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Viewed with Much Pleasure

By: LC200 staff

April 7, 1805 was “the biggest day in the life of the Corps of Discovery.” That day marked the Expedition’s first steps off into an unknown land on their journey to the Pacific. In all their previous travels as they exploring party gathered at Camp Wood then worked their way up the Missouri River to the Mandan and Hidatsa Villages where they spent the winter, they had been traveling on territory that had been traveled many times before. They were about to enter a country that was “totally unknown.”

Clark set off with the crew of 31 in six small canoes and two pirogues. As Lewis watched their departure he was “well pleased and confident of success.” He noted it was the most happy time of his life. Before he departed overland to the villages to bid the chiefs farewell, he recorded the moment in his journal, referring to the journey as “a voyage which had formed a darling project of mine for the last ten years.”

Throughout the trip up the river both Captains carefully noted the birds and animals they saw and described the land they were passing through. It did not take long for the euphoria of setting off on his darling project to give way to some of the realities. Two days after departure, Clark commented that he saw his first mosquito of the season. From that day on it was an almost constant remark on those troublesome creatures.

The journal entries are filled with land characteristics that are easily seen today. Such things as little columns of smoke rising from cracks in the ground as the methane gas from the seams of coal would catch fire or the sulphur smells. The country they were passing through was very broken with dry runoff creeks and had no trees on it. This was very unusual to the Captains but very common in the arid northern plains.

For the first few days after departing Fort Mandan the game was very scarce since the Indians hunted it heavily. Once the Expedition got some distance from the permanent villages game became much more plentiful. Lewis noted that they saw many beaver swimming in the river thus proving they were not trapped very much.

On April 11 the Expedition overtook three French trappers who were going to trap beaver on the Yellowstone River. Two days later when they passed the mouth of the Little Missouri River the trappers decided to stay and trap in that location. That day was a most memorable day; the wind was favorable so the pirogues were under sail. A sudden squall came up almost capsizing the white pirogue. This was the boat that had all the instruments, papers, medicine and the most valuable of the Indian presents on it. Drouillard was able to right the boat and most everything was saved. What was almost disaster turned out to be only a small amount of gunpowder lost.

On this day grizzly tracks were seen, but no bear. Lewis described how the Indians hunted the grizzly starting with a ceremony asking for good fortune and protection from the powerful bear. According to Lewis it was common for eight to ten warriors to attack a single grizzly. They would unusually kill the bear but one or more of the Indians would also be killed. Lewis attributed this to inferior weapons.
The following day the Expedition reached the farthest west point up the Missouri that white men had ever traveled – except for two Frenchmen who were lost. Charbonneau had camped on a nearby creek for several days on one of his previous trips in the area, so the creek was named Charbonneau Creek. The Expedition had traveled a hundred miles upriver from Fort Mandan. This point is only a dozen miles from the place where the two Captains rejoined in 1806 after splitting up in western Montana.

The daily routines were soon established with the Captains taking turns walking on shore to survey the lands ahead. The river was very crooked with many sandbars. The breaks were getting more broken and rocky the farther west the explorers went with the prairies above the breaks continuing flat, rolling and treeless, covered with large herds of buffalo, antelope, deer and elk. Lewis made the comment that two good hunters in this land could supply an entire regiment.

The animals noted were common throughout the trip with only an occasional difference. One day a black bear was spotted and on April 17, Lewis mentions the long bill curlew, which was new to science. Although they had seen many tracks from the grizzly bear, none had been sighted yet.

A common journal entry was problems with the wind that frequently cut short the day’s travel, even preventing travel altogether on some days. Fierce winds would make the water so rough that if the canoes ventured out they would fill with water and sink. The wind also caused many complaints about sore eyes from the sand and dust in the air. Lewis wrote in his journal “we cannot keep any article free of it; in short we are compelled to eat, drink and breathe it very freely.”

April 25th was a day that brought several changes to the routines. When the Expedition started out that morning the men tried to row their boats it was so cold the water would freeze on the oars. Another disturbing fact was Lewis’ dog had been gone from camp all night; much to everyone’s relief he returned to camp as the Expedition was heading out in the morning. When the wind again halted travel by ten that morning, the Captains gave in to their frustrations and decided Lewis would take a few men and proceed overland to the mouth of the Yellowstone, which they calculated was not far away. Once there, Lewis would take navigational readings, etc while the rest of the Expedition caught up. A short ten-mile march put him on the shore of the Yellowstone two miles upriver from it mouth.

Clark and the rest of the Expedition arrived at the mouth of the Yellowstone by noon the next day. They Captains gave each man a dram “which produced a fiddle with singing and dancing.” The first major milestone of the journey into the unknown had been reached.

The area of present day western North Dakota the explorers passed through is known as the Williston Basin. Geologically it looks like a huge saucer shaped depression in the ground covering some 130,000 square miles. While this area was still an ocean it sank. As the earth’s crust was taking shape during the continent building period this area changed from being an ocean to being swampland. Sediment layers formed in this huge saucer eventually becoming stratified rocks—sandstone, shale and limestone. Along with the sediment that was deposited in the saucer was plant life that had grown in it. This organic material eventually formed into coal and oil. These were the coal deposits noted by Lewis and Clark as they made their way up the Missouri.

As the water ran off the land it cut a series of channels in the land and stratified rocks sculpturing some truly amazing scenes into the landscape. This action, along with the grinding of glacial ice formed the badlands of western North Dakota and eastern Montana. These lands were also described by the Expedition.