On this day in May, they began navigating their boats up what was to be the nearly 2, miles of this river named for the Indian nation which lived near its confluence with the Mississippi. Here they began the segment of their journey that was considered the major purpose of this extraordinary journey.
These instructions were among the extensive orders that Commander-In-Chief Jefferson had written for the Corps of Discovery before the group left on its trip. Well prepared to carry out these orders, the Corps of Discovery had among its ranks interpreters, fur trappers, hunters, boat builders, blacksmiths, gunsmiths, carpenters, surveyors and millers. The expedition party included 45 souls including Lewis, Clark, 27 unmarried soldiers, a French-Indian interpreter, a contracted boat crew and a slave owned by Clark named York.
Charles, Missouri and headed upstream on the Missouri River in the keelboat and two smaller boats at a rate of about 15 miles per day. Heat, swarms of insects and strong river currents made the trip arduous at best. To maintain discipline, Lewis and Clark ruled the Corps with an iron hand and doled out harsh punishments such as bareback lashing and hard labor for those who got out of line.
On August 20, year-old Corps member Sergeant Charles Floyd died of an abdominal infection, possibly from appendicitis. He was the only member of the Corps to die on their journey. Most of the land Lewis and Clark surveyed was already occupied by Native Americans. Lewis and Clark developed a first contact protocol for meeting new tribes.
They also told the Indians that America owned their land and offered military protection in exchange for peace. Others were wary of Lewis and Clark and their intentions and were openly hostile, though seldom violent. But they were no match for the military might of the Corps, and soon moved on.
In early November, the Corps came across villages of friendly Mandan and Minitari Indians near present-day Washburn, North Dakota , and decided to set up camp downriver for the winter along the banks of the Missouri River. The Corps spent the next five months at Fort Mandan hunting, forging and making canoes, ropes, leather clothing and moccasins while Clark prepared new maps.
They allowed his pregnant Shoshone Indian wife, Sacagawea , to join him on the expedition. Sacagawea had been kidnapped by Hidatsa Indians at age 12 and then sold to Charbonneau. On February 11, , Sacagawea gave birth to a son and named him Jean Baptiste. She became an invaluable and respected asset for Lewis and Clark. On April 7, , Lewis and Clark sent some of their crew and their keelboat loaded with zoological and botanical samplings, maps, reports and letters back to St.
Louis while they and the rest of the Corps headed for the Pacific. The group next headed out of Lemhi Pass and crossed the Bitterroot Mountain Range using the harrowing Lolo Trail and the help of many horses and a handful of Shoshone guides.
This leg of the journey proved to be the most difficult. Many of the party suffered from frostbite, hunger, dehydration, bad weather, freezing temperatures and exhaustion. Still, despite the merciless terrain and conditions, not a single soul was lost. The Indians took in the weary travelers, fed them and helped them regain their health. As the Corps recovered, they built dugout canoes, then left their horses with the Nez Perce and braved the Clearwater River rapids to Snake River and then to the Columbia River.
They reportedly ate dog meat along the way instead of wild game. A bedraggled and harried Corps finally reached the stormy Pacific Ocean in November of They decided to make camp near present-day Astoria, Oregon , and started building Fort Clatsop on December 10 and moved in by Christmas. After Lewis and Clark finally make contact with the Shoshone, Sacagawea is joyfully reunited with her brother Cameahwait, who is now the Shoshone chief.
Even with horses and a Shoshone guide named Old Toby, the crossing of the Bitterroot Mountains in Idaho proves to be the most grueling and life-threatening section of the entire journey.
It was only mid-September, but the snow on the western flank of the Bitterroots is already deep and Old Toby gets lost. Horses slip and tumble down the mountain. The men, who have grown accustomed to eating five to seven pounds of meat daily in the game-rich plains, begin to starve. They become so desperate they start eating the colts. Eleven days later, they stumble out of the forest snow-blind and weak with hunger, and are taken in by a village of Nez Perce Indians.
