Reliving Lewis and Clark: An Adventure in Its Own Right

Anthony Brandt
for National Geographic News

November 2, 2004

This article is seventh in a series. The author is following the
trail of the Lewis and Clark expedition across the North American
West. Along the way, he's reporting on 200th-anniversary events at
pivotal locations, and on what happened all those years ago.

The protest by a group of Lakota tribespeople against the reenactment of the Lewis and Clark journey in late September, reported in the previous episode of this series of reports, "has changed the spirit of the voyage," says Scott Mandrell, who portrays Meriwether Lewis. "We did not expect to be treated in the fashion that we were," reenactor Norman Bowers told an ABC News reporter.

They had gotten along well with Native Americans lower down the Missouri. Now? It was anyone's guess what would happen farther upriver.

So far, however, nothing has happened. The reenactors will be going into their winter camp above Bismarck, North Dakota, on November 4, and they have enjoyed a quiet trip over the last month.

The population thins out dramatically in northern South Dakota. Communities on the river are few and far between. The landscape is empty of trees. It is bleak, lonely, and wild. They have seen bison, prairie dogs, deer, antelope, hawks, pheasants, owls, prairie chickens, and wild horses.

A South Dakota National Guard unit portaged them around Oahe Dam, the last dam on the upper Missouri. They also crossed the Oahe Reservoir, which has drowned most of the Lewis and Clark campsites on this part of the river. At several points they found themselves moving just above the tops of drowned trees.

On the second of October the temperature dropped to 23 degrees Fahrenheit (-5 degrees Celsius). Ice formed on the keelboat's deck. The cold and the winds out of Canada and the work of moving boats upriver have kept them busy. They no longer pay much attention to the Lewis and Clark journals. "Our own issues preclude the academic attention to them we once had," Mandrell says. This is becoming less a reenactment of an adventure, in other words, than an adventure in its own right.

Changed Spirit

The encounter with the Teton Sioux changed the spirit of Lewis and Clark's voyage, too. They were on high alert after that. They saw Sioux hunters on the banks of the Missouri nearly every day after they left the Sioux encampment. The hunters were always trying to get them to stop. Lewis and Clark always refused. One brave shot a musket ball across their bow, skipping it over the water. They ignored him.

Their weather, of course, was also turning cold. Progress was slow. The river often took on the typical braided character of High Plains rivers, which are broad, shallow, and divide into many channels. Sometimes the expedition had to reverse course and retreat downriver a few miles to find a channel deep enough to handle the keelboat.

On October 7 Clark saw the first tracks of the "white bear," the grizzly, so called because of the silver hairs that form the outer coat of mature males. On October 20 Pierre Cruzatte shot one and wounded it, then ran for his life when the bear turned on him. He left his rifle and tomahawk behind in his haste.

It was not a good day for Cruzatte. When he retrieved his weapons he shot a buffalo cow in the thigh, breaking the bone, but she came after him anyway and he had to hide in a ravine.

Grizzly bears, it is worth noting, are Plains animals, feeding off the abundant game in the Plains. They were driven into the mountains when settlers moved into the Plains.

Cultural Exchange

On October 8 Lewis and Clark reached the Arikara villages. The Arikaras were agricultural, growing corn, beans, and squash, which they traded for horses. "All things were arranged for peace or war," Clark wrote when they arrived, but the tribe proved to be friendly. They went through the usual ceremonies, with speeches from both sides, the exchange of gifts, peace medals given out. The Indians of this tribe had never seen a black man before, and York, Clark's slave, fascinated them. "The Indians were much astonished at my black servant," wrote Clark, "who made himself more terrible in their view than I wished him to do, telling them that before I caught him he was wild and lived upon people. Young children was very good eating."

It was not uncommon for Indians to wet their fingers and try to rub the black off York's skin, thinking it was painted on.

The Arikaras must have heard about the expedition's treatment at the hands of the Teton Sioux and taken it to heart. The chiefs who spoke at the ceremonies all said that no one would "dare put hands on your rope" and try to stop them from going upriver. Lewis demonstrated his air gun, which operated on compressed air, and it astonished them.

But the Arikara had interesting things of their own to show. They fed the expedition a meal that included a large bean known as a ground bean. They collected the bean from the underground nests of meadow voles, which gathered them for the winter. The Arikara never took the beans without leaving other food behind for the voles.

They had stories to tell as well. Some miles above their villages stood stones "resembling human persons and one resembling a dog." The Arikara, reports Clark, "have a curious tradition about those stones. One was a man in love, one a girl whose parents would not let her marry him. The man, as is customary, went off to mourn, the female followed, and the dog went to mourn with them. All turned to stone gradually, commencing at the feet … They fed on grapes until they turned [i.e., turned to stone], and the woman has a bunch of grapes yet in her hand." Whenever they passed by these stones, says Clark, the Arikara stopped and left offerings.

Winter Sets In

They left the Arikara after a few days amongst them and continued moving upriver. On the 21st of October it snowed. They were entering the country of the Mandans, beyond which the Missouri was uncharted and where no white man had gone.

On the 24th they met one of the Mandan chiefs, who was out hunting with a group of men. Now, indeed, there were Mandans in view in every direction, all along the river banks, watching them approach, "continually in sight," satisfying, says Clark, their curiosity about the expedition. Two or three days later they reached the Mandan villages.

They were a fur-trading center for both the Hudson's Bay Company and the rival North West Company, and the Mandans were used to the presence of whites living with them. On the 31st of October, with snow deepening on the Plains and the river threatening to freeze up soon, Lewis and Clark decided to spend the winter there. They chose a site a mile or two below the first Mandan village, and on the 3rd of November, 1804 they began building Fort Mandan, their winter quarters.

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