The Lewis and Clark Expedition Resumes with Sacagawea: April 6, 1805
- Catholic Textbook Project
- Apr 7
- 4 min read
This text comes from our book, Lands of Hope and Promise.
On August 3, at Council Bluffs on the Missouri, Lewis and Clark met with representatives of the Oto and Missouri tribes, including six lesser chiefs. Lewis and Clark announced the tidings that the Oto and Missouri were the children of a new “great father” and that the great father wished them to benefit from his protection and from trade with his people. He would provide them more opportunities for trade than the Spanish or French ever did, said the explorers.
In late August, Lewis and Clark made their first contacts with the Dakota or Sioux. The explorers were worried, for they had heard much of this tribe and of its cruel and relentless attacks on its neighbors. But the first of these people they met, the Yankton Sioux, were eager for trade and friendship with the United States. Their people were poor, they said; they needed guns and ammunition. The Indians asked for “some of their great father’s milk”—whiskey.
Clark described the Yankton Sioux as having “a certain air of dignity and boldness.” Fond of decoration, they wore “paint and porcupine quills and feathers . . . with necklaces of white bear claws three inches long.” According to Clark, the Sioux “camps are handsome of a Conic form Covered with Buffalo Robes painted different colors and all compact & handsomely arranged.” He was describing, of course, the tipi, a kind of housing used only by the Plains Indians. The Sioux lived by hunting buffalo and were excellent horsemen. They frequently raided other tribes to steal their horses.
A little farther up river, the expedition met the Teton Sioux, who lived by hunting buffalo and raiding their enemies, the Mandans, for horses. The Teton had once manufactured pottery but had given it up for the horse-trade. They kept friendly relations with their neighbors, the Arikaras, who were farming folk and supplied the Teton with corn. The farmers among the Arikara were the women, who cultivate the soil with digging sticks made from the shoulder blades of antelope and buffalo and rakes made from reeds fastened to a long handle.
The Teton Sioux mistrusted Lewis and Clark, and at their first meeting, the Teton chiefs were belligerent. When they demanded more whiskey and presents, Clark put on a warlike mien. He told the chiefs that he and his men “were not squaws, but warriors,” and “were sent by our great father, who could in a moment exterminate them.” According to Clark, “the chief replied that he too had warriors, and was proceeding to offer personal violence to Captain Clark, who immediately drew his sword.” The Indians formed a circle around Clark. His men formed up behind their leader. From the barge, the swivel gun was turned on the Indians. Several tense moments passed before the Teton chief, Black Buffalo, intervened and made his men draw back.
Lewis and Clark spent the next three days with the Teton Sioux. After another incident almost led to violence, the expedition moved farther up river. Fall was upon them, and they decided to find winter quarters with the Mandan. The Mandan proved hospitable and allowed the corps to build a fort, Fort Mandan, outside their village. Mandan villages were made up of permanent “lodges” centered around a sacred cedar post that represented a village hero. Like other tribes, the Mandan believed in “medicine”—a personal spirit or intercessor before the Great Spirit. There was “good medicine” (beneficial spirits) and “bad medicine” (maleficent spirits).
At the Mandan village Lewis and Clark met two whites, George Drouillard and Toussaint Charbonneau, who joined the expedition as interpreters with the Indians. Charbonneau’s wife was a Shoshone Indian woman who had been separated from her people in a raid and sold to Charbonneau. This woman, Sacagawea, along with her infant son, joined the expedition; the captains thought she would be valuable in helping them obtain from the Shoshone the horses the expedition needed to cross the Rockies. As events proved, this 17-year old woman would prove very useful to the expedition; for she knew what roots are edible, could describe medicinal plants and serve as an interpreter with the tribes that knew the Shoshonean language.
A Mandan village, by Karl Bodmer (left), a Mandan chief, by Karl Bodmer (right)
On April 6, 1805, the corps resumed its journey. Continuing up the Missouri, they passed through hilly lands and then into barren country where were no signs of men. The Missouri now flowed between perpendicular black granite cliffs, 1,200 feet high. Jutting skyward reared “large irregular masses of rocks and stones.” Herds of deer and elk thinned, and buffalo were seen no more in this bleak, frowning, though beautifully sublime land. By late May the expedition had reached a place where, for the first time, they could see the Rockies.
Reaching a great fork in the Missouri, the corps divided into two parties, each following a tributary to discover which was the principal stream. Lewis’ party, with Sacagawea, followed the northern fork, which he named Maria’s River (now the Marias), while Clark followed the southern fork, which proved to be the main stream of the Missouri. Proceeding up this fork, by mid June the expedition reached the great falls of the Missouri. The passage around the falls proved most difficult; the explorers suffered from hailstorms; the terrain was broken, the country infested with prickly pear cactus and grizzly bears. It was not until July 4 that the explorers completed the passage. They celebrated their victory, and Independence Day, by drinking off the last barrels of spirits and dancing into the night.