Understanding The Boats of Lewis and Clark

After encountering several Native American tribes, including the Missouri, Oto, Yankton Sioux, and Teton Sioux (with whom they nearly fought), the expedition reached the Mandan and Hidatsa villages (in present-day North Dakota) where they spent their second winter. The Mandans were friendly with the crew and provided food for the winter and information about what lay ahead. They also taught the crew how to build and use bullboats. Bullboats were made by lashing willow branches together with sinew in the shape of a teacup and then covering them with buffalo hide. Bullboats could be small or large, depending on resources, and were used to shuttle people and supplies across the river and for short trips. They were either paddled or poled. The crew utilized two bullboats on the return trip when horses were stolen from a group of crew members.

While at Fort Mandan, Lewis enlisted the services of a French-Canadian trapper and interpreter, Toussaint Charbonneau, hoping that his young Shoshone wife, Sacagawea, would assist the expedition in securing horses from her tribe that were needed to cross the Rocky Mountains. In February, Sacagawea had a baby, Jean Baptiste, whom Clark nicknamed Pomp. Clark became very attached to Pomp and assumed custody of him after the expedition.

After the boats were extracted from the ice in early spring, Lewis decided to send the Keelboat back to St. Louis loaded with specimens, including a live prairie dog and magpies (which eventually reached Jefferson). Several crew members and the engages returned with the Keelboat, leaving 33 permanent crew members who would make the out-and-back journey. The fate of the Keelboat remains unknown.

Lewis ordered six cottonwood dugout canoes to replace the Keelboat. It took the crew nearly one month and several injuries to finish the dugouts. Finally, the expedition was riverborne again, laboring against the Missouri current, wind, and waves. The crew learned to position the pirogues in front of the dugouts to block some of the waves from spilling into the low-riding dugouts. Later, a snag damaged the Red Pirogue, and most of its contents were transferred to the White Pirogue.

When the expedition reached an unknown river confluence, they spent a week deciding which branch to take. Lewis named the unknown branch the Marias River after one of his relatives. He decided to cache some heavy cargo and leave the Red Pirogue there, as he believed the Great Falls of the Missouri was near. Because of deterioration, the Red Pirogue was not retrieved on the return journey. Some of the crew then had to walk.

Lewis pushed ahead of the crew and discovered the magnificent Great Falls of the Missouri, which the Mandans had described. However, instead of the single falls and one-day portage that he expected, he discovered five waterfalls, and a grueling 18-mile portage that would require two weeks and test the very limits of the crew.

The White Pirogue was hauled up Portage Creek (now Belt Creek) and cached along with unneeded supplies. While one group prepared for portaging the dugouts, Lewis and other crew members established an upper portage camp near White Bear Island and began preparing the Ironboat.

Using the mast of the White Pirogue for axles and a lone cottonwood tree for wheels, the crew constructed carts to haul the dugouts, which weighed at least 1,000 pounds empty. They were plagued by mosquitoes, rattlesnakes, grizzly bears, prickly pear, a hailstorm, and unending exhaustion. Lewis wrote that the men were so tired that they immediately fell asleep when taking a rest. At one point the crew hoisted a sail on the carts, and the boats were sailed across the prairie--anything to reduce fatigue.

Lewis and the other crew members had been assembling the Ironboat (see box). It entailed a tedious process that held up the expedition for an additional two weeks. After the portage and a problem with the Ironboat, Lewis ordered two additional dugouts made, and with the six other dugouts, the expedition continued upriver.

The Expedition made it to the Three Forks of the Missouri, where Sacagawea began recognizing landmarks. In August the crew finally reached the headwaters of the Missouri, and Lewis climbed the final ridge toward Lemhi Pass (present-day Montana-Idaho state line), expecting to see a vast plain with a river leading to the Pacific. Instead, he saw continuous, snow-covered mountain ranges.

Soon the Expedition encountered the Shoshone and bartered for horses with Sacagawea's interpretive assistance. The Shoshone chief, Cameahwait, who happened to be Sacagawea's brother, provided horses and a guide. After sinking all the dugouts in a nearby pond (to be retrieved on the return trip) the crew made their way across the Bitterroot Mountains, where they nearly starved. They ate three colts and candle wax to survive. Eleven days later they stumbled into what is today the Weippe valley, home of the Nez Perce.

The Nez Perce provided food (fish and camas root) that made the entire crew sick for a week. After recovering, the crew made five new Ponderosa dugouts with assistance from the Nez Perce, who showed them the technique of burning out the insides of a dugout. On the Clearwater, they traveled downstream for the first time since the Ohio River. They also encountered the first rapids. The boats broached, cracked, overturned--all necessary experiences for what lay ahead, the whitewater of the Snake and Columbia Rivers.

After more practice running rapids on the Snake, the crew paddled into the Columbia River Gorge, where they encountered their first coastal Native Americans, and what today would be considered Class IV to V rapids. At Celilo Falls, a hub of social interaction and commerce for the tribes of the Columbia River for hundreds of years, the expedition exchanged one of its dugouts and a hatchet for their first coastal canoe, which Clark described as ìneeter made than any I have ever seen.

After portaging the falls, the crew encountered the Dalles, a stretch of the Columbia River Gorge that featured several rapids. The crew decided to run the Long Narrows after portaging the contents of the canoes. Hundreds of Native Americans lined the canyon rim to watch the crazy white men run large logs through what appeared to be unrunnable rapids. Miraculously, the boats made it through without flipping.

The crew reached Beacon Rock and noticed tidal effects for the first time. They saw native homes made of red cedar planks, tons of dried fish, and more coastal canoes. The coastal tribes (Clatsops, Chinooks, Tillamooks, and others) used several types of coastal canoes, including the Chinook Sea Canoe (up to 50 feet long and used for hunting whales and seals), the Columbia River Freight Canoe (used for hauling heavy cargo such as planks), the Hunting Canoe (a small river canoe), the Squaw Canoe (used by women for food-gathering), and the Shovel-Nose Canoe. The entire crew was very impressed by the coastal canoes and bartered for a total of four canoes. On the return trip, in need of more cargo space, Lewis ordered a coastal canoe stolen from the Clatsop tribe.

About 25 miles from the coast, Clark wrote, "Ocean in view; Great joy in camp." The crew was pinned down on a small beach for a week in constant rain before the Clatsops paddled across the turbulent waters of the Columbia River estuary and offered them fish to eat. After all crew members voted to make winter camp on the south side of the river, they settled in for three months of rain at their winter quarters, Fort Clatsop. With spare time, Lewis wrote extensively about the Chinook and Clatsop cultures, and continued to name and describe 178 species of plants and 122 species of animals new to science. Clark finished a detailed map of the new land that would be invaluable to America in the future.