The Voyage Of Captain Lewis And His Men
Was Without Startling Incident, Except That Cruzatte Accidentally
Shot The Captain, One Day, While They Were Out Hunting.
The Wound Was Through The Fleshy Part Of The Left Thigh,
And For A Time Was Very Painful.
As Cruzatte was not in sight
when the captain was hit, the latter naturally thought he had been
shot by Indians hiding in the thicket.
He reached camp as best
he could, and, telling his men to arm themselves, he explained
that he had been shot by Indians. But when Cruzatte came into camp,
mutual explanations satisfied all hands that a misunderstanding
had arisen and that Cruzatte's unlucky shot was accidental.
As an example of the experience of the party about this time,
while they were on their way down the Missouri, we take this
extract from their journal: -
"We again saw great numbers of buffalo, elk, antelope, deer,
and wolves; also eagles and other birds, among which were geese
and a solitary pelican, neither of which can fly at present,
as they are now shedding the feathers of their wings.
We also saw several bears, one of them the largest, except one,
we had ever seen; for he measured nine feet from the nose
to the extremity of the tail. During the night a violent storm
came on from the northeast with such torrents of rain that we had
scarcely time to unload the canoes before they filled with water.
Having no shelter we ourselves were completely wet to the skin,
and the wind and cold air made our situation very unpleasant."
On the twelfth of August, the Lewis party met with two traders
from Illinois. These men were camped on the northeast side
of the river; they had left Illinois the previous summer,
and had been coming up the Missouri hunting and trapping.
Captain Lewis learned from them that Captain Clark was below;
and later in that day the entire expedition was again united,
Captain Clark's party being found at a point near where
Little Knife Creek enters the Missouri River. We must now
take up the narrative of Captain Clark and his adventures
on the Yellowstone.
Chapter XXV
Adventures on the Yellowstone
The route of Captain Clark from the point where he and Captain Lewis
divided their party, was rather more difficult than that pursued
by the Lewis detachment. But the Clark party was larger,
being composed of twenty men and Sacajawea and her baby.
They were to travel up the main fork of Clark's River
(sometimes called the Bitter Root), to Ross's Hole, and then
strike over the great continental divide at that point by way
of the pass which he discovered and which was named for him;
thence he was to strike the headwaters of Wisdom River, a stream
which this generation of men knows by the vulgar name of Big Hole River;
from this point he was to go by the way of Willard's Creek to
Shoshonee Cove and the Two Forks of the Jefferson, and thence down
that stream to the Three Forks of the Missouri, up the Gallatin,
and over the divide to the Yellowstone and down that river to its
junction with the Missouri, where he was to join the party of
Captain Lewis.
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