Buckley says that the Nez Perce debate killing the half-dead intruders, who are accompanied by a Shoshone woman, their bitter enemy. But a Nez Perce woman named Watkueis, who lives among white men as a captive, convinces them to spare the strangers and befriend them. The Nez Perce hospitality has one drawback. After paddling dugout canoes down the treacherous Columbia River for weeks, Clark believes the men have finally reached the Pacific. Powerful waves and strong winds swamp and paralyze the canoes.
The Corps finally crosses the estuary with the help of local Clatsop Indians and their large, ocean-going canoes. Lewis and Clark put the decision to a vote as to where to build Fort Clatsop, their home for the next five months. They were stuck in cramped, smoky quarters subsisting on lean elk meat. Such precautions could also be taken when one of the captains was scouting ahead on foot, accompanied by only a few men; he might leave his notebook journals with the main body, for convenience or in case something happened to him and he did not return.
After such separations, one might copy the experiences of the other into his own journal, to insure the preservation of a complete record. As they moved up the Missouri around the Great Falls , the captains were separated at various times in June, July, and August , as one or the other was ahead, portaging the falls or later looking for the Shoshone Indians.
In these intervals, Lewis sometimes copied Clark's journal for the days of separation under the date of their reunion, suggesting that he was keeping the notebook journal day by day. At other times, Lewis gave an account of Clark's activities in his own entries for each day, indicating that those entries must have been written after they were reunited. Clark in this period did not ordinarily copy Lewis's record of daily events while they were separated.
In some of Clark's red notebooks are extra pages he apparently inserted, sometimes torn from other red books but at least once cut to fit from letter paper. The handwriting on the inserted sheets is neater and more legible than Clark's usual bold but rather careless hand, but it is definitely Clark's , and the need for legibility is the likely reason for many of the insertions.
This circumstance strengthens the likelihood that the ordinary handwriting represents daily entries written on the trail, during the day or in camp. A notable example is Clark's insertion of pages to recopy his survey notes of the Great Falls portage, already written in his rougher hand in the middle of his June 17, , entry, probably during the course of the day.
He decided to copy the notes over for greater legibility and in fact inserted more sheets than he needed. The inserted sheets are in the middle of the original rough notes. Each consists of a few loose sheets covering periods of two to five days. Codex Fa describes events also related in more detail in Lewis's Codex F; the others are all from periods after the end of Codex F, during a hiatus of over four months for which there are no other known Lewis journals, except for a later fragment, Codex Ia.
But the fragments themselves provide no evidence for this hypothesis. If they had portions of a previous day's entry at the beginning, or of the next day's entry at the end, there would be good reason to regard them as portions of a larger body of notes now lost.
On the contrary, however, they appear to be complete in themselves. Codex Fa has a dated heading for an entry at the end that was never written, since only a blank space follows the date on the last sheet of the codex. Moreover, all of the fragments except Fc relate to periods when the captains were separated; Fa chronicles a scouting excursion ahead of the main body when Lewis might have preferred not to risk his notebook journal, and the other two describe periods when Clark scouted ahead and Lewis had to keep a record of the movements of the main party.
Codex Fc derives from two days of relative leisure at Travelers' Rest in western Montana when Lewis may have intended to resume journal keeping after a lapse of about two weeks. In Codex G, Clark sometimes groups courses and distances for several days in one place, suggesting that he may have kept this information in separate notes and transferred it to his notebooks when time allowed. It may be that he kept course and distance notes on the same sheets with sketch maps, as he did with Atlas maps 33—42, although no such maps have been found for the route from the Great Falls to Travelers' Rest in western Montana , traversed during the period covered in Codex G.
This journal consists of sheets of letter paper sewn together and crudely bound in elkskin, presumably in the field. While we cannot be certain whether it was bound before or after writing, the fact that it ends precisely on the last day of , the day before Lewis's known journal-writing again resumes, strongly suggests the latter.
From September 11 to 20, the Elkskin-bound Journal consists of courses and distances, with sketch maps of the Lolo Trail route. The courses and distances become progressively more detailed, briefly mentioning daily incidents; by September 13 they are in effect short journal entries in themselves.
