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Lived as Well as We Could Expect

By: Phil Scriver, LC200 Historian

With the labors of building Fort Clatsop now behind them the Corps of Discovery settled in to wait for the day they would depart the coast on their return to the United States. The Captains determined that it would be useless to leave the warm, dry, comfortable “situation” of Fort Clatsop before April 1, 1806. They could not cross the Rockies until early June when the snow, which got to 20 feet or more in depth, had sufficiently melted. An April 1st departure from Fort Clatsop would give the Corps adequate time to reach the Rockies.

The first day of life in the Fort was New Year’s day 1806. Lewis said the men woke the Captains early with a volley from their muskets to ring in the new year. Although New Year’s dinner was the same boiled elk and roots as Christmas dinner, Lewis thought it was made to be better with “the anticipation of New Year 1807 and enjoying a repast which the hand of civilization had prepared.” He lamented on “pure water (as) their only beverage.”

The next day the Captains set to work drawing up a set of rules for conduct while living at Fort Clatsop. Sentries were posted daily with the gates to the fort opening at daylight and closing at dark. Only the cooks and interpreters did not stand guard duty. Trading or disposing of any tool, iron, or steel instrument was strictly forbidden. Reading through these rules of conduct leaves absolutely no doubt that this was a military unit and was operating as one even though they were 4,000 miles away from home. Although there were no courts martials for breaking the rules of conduct, several of the men were “chewed out” for carelessly leaving tools lay about or losing knives and tomahawks.

Patterns of life at Fort Clastop quickly developed. Salt making started in earnest when a satisfactory location was found that was sheltered from the weather, but still near the ocean and had a supply of wood for the fire that burned constantly until February 20. The salt makers made 20 gallons of salt by boiling sea water until the water evaporated leaving the fine salt behind. This job had employed three to five men.

The Captains realized their staple diet would be elk with an occasionally deer or beaver from Drewyer’s traps. Trade with Indians for fish and roots would supplement the elk meat. Consequently several groups of hunters were sent out every day. Because of the poor condition of the elk and how quickly the meat would spoil in the warm, rainy climate adequate meat supplies were a never-ending problem. Other patterns were trading with the Indian groups that came almost daily to the fort, writing journal entries, and when not doing anything else, preparing clothes and moccasins from the elk skins.

The daily journal entries took on a very different look. Lewis apparently took over as the primary journalist from Clark who had done most of the writing since leaving Camp Fortunate with horses from the Shoshones. Up until this point the journal entries focused on the many demanding activities of the Expedition; with intermittent descriptions of the land they were going through and the plants and animals they encountered. Life at Fort Clatsop was not adventure story material; it was routine details of men waiting for time to pass. Consequently the journals for the Clatsop time start with a few lines of activities report then go on for pages describing Indians of the area, plants, animals, customs, etc. Often the entry will sum up the activity with “nothing transpired today worthy of notice.” The journal pages are very rich with a wide variety of information now that the Captains had time to write and make sketches.

Most of the days Clark copied what Lewis wrote, excepting for those times when Clark left the Fort, which he did on a trip to the salt makers and when the Indians told the Captains about a whale that had been washed up onto the beach. Clark took a party to go get some of the blubber. He returned a few days later with 300 pounds of blubber and a few gallons of oil. It was this trip that Sacajawea insisted so much on going that Clark allowed it. She said that she had traveled a long way to see the great waters and now the monstrous fish was also to be seen, she should be permitted to see them.

From the journal entries for this time we learn such things as the salt makers were producing approximately one gallon of salt per day to finding out that Clark did not care much about salt while Lewis would eat almost any meat if it were salted. Adventures or events out of the ordinary were infrequent so they attracted detailed discussion. We get some insight to the health of the men and medical practices employed. Lewis said everyone was in reasonable health but did not have the strength and stamina they had when they were eating sufficient quantities of fresh meat. Clark attests to that fact during his trip to see the whale. They crossed Tillamook Head, which they named “Clark’s Mountain and Point of View,” on the route. Clark described it as a very tough climb and continued his narrative by saying that he tried to help an Indian woman who was carrying a large load of blubber up the trail and had lost her footing, but to his surprise he could scarcely lift her load of a little over a hundred pounds.

