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.
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