After September 21, the book becomes a regular journal of daily events. Here some speculation seems warranted. The Lolo Trail was one of the roughest parts of the trip, the trail hazardous and the weather terrible; the horse carrying Clark's writing desk slipped down a mountainside on the fifteenth, smashing the desk.
These were conditions under which it would be prudent to seal up the notebook journals in tin boxes for protection and keep rough field notes along the trail.
The sketch maps and courses and distances suggest that the elkskin book started out as the sort of route notes Clark kept at other times, such as those with Atlas maps 33— Their becoming progressively more extensive from September 11 to 20 suggests that Clark did indeed seal up Codex G at some point during this period, the Elkskin-bound Journal becoming the preliminary journal, the first draft for the notebooks.
Clark went ahead with a few men, looking for game, on September 18, and the courses and distances in the elkskin book become particularly extensive from that date. There can be no certainty, however, that was the date when Codex G was sealed up.
From September 21, the elkskin book consists of regular daily entries in the conventional form, not in the form of courses and distances. September 20 was the day Clark met the Nez Perces at Weippe Prairie , Idaho , a meeting described in some detail in the elkskin notebook courses and distances.
Lewis and the main party did not catch up until September If Codex G was in a tin box on a packhorse with Lewis's group, we can understand why Clark wrote his regular September 21 entry in the elkskin book. He traveled a few miles that day but gave no courses and distances until the next day, September 22, when he wrote, "our first course of yesterday was nearly.
There may have been no notes other than those in the elkskin book. Clark's courses and distances for September 11—21 and September 25 are together in Codex G after the September 30 entry; he may have taken the notebook out on that day and brought it up to date, or he may have been keeping entries in it and simply have delayed copying the courses and distances because he was busy. In any case, he continued to keep journal entries in the elkskin book until December 31, paralleling notebook journal entries in Codices G, H, and I.
That the Elkskin-bound Journal entries were the first draft and the codices the second seems probable.
For much of the period from early October to early December the expedition was going downriver in small dugout canoes, and when they neared the Pacific Coast they entered an area of almost constant rain and storms. It may have seemed wise to keep the red books in their waterproof boxes much of the time and continue to use the sheets that became the Elkskin-bound Journal.
The elkskin book begins on the exact date of starting on the Lolo Trail , which may indicate that Clark had not kept detailed field notes for some time before that but had written daily information directly into his notebook journals. He could well have been keeping course and distance notes, with sketch maps of the route, as he had earlier, notes such as the pages in the elkskin book apparently started out to be.
But why were those bound notes preserved if similar ones for an earlier period the summer and fall of were not saved also? We must, of course, allow something for sheer chance, but the special care taken to bind the notes suggests a particular need to preserve material covering that period.
One reason for preserving them might be the exceptionally large number of maps nineteen along with the journal material; none of the maps of the Elkskin-bound Journal are repeated in the codices for the same period. Again note that there are, to our present knowledge, no notebook journals by Lewis from late August , to January 1, ; only fragmentary loose sheets are known, and all except one Codex Fc cover periods when the captains were separated.
The Elkskin-bound Journal ends the day before Lewis is known to have resumed his journal-keeping, the first day of It would be a remarkable coincidence if Clark just happened to run out of paper in the book on that day. Internal evidence indicates that large portions of Clark's notebook journals after early November were probably written months later. If the sheets in the elkskin book were the only continuous record by either captain for a period of over three and one-half months, then we can readily understand why they took special care to preserve them.
If Clark's red books were sealed up and packed away for much of that time, we can also understand why what started out as rough notes and sketch maps became a journal of events as well. What was Clark doing with his notebook journals during the period September 11—December 31, covered by the Elkskin-bound Journal?
Entries in late September and early October in Codex G are generally more extensive than those in the Elkskin-bound Journal; both are brief during periods when Clark was ill or particularly busy. After the party set out down the Clearwater River in canoes on October 7, the Elkskin-bound Journal again becomes primarily expanded courses and distances.
Codex H, however, begins on October 11, and from this point the elkskin book entries again become progressively more detailed and lengthy, as if it were again the record actually kept on the given dates. On November 7, , the day the party arrived, or so they thought, in sight of the Pacific , Clark records the event in both journals in terms suggesting immediate emotion. The Codex H entry for November 7, however, also contains a passage in quotes describing the dress of the local Indian women, noting that it was so skimpy that the "battery of venus is not altogether impervious to the penetrating eye of the amorite.
