experience that the Salmon River canyon was impassable, and purchased 29 undernourished, sore-backed, ill-mannered horses to carry their baggage across the Bitterroot Mountains to the navigable reaches of the Columbia River basin. -
Hat Rock
Working hard to stay ahead of the current, on October 19, 1805, the Corps of Discovery paddled an estimated thirty-six miles in four compass courses. The first, starting at their camp near the mouth of the Walla Walla River, was the longest: "S.W. 14 miles to a rock in a Lard." — the larboard, or left side of the river — "resembling a hat." Just a casual nod toward an object that two centuries later would be one of the few Lewis and Clark landmarks left above water. -
The Indian Game
The three figures in the lower foreground of Agate's drawing appear to be playing the game Meriwether Lewis described in his journal for February 2, 1806: -
Tillamook People
The Columbia Gorge's native traders spoke languages belonging to one of three major families: Salishan, Sahaptian, or Chinookan. With Clark recording their vocabularies, the expedition met speakers from each of these families. Clark's whale-blubber trading party in January 1806 took him among the Tillamook people near today's Seaside, Oregon, on the Pacific. -
Passing the Hats
A number of objects were brought east by Lewis and Clark and given to President Thomas Jefferson or to Charles Willson Peale, who founded an important museum in Philadelphia. Castle McLaughlin has written that the kinds of artifacts presented "were largely those. . . which were customarily presented by Native peoples to initiate and formalize social relationships with foreigners," but that was not the case with these hats acquired in the Columbia. -
Introducing Indians to the President
The third group of Indian representatives to visit the President consisted of the Mandan chief, Sheheke, and his family, who accompanied Lewis and Clark from their Knife River village to St. Louis, on to Virginia and thence to Washington City. -
Lawyer, Nez Pierce
This man's ancestor, the first "Lawyer"—so-nicknamed by white men in recognition of his persuasive eloquence and keen mind—was Aleiya, the son of Lewis and Clark's friend, Twisted Hair.