Lewis made some interesting observations during the Clatsop days. He observed that the women were treated very much as equal to the men by the Coastal Indians which was quite the opposite of the Plains Indians treatment that considered them very much second class members of the tribe. He summarized that when men were the primary food providers women were treated as inferiors, but when the task of providing food was shared, men and women were more equal.

The Indians said the trading ships arrived in April then stayed several months then they left in a southwest direction. From that information Lewis concluded the traders were not coming from established settlements at Nookta Sound since that would be to the north, so they must have a settlement on an island in the ocean between North America and Asia. (This proved to be correct; the main traders were using the Hawaiian Islands as their stop over after leaving the northwest coast).

Valuable information from these days journal pages included a number of plants and animals new to science that Lewis described. They were sitka spruce, grand fir, western white pine, orange honeysuckle, mountain huckleberry, vine maple, Oregon grape, candle fish, bushy tail wood rat, Columbian sharp tail grouse. Lewis also made more detailed descriptions of a number of plants and animals he had previously made brief descriptions of between Fort Mandan and Fort Clatsop. He also described almost every plant and animal they had found in the area aw well as many they had encountered earlier that wer already known to science. An interesting entry Lewis made on January 20th summarized the Expedition’s constant efforts at finding enough food to sustain itself (this same remark could probably apply to any group that operates at subsistence levels) “we have lately so frequently had our food stocks reduced to a minimum and sometimes taken a small touch of fasting that it concerns nobody.” He adds that most of the party have become very expert riflemen.

Another source of frequent concern was the situation with the canoes. It seemed like some member of a hunting party would leave a canoe somewhere then forget where it was or canoes were frequently breaking the leather cords they were tied to shore with and being carried away by the tides. Fortunately they managed to find them all. However, when the Expedition was ready to start its homeward journey, the Captains found they needed to purchase two Indian canoes. Prices for canoes were extremely high since only a wife could rival a canoe in value. As a result many attempts to get canoes ended in failure, although Pryor was able to get one. Lewis finally decided that if the Clatsop Indians would not sell one at a reasonable price, he would simply take one to make up for the number of elk the Clatsops had taken from the hunters. (One time the hunters shot ten elk, but before they could collect them all, Indians got five of them). This was done on March 17th, just a few days before the Corps of Discovery headed home.

The Captains decided to leave Fort Clatsop on March 18th. The weather was too unpredictable to wait until the first of April. They may get weathered in for many days beyond that date so they planned to leave as soon as the weather was favorable. They gave several groups of Indians a list of the men who had been with the Expedition and left one copy in the Captains’ room at the Fort as proof they had been there. They waited until the 23rd to actually depart. During these same days a Russian trading ship was trying to sail into the Columbia, but the same foul weather that was delaying the Corps of Discovery’s departure from Fort Clatsop finally forced it away.

On March 20, 1806 Lewis penned remarks that summarized three months at Fort Clatsop. He reflected the good times and the bad times in these few words, “Altho we have not fared sumptuously this winter and spring at Fort Clatsop, we have lived quite as comfortably as we had any reason to expect we should and we have accomplished every object which induced our remaining at this place except that of meeting with the traders who visit the entrance of this river.”

Because they missed the traders they could not re-supply their own trading stock so they must rely almost entirely on their guns for getting food. Lewis’ tried to make the best of the situation when he said, “but for the precaution taken in bringing those extra locks and parts of locks, in addition to the ingenuity of John Shields, most of our guns would at this moment been entirely unfit for use.”

On March 22nd while the Clatsop chief Comowooll was visiting, the Captains formally gave Fort Clatsop to the Chief saying he had consistently been the friendliest of all the Indians they had encountered on the coast. The Corps of Discovery set out for the Rocky Mountains the next day.