In fact, the whole paragraph occurs verbatim in Lewis's Codex J entry for March 19, —over four months after the ostensible date of Clark's entry. This forces us to conclude that Clark wrote the November 7, , entry in Codex H on or after March 19, Lacking any indication that the page with the quoted paragraph was inserted later, we must assume that the remainder of Codex H after that date—and Clark's subsequent notebook journals, largely copied from Lewis's —were written on or after March 19, —an assumption that creates some intriguing problems.
There is some evidence, moreover, that much of Codex H before November 7, , was not written until months after the given dates. Clark's copy of the sketch appears in the middle of the journal entry as if done at the same time as the entry itself. There is good reason to believe that the captains did not decide to give the name Clark's River to the combined Bitterroot - Clark Fork - Pend Oreille rivers until between April 17 and May 6, see Atlas , pp.
An almost exact duplicate of the map in another notebook not containing daily entries shows the same stream as the "Flathead River," the name they used earlier. It may be, then, that Clark did not write the October 18 entry until late April or early May of , inserting the sketch the Indians had given him under the appropriate date by copying from an earlier version. Codex H begins only a few days before that date, on October 11, , so it might well be that, on finishing Codex G on October 10, Clark decided that since they were traveling downstream in canoes, it would be wise to use the Elkskin-bound Journal for daily journal keeping and keep his notebooks safely sealed away in boxes.
As noted, the elkskin book's entries become increasingly extensive about this time. Codex H ends on November 19 with a brief entry and Clark's words "See another book for perticulars. That Codex I then takes up the narrative on November 19, , immediately after this collection of data, suggests that Codex H was finished and the daily entries in Codex I begun in sequence.
If so, then Clark also wrote Codex I after March 19, , when Lewis wrote the "battery of venus" passage, which Clark copied under the date of November 7, , in Codex H. Why, then, did Clark wait so long to write this material in the red books? Up to December 31, , he was writing in the sheets bound in elkskin and may not have seen any reason to start another journal, or he may not have gotten around to it.
There is no clear evidence of such notes continuing after the first day of But Clark's Codex I has three short entries for January 1, 2, and 3 at one end of the book, upside down to all the rest of the writing in that book, which starts at the other end.
It would seem that Clark began Codex I as a continuation of the Elkskin-bound Journal ending December 31 , then decided to do something else.
It appears that he again took up Codex H, filled it up with entries paralleling the elkskin book through November 19, then continued in sequence in Codex I; if so, then he evidently did so after March 19, the date of Lewis's observations about the visibility of the "battery of venus. Codex I does contain a detailed record of Clark's trip down the Oregon coast on January 6—10, taken from notes here called First Draft, January 6—10, of the kind the captains kept on other occasions when separated.
Lewis's synopsis of Clark's trip is in his Codex J for January 10, the day of Clark's return, and was likely written at that time from Clark's verbal account and First Draft notes. Lewis began a new journal Codex J on January 1, , and continued a consistent writing until August 12 when he laid his pen down, ending his record of the expedition. That is the first journal writing by him, as far as we know, since August , except for scattered fragments.
Perhaps the new journal is another point of beginning as has been conjectured with Codices Aa, Ba, and Fc, and here his good intentions of journal keeping combined perhaps with a New Year's resolution were fulfilled.
Codex J is a detailed record, to March 20, of life at Fort Clatsop , and contains extensive descriptions of local flora and fauna and the life of the nearby Indians, with numerous illustrations.
Nowhere else did Lewis devote more time to fulfilling the scientific objectives of the expedition by recording so much. All of the observations are incorporated in the daily entries, generally after the record of the day's events. In what was evidently an additional measure to insure the preservation of this material, Clark copied most of it into his journals almost verbatim.
For some reason Clark did not always copy material under the same date as Lewis and sometimes placed it under an entry several days earlier than that of Lewis's. Clearly he was not copying Lewis's day by day. Clark's copying of Lewis for the period after January 1, , is in a more careful, neater hand.
