"The Object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river & such principal stream of it as by it's course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent for the purpose of commerce."
—President Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis, leader of the "Corps of Discovery," June 20, 1803.
Editor's note: These words launched one of the greatest explorations in history. Now, on the 200th anniversary of the expedition to open up the U.S. West, author Anthony Brandt follows the trail of Lewis and Clark. In this article he recounts the last months of the winter of 1805 and the start of the spring push up the Missouri River.
The year 1805 began with the men of the Corps of Discovery—Lewis and Clark's expedition team—firing off two cannon rounds to celebrate the occasion. But the cold of November and December only got worse, and the food situation was always problematic.
Shields, the Corps' blacksmith, was keeping them in corn by repairing war axes for American Indians and making new ones out of the sheet iron from an old stove they had worn out on the journey up the Missouri.
But meat was in short supply. Captain Lewis had taken a party out to hunt in the fall. On February 3 Captain Clark left with 16 men and made his way 60 miles (100 kilometers) downriver to hunt. They killed 40 deer, 19 elk, and 3 buffalo.
Many of these animals were so thin that they were useless; if the Corps of Discovery was short on food, it was worse for the animals. What meat the men could use they cached, burying it under logs to keep the wolves away from it. The party was gone for ten days.
On the last day Clark, weary and anxious to get back, walked 30 miles (50 kilometers) on the frozen surface of the Missouri River to Fort Mandan, a Mandan Indian camp. The rough surface of the ice blistered the bottom of his feet, and walking was painful, but it was better than walking on land, where the snow was knee deep.
Sioux Ambush
When Clark returned he sent four men back with horses and sleighs to pick up the meat. On the way a party of about a hundred Sioux ambushed them, stole two horses, and took most of their weapons. They also burned one of the caches of meat.
Lewis then went out with his own party of men in pursuit, but the Sioux had disappeared. Lewis found the second of the two caches, however, and shot 36 deer and 14 elk. They now had more than 3,000 pounds (1,360 kilograms) of meat. Most of it the party dried, in preparation for the trip west.
Hunting was the only real work the men had to do. The Mandan and the men of the Corps visited back and forth on a nearly daily basis. The captains came to like and admire one particular Mandan chief, Black Cat.
