LEWIS & CLARK
There were at least 14 times that Native Americans were crucial in helping Lewis & Clark to survive and succeed.
Some would say that this was a great travesty for the Native American.

1.
Winter 1804/05. Mandan villages near what is now Bismarck ND. Lewis & Clark built a wooden palisaded fort and stayed the whole winter.
Very cold, 40 below and frostbite problems many days. Mandans traded abundant supplies of corn.
One of my sources says, "it was Mandan corn that got the expedition through the winter.
Had the Mandan not been there, or had they had no corn to spare, or had they been hostile, the expedition would not have survived the winter."

2.
Hidatsa villages very close to Mandan.
Hidatsas frequently traveled to SW Montana and to the Rockies for war and raids.
They gave Lewis & Clark some food, but primarily they gave Lewis & Clark the info about the route ahead and the Great Falls of the Missouri
and that Lewis & Clark had to find the Shoshone tribe to buy horses to get over the Rockies.
"They were an intelligence source waiting to be tapped."

3.
Sacagawea or Sakakawea.
Lewis & Clark hired her husband, Touissant Charbonneau, at Mandan as an interpreter.
She saved their instruments, books, medicines, and probably THE JOURNALS THEMSELVES when her husband swamped one of the canoes and the items were floating away.
She also helped them when by coincidence her brother, Cameahwait, was the chief of the Shoshone!
She guided the expedition only a few times; in the Three Forks area of SW Montana she began to recognize landmarks so Lewis & Clark knew they were in the right area to find the Shoshone.
When the expedition broke into 4 separate groups, she guided Clark and 10 others towards the Yellowstone River, July 1806.
She also found plants for Lewis to record and collect for Jefferson, and she provided edible plants for the Corps to eat.
She and her baby also helped the Corps show Indians that they were peaceful and were not war parties.
Indian war & raiding parties did not bring women or babies.

4.
The Lemhi Shoshone near Lemhi Pass sold Lewis & Clark 28 horses.
I argue that Lewis was determined to cross the Rockies/Bitterroots even though it was September and the snows had already begun.
He feared the men would not tolerate spending the winter there and waiting to cross the Rockies the next June or July to continue on to the Pacific.
I think he would have tried it on foot and the Corps would have died or had to turn back defeated.

5.
Lewis & Clark would also have tried to cross the Rockies without a guide and would have perished for certain.
The Shoshone provided them Old Toby and he guided them through the Bitterroot mountains.
Even Old Toby got lost for 2 days in the heavy snows and it took them 11 days to cross. They were nearly dead and starved as it was.
They ultimately ate 4 or 5 of their horses for food.

6.
Lewis & Clark met the Salish Tribe Sept 4, 1805 on the way to the Lolo Pass Trail over the Bitterroots.
Lewis & Clark traded for 13 more horses. Old Toby had relatives with the Salish.

7.
Once they crossed the Bitterroots - the friendly Nez Perce Indians saved Lewis & Clark lives with food, salmon and camas root bulbs,
and camas bread.

8.
The Corps gorged themselves on so much strange food that they got very sick.
The tribal council decided to kill them and take their weapons and goods.
The tribe would have become the richest, strongest tribe in the U.S. with the new weapons and trade goods.
But an old Nez Perce woman, Watkeweis, saved them b/c she had once been a captive and escaped and Canadian whites had helped her.
She said "do them no harm."
Tribe did what she advised.

9.
Nez Perce chiefs showed Lewis & Clark where to find big enough trees for canoes, and how to burn out the trees to quickly and easily make canoes,
and showed them the branch of the Clearwater River that would lead to the Columbia River.

10.
Lewis & Clark agreed to pay a Nez Perce chief to tend their horse herd until they returned from the Pacific.
The chief held the horses for about 8 or 9 months and Lewis & Clark got all of them back but about 2 or 3.

11.
Two Nez Perce chiefs led Lewis & Clark down the Clearwater, the Snake and then the Columbia to Celilo Falls and introduced them to tribes along the way as peaceful and friendly visitors.
This helped Lewis & Clark to proceed quickly and to buