The Party
Was Also Intrusted With Sundry Gifts For The President,
Among Them Being Natural History Specimens, Living And Dead,
And A Number Of Indian Articles Which Would Be Objects Of
Curiosity In Washington.
The long voyage of the main party began on the 8th of April,
1805, early passing the mouth of
The Big Knife River,
one of the five considerable streams that fall into the Missouri
from the westward in this region; the other streams are the Owl,
the Grand, the Cannonball, and the Heart. The large town
of Stanton, Mercer County, North Dakota, is now situated
at the mouth of the Big Knife. The passage of the party up
the river was slow, owing to unfavorable winds; and they observed
along the banks many signs of early convulsions of nature.
The earth of the bluffs was streaked with layers of coal,
or carbonized wood, and large quantities of lava and pumice-stone
were strewn around, showing traces of ancient volcanic action.
The journal of April 9 says: -
"A great number of brants [snow-geese] pass up the river;
some of them are perfectly white, except the large feathers
of the first joint of the wing, which are black, though in
every other characteristic they resemble common gray brant.
We also saw but could not procure an animal [gopher] that
burrows in the ground, and is similar in every respect to the
burrowing-squirrel, except that it is only one-third of its size.
This may be the animal whose works we have often seen
in the plains and prairies; they resemble the labors of the
salamander in the sand-hills of South Carolina and Georgia,
and like him the animals rarely come above ground; they consist
of a little hillock of ten or twelve pounds of loose ground,
which would seem to have been reversed from a pot, though no
aperture is seen through which it could have been thrown.
On removing gently the earth, you discover that the soil has
been broken in a circle of about an inch and a half diameter,
where the ground is looser, though still no opening is perceptible.
When we stopped for dinner the squaw [Sacajawea] went out,
and after penetrating with a sharp stick the holes of the mice
[gophers], near some drift-wood, brought to us a quantity of
wild artichokes, which the mice collect and hoard in large numbers.
The root is white, of an ovate form, from one to three inches long,
and generally of the size of a man's finger, and two, four,
and sometimes six roots are attached to a single stalk.
Its flavor as well as the stalk which issues from it resemble
those of the Jerusalem artichoke, except that the latter
is much larger."
The weather rapidly grew so warm, although this was early
in April, that the men worked half-naked during the day;
and they were very much annoyed by clouds of mosquitoes.
They found that the hillsides and even the banks of the rivers
and sand-bars were covered with "a white substance, which appears
in considerable quantities on the surface of the earth,
and tastes like a mixture of common salt with Glauber's salts."
"Many of the streams," the journal adds, "are so strongly
impregnated with this substance that the water has an
unpleasant taste and a purgative effect." This is nothing
more than the so-called alkali which has since become known
all over the farthest West. It abounds in the regions west
of Salt Lake Valley, whitening vast areas like snow and poisoning
the waters so that the traveller often sees the margins
of the brown pools lined with skeletons and bodies of small
animals whose thirst had led them to drink the deadly fluid.
Men and animals stiffer from smaller doses of this stuff,
which is largely a sulphate of soda, and even in small quantities
is harmful to the system.
Here, on the twelfth of April, they were able to determine the exact course
of the Little Missouri, a stream about which almost nothing was then known.
Near here, too, they found the source of the Mouse River, only a few
miles from the Missouri. The river, bending to the north and then making
many eccentric curves, finally empties into Lake Winnipeg, and so passes
into the great chain of northern lakes in British America. At this
point the explorers saw great flocks of the wild Canada goose.
The journal says: -
"These geese, we observe, do not build their nests on the ground
or in the sand-bars, but in the tops of the lofty cottonwood trees.
We saw some elk and buffalo to-day, but at too great a distance
to obtain any of them, though a number of the carcasses of
the latter animal are strewed along the shore, having fallen
through the ice and been swept along when the river broke up.
More bald eagles are seen on this part of the Missouri than
we have previously met with; the small sparrow-hawk, common
in most parts of the United States, is also found here.
Great quantities of geese are feeding on the prairies,
and one flock of white brant, or geese with black-tipped wings,
and some gray brant with them, pass up the river; from their
flight they seem to proceed much further to the northwest.
We killed two antelopes, which were very lean, and caught
last night two beavers."
Lewis and Clark were laughed at by some very knowing people
who scouted the idea that wild geese build their nests in trees.
But later travellers have confirmed their story;
the wise geese avoid foxes and other of their four-footed
enemies by fixing their homes in the tall cottonwoods.
In other words, they roost high.
The Assiniboins from the north had lately been on
their spring hunting expeditions through this region, -
just above the Little Missouri, - and game was scarce and shy.
The journal, under the date of April 14, says:
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