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To the Grand Detour

By: Phil Scriver, LC200 Historian

As the Expedition worked its way upriver they made slow progress. They knew the area they were passing through afforded them some prime opportunities to work on some of the detailed instructions President Jefferson had given. The Captains sent several messengers out to find the tribes living along the river and its tributaries, carrying an invitation to meet the Captains in council. They would meet at the Calumet Bluff on August 30th.

The Captains were in no hurry during the last days of August as they waited for their messengers to return. They took a group of men to see the “Mountain of little people” Lewis had heard the Indians speak of. This was a conical mound about 70 feet tall rising out of the prairies. The Indians said the great number of birds that gathered at the crest of the mound proved spirits dwelled there. Clark marveled on how regularly even the mound was, as if it had been built by man, but he finally concluded it was the work of nature. Today this mound near the southern border of South Dakota is called Spirit Mound.

The party that had gone to the mound with the Captains included York. Clark noted that after returning to the boats at sunset York was exhausted from the trip of about 15 miles. He attributed it to York being fat and not used to walking fast for long distances. (I can hardly imagine him being fat by today’s standards, but I can easily believe he was not conditioned to walking fast for long distances.)

August 26th was a day the Captains would probably remember in retrospect for a long time. Although the mission Drewyer and Shannon were sent on was common the results were not. Drewyer, the best woodsman of the Expedition, and Shannon, the youngest and least experienced member, were sent out to find the horses that had wandered off during the night. Drewyer returned the following day after walking all night. He could not find the horses or Shannon. They had split up to cover more territory in their search for the missing horses.

Since Drewyer was “much fatigued” Shields and Joe Fields were sent out to continue the search for Shannon. Their instructions were to search on upriver and join the main party at the Niobrara River. This they did the next day, but without Shannon or the horses. Concern was growing since the Captains knew Shannon was not a good hunter and he did not have much food or ammunition with him. They decided that Shannon must be ahead of the main party, so Colter was sent ahead to try to catch up with Shannon. When he found him they were to wait for the boats to catch up to them.

Colter set out upriver on his quest on August 28th while the main party stopped at Calumet Bluff preparing for council with the Sioux. The council was done and the Expedition continued on September 1st. As they went upriver they saw signs of Colter and Shannon on the 2nd and the 5th, then on the 6th Colter rejoined the main party. He had been unable to find Shannon.

By now the Captains didn’t know quite what to make of the situation. Three of the best woodsmen had been unable to find the man. No more searchers were sent out. Instead everyone concentrated on getting upriver as quickly as possible in hopes of overtaking him somewhere along the way. Nothing was written, but the recent loss of Floyd and now the very real possibility of losing Shannon undoubtedly weighed heavily on the minds of many.

Finally to everyone’s relief, on September 11th the prodigal son, half-starved, was found where he waited on the river bank for a downriver trader. He had one horse with him, having turned the other one loose since it had “given out” as he pushed as hard as he could upriver trying to catch up with his comrades. The first day out Shannon had been successful in finding the two lost horses that had wandered away in the night. His problems began at that point. Alone on the prairie and thinking he was behind the main party, he hurried upriver as fast as he could, but he was on horseback while everyone else, including those sent out searching for him, was walking. Consequently he got many miles ahead of the main party. Clark’s concerns were well justified. Shannon had used his meager rations and ammunition in the first four days. For the next 12 days he survived on wild berries and one rabbit he managed to shoot – he used a short piece of stick for a bullet. Clark’s journal entry failed to show the feelings in camp with Shannon’s return. He wrote that “he shot away what few bullets he had with him and in a plentiful country liked to have starved.”

The other memorable event for August 26, 1804 was that the Captains wrote the detachment order officially appointing Patrick Gass a sergeant to replace Floyd, who had died a few days earlier. The men had selected Gass for this position by a majority vote on the 22nd.

The Captains had succeeded in getting a group of 70 Indians to come to their council at the Calumet Bluffs. Included in the group were three main chiefs of the Yankton Sioux. The council was held over two days. Captain Lewis gave his speech on August 30th telling about the new owners of the territory and the President’s wish for peace among all the tribes. They also heard of the Americans’ wish for good trading with the Sioux. After the speech was done presents were given out including five peace medals and a flag. The Indians then withdrew to council among themselves and discuss what Lewis had said. The next day several of the Indians each gave a speech agreeing to what Lewis and told them.

After the speeches were done Clark took vocabularies of the tribes and notes on their customs, etc. He also listed the names of 12 of the tribes and where they each lived. Lewis gave instructions to the trader Durion for making peace and for taking several of the chiefs to meet with President Jefferson.

When the Expedition continued upriver after the council, they stopped at Bon Homme Island. Clark made sketches and detailed descriptions of the “ancient fortifications” nearby. This was a bad case of Clark’s military mind and imagination playing tricks with him. His ancient fortifications were really natural formations. The Captains concentrated on describing the country they passed through and the river they traveled on. Their descriptions of the geography and geology were so well done that even with the changes that have taken place, many of the remarkable features recorded in the journals can still be found today.

Both Captains were also deeply involved in recording the plant and animal life they encountered. Clark relates the Expedition’s efforts to get prairie dog specimen. On September 7th they had stopped to investigate another large conical mound when they found a large prairie dog town that covered four acres. They killed one of the dogs, but still wanted to get a live one. First they tried digging down one of the tunnels to the main nest. After going down six feet Clark ran a pole down the tunnel only to discover they were much less than half way to the nest. The digging stopped and five barrels of water were poured down the hole in an attempt to flood them out. That failed. One of the men did manage to snare a prairie dog, so they departed to their boats happy with the specimen they had.

On September 3rd Clark noted seeing several wild goats on the distant prairie. That was the first mention of antelope. They gave a more complete description on the 14th. Three days later Lewis tried to get close to some of these strange animals. He had spotted seven antelope on a hilltop. There was adequate cover for him to get within 200 paces, but as soon as he showed himself the antelope were off in a flash. They covered three miles through a ravine to another hillside in the time Lewis took to traverse the 200 paces to where they had been. He recorded that “it appeared rather the rapid flight of birds than the motion of quadrupeds.” In addition to describing the prairie dog and antelope which were both new to science, the Captains described the black bill magpie, coyote and jackrabbit which were also new to science.

The final scientific discovery the Expedition made in this area was at Cedar Island, now covered by Fort Randall Reservoir. Clark discovered a backbone that measured 45 feet long and had some teeth and ribs attached. He called them petrified fish bones. What Clark found is now known as remains of a plesiosaur, an aquatic dinosaur of the Mesozoic era. Although he does not say if they took any of these fossils, part of this find is now in the Smithsonian.

On September 19, 1804 the Expedition reached the “great pass of the Sioux” which was commonly used by the Indians as a place to cross the Missouri River. They camped that night at the beginning of the Big Bend or “Grand Detour” of the Missouri River.