There is no way of knowing whether Clark's neater hand was something he could do at any time he chose to make the effort, or whether it represents writing at leisure and in comfort after the return from the voyage. But if the reason for copying from Lewis was insurance against loss, it would make more sense to complete it as soon as possible during the journey.
Lewis's Codex J also includes natural history material appropriate to the Rocky Mountains and Interior Basin, notes additional to the few fragments extant for that period. If Lewis had kept a journal for that period August-December , why did he copy it into daily entries for the time at Fort Clatsop?
Why not copy it into a separate journal covering the actual dates? That question must remain a mystery. There must have been some sort of natural history field notes or other journals for that period that are now lost. If Lewis did have notes in daily journal form covering the August-December gap, why did he not copy them into his own journal at Fort Clatsop when he would have had time?
One answer might be that the notes he had were mainly natural history and ethnographic material, and that he did copy them into Codex J, under current dates. If both Lewis and Clark were copying from supposed notes made by Lewis before arriving at Fort Clatsop , then it might be clear why Clark's version of the scientific material comes under different dates than in Lewis's journals, while his daily record of events follows Lewis verbatim on the same dates.
But Clark's duplication of Lewis's natural history notes in the codices particularly Codex J is so exact that the hypothetical notes must themselves have been as elaborate as those in Lewis's notebooks. As noted, Clark apparently did not write his November 7, entry in Codex H until on or after March 19, , when he copied the "battery of venus" passage into that entry.
March 19, when Lewis evidently wrote the paragraph, was just four days before the expedition left Fort Clatsop on the return trip. We can hardly imagine Clark writing over four months' worth of notebook journals, including extensive natural history notes, in that period of time, which surely was crowded with preparations for leaving.
If he was copying from Lewis after the departure from Fort Clatsop , when did he do it—along the trail, during the lengthy stopover at Camp Chopunnish in Idaho , or after the arrival in St.
And what did he do about his own daily journalizing during the homeward journey? Clark's copying of Lewis continues during the first few days of the party's journey up the Columbia ; he was still writing in the same book Voorhis No. The last two days of Voorhis No. Clark's Voorhis No. Since Voorhis No. Under April 6, Clark again has some natural history data copied from Lewis's entry of April 7. Clark may have been keeping some sort of field notes at this time.
There are such notes made by him for the period of April 16—21, but for most of that time the captains were separated, with Clark trading for food at various Indian villages near the Great Falls of the Columbia. He might well have not wanted to be troubled with carrying a notebook journal at that time, but perhaps he was not keeping a journal at all in the period of the journey upriver.
We have no idea when the two decided that Clark should copy Lewis's Fort Clatsop journals, perhaps doing no journalizing himself in the meantime, although the short entries for January 1—3 in his Codex I suggest the decision was taken in early January Nor is it clear how long after March 19 Clark waited to begin his copying. From May 14 to June 10, , the expedition was at rest at Camp Chopunnish , on the north bank of the Clearwater River in the Nez Perce country of Idaho , waiting for the snow to melt sufficiently on the Lolo Trail for their passage east.
In this extended period of relative leisure Clark might have done some of the extensive copying from Lewis's journals. As noted, the use of the name "Clark's Fork" in a map placed with the October 18, , entry in Codex H suggests that much of that notebook journal was not written until late April or early May of , or later.
That possibility would fit well with the hypothesis that much of Clark's catching up in his notebook journals and his copying from Lewis took place at Camp Chopunnish in May and June of Voorhis No. Perhaps Clark finished his copying at Camp Chopunnish , although it would have been a substantial task. Clark records events of the period in words very similar to Lewis's , but daily events could obviously have been copied the day they happened.
It is notable, however, that after the end of May we no longer have passages in Clark's journal that are clearly copied from Lewis , placed by Clark under dates earlier than in Lewis's journal.
At the beginning of Codex M is a map of the Rockies based on a sketch given by "Sundary Indians of the Chopunnish Nation on the 29th 30th and 31st of May It is therefore possible that Clark's copying from Lewis was complete to June 6 and he was able to start Codex M on the actual date.
