The bay by water.
We therefore landed, and having chosen the best spot we could select,
made our camp of boards from the old [Chinook] village.
We were now situated comfortably, and being visited by four
Wahkiacums with wappatoo-roots, were enabled to make an agreeable
addition to our food."
On the seventeenth Captain Lewis with a small party of his men
coasted the bay as far out as Cape Disappointment and some distance
to the north along the seacoast. Game was now plenty, and the camp
was supplied with ducks, geese, and venison. Bad weather again set in.
The journal under date of November 22 says: -
"It rained during the whole night, and about daylight a tremendous gale of
wind rose from the S.S.E., and continued through the day with great violence.
The sea ran so high that the water came into our camp, which the rain prevents
us from leaving. We purchased from the old squaw, for armbands and rings,
a few wappatoo-roots, on which we subsisted. They are nearly equal in
flavor to the Irish potato, and afford a very good substitute for bread.
The bad weather drove several Indians to our camp, but they were still
under the terrors of the threat which we made on first seeing them,
and behaved with the greatest decency.
"The rain continued through the night, November 23, and the morning
was calm and cloudy. The hunters were sent out, and killed three deer,
four brant, and three ducks. Towards evening seven Clatsops came over
in a canoe, with two skins of the sea-otter. To this article they attached
an extravagant value; and their demands for it were so high, that we were
fearful it would too much reduce our small stock of merchandise, on which we
had to depend for subsistence on our return, to venture on purchasing it.
To ascertain, however, their ideas as to the value of different objects,
we offered for one of these skins a watch, a handkerchief, an American dollar,
and a bunch of red beads; but neither the curious mechanism of the watch,
nor even the red beads, could tempt the owner: he refused the offer,
but asked for tiacomoshack, or chief beads, the most common sort of coarse
blue-colored beads, the article beyond all price in their estimation.
Of these blue beads we had but few, and therefore reserved them for
more necessitous circumstances."
The officers of the expedition had hoped and expected to find
here some of the trading ships that were occasionally sent along
the coast to barter with the natives; but none were to be found.
They were soon to prepare for winter-quarters, and they still
hoped that a trader might appear in the spring before they
set out on their homeward journey across the continent.
Very much they needed trinkets to deal with the natives
in exchange for, the needful articles of food on the route.
But (we may as well say here) no such relief ever appeared.
It is strange that President Jefferson, in the midst
of his very minute orders and preparations for the benefit
of the explorers, did not think of sending a relief ship
to meet the party at the mouth of the Columbia. They would
have been saved a world of care, worry, and discomfort.
But at that time the European nations who held possessions
on the Pacific coast were very suspicious of the Americans,
and possibly President Jefferson did not like to risk
rousing their animosity.
The rain that now deluged the unhappy campers was so incessant that they
might well have thought that people should be web-footed to live in
such a watery region. In these later days, Oregon is sometimes known
as "The Web-foot State." Captain Clark, in his diary, November 28,
makes this entry: "O! how disagreeable is our situation dureing this
dreadfull weather!" The gallant captain's spelling was sometimes queer.
Under that date he adds: -
"We remained during the day in a situation the most cheerless
and uncomfortable. On this little neck of land we are exposed,
with a miserable covering which does not deserve the name
of a shelter, to the violence of the winds; all our bedding
and stores, as well as our bodies, are completely wet;
our clothes are rotting with constant exposure, and we
have no food except the dried fish brought from the falls,
to which we are again reduced. The hunters all returned hungry
and drenched with rain, having seen neither deer nor elk,
and the swan and brant were too shy to be approached.
At noon the wind shifted to the northwest, and blew with such
tremendous fury that many trees were blown down near us.
This gale lasted with short intervals during the whole night."
Of course, in the midst of such violent storms, it was impossible
to get game, and the men were obliged to resort once more to a diet
of dried fish, This food caused much sickness in the camp, and it became
imperatively necessary that efforts should again be made to find game.
On the second of December, to their great joy an elk was killed,
and next day they had a feast. The journal says;
"The wind was from the east and the morning fair; but, as if one whole
day of fine weather were not permitted, toward night it began to rain.
Even this transient glimpse of sunshine revived the spirits
of the party, who were still more pleased when the elk killed
yesterday was brought into camp. This was the first elk we had
killed on the west side of the Rocky Mountains, and condemned as we
have been to the dried fish, it formed a most nourishing food.
After eating the marrow of the shank-bones, the squaw chopped them fine,
and by boiling extracted a pint of grease, superior to the tallow
itself of the animal.