Having returned to Travelers' Rest , the captains split the party on July 3, Lewis going northeast to seek a shorter route to the Missouri , Clark southeast to explore the Yellowstone. By all previous experience they should each have kept a journal during the period of separation, especially since they would be covering territory they had not previously explored.
Lewis's Codex L runs to July 4, then resumes after eighteen blank pages with an entry for July 15; that is the only such unfilled gap in time in a notebook journal. The fragmentary Codex La July 3—15 covers that period, and Lewis probably intended it as the first draft.
He probably packed away the notebook Codex L for safekeeping while traveling through the mountains, then resumed writing in it on July 15, leaving the blank pages to fill in later from the material in Codex La.
In fact he never got around to that, probably because he quit writing entirely on August 12, by which date all the writing in Codex L was probably complete.
He probably wrote his account of the violent encounter with the Blackfeet on July 27—28 at least a few days later, after rejoining his party following a hurried ride across country.
He continued Codex L to August 8, after which the fragmentary Codex Lb covers August 9—12; on the twelfth Lewis stopped writing entirely because of discomfort from the accidental gunshot wound inflicted by Pierre Cruzatte on August He had rejoined Clark on August 12, and the latter could now keep a record for the whole party.
The loose pages constituting Codex Lb were evidently once part of a red notebook found among Clark's papers, which bears on its cover the notation "9 to 12 Augt.
Lewis evidently began writing in the book after finishing Codex L, then stopped after a few days because of the pain of his wound. In later years Clark removed those few pages to use the book for other purposes.
Considering the unfilled gap in Codex L, it appears that Lewis's journal keeping ceased entirely on August 12, , and was then complete as it now stands. Clark's travels after leaving Lewis involved several shifts from horseback to canoes and back to horses, but there is little indication that he did not write entries directly into his notebook journal Codex M for much of the period. A fragment for this period, covering the days July 13—19 and July 24—August 3, consists of courses and distances for his Yellowstone exploration—July 13 was the day he left the Three Forks of the Missouri headed for the Yellowstone.
The Codex M entries for those days are much more extensive than the material in the fragment. The gap in the fragment represents the period when Clark's party stopped to build canoes, when there were no courses and distances to be recorded. Codex M has fairly extensive entries for those days. The Codex M entries through July 23 are in sequence, with no large gaps or crowding; as far as we can tell, Clark could either have been keeping that journal day by day, or he could have brought it up to date to the twenty-third while encamped.
Clark reached the Missouri , at the mouth of the Yellowstone , on August 3. At the end of his August 3 entry in Codex M is a passage, over two pages in Lewis's hand, describing the Yellowstone , which obviously Lewis could not have written before the captains' reunion on August Clark's August 4 entry then follows on the next page without any gap. Unless Lewis managed to fit his passage neatly into a gap left by Clark , then the subsequent entries by Clark must also have been written after August Lewis may have written the passage on August 12 before he stopped writing, but he could also have written it weeks later, after he had largely recovered from his gunshot wound, even after the arrival in St.
In his August 10 entry in Codex M, Clark gives a description of a cherry in Lewis's characteristic technical vocabulary, which is in fact copied from Lewis's description in Codex Lb for August 12; Clark could not have copied it before August 12, the date of their reunion. The day of their reunion was the logical place for that information, but there is no proof that he actually wrote it on the twelfth.
After that narration, however, Clark finishes the entry with the remaining events of August 12, the natural sequence if he had written the entry on that date. The last daily entry in Codex M is that of August 14; it breaks off in the middle and is taken up in Codex N, an unusual procedure for Lewis and Clark.
The entry in Codex M runs into the bottom of a weather table for the month of August , which is complete to the end of the month. It is not clear which was written first, since Clark might have broken off the August 14 entry to leave space for finishing the weather table already started.
Otherwise, we would have to assume he wrote the August 14 entry after the end of August. Codex N takes up under the heading of August 15, yet it clearly describes the same Indian council as that of August 14, in Codex M; the transition from one day to the next is never clear.
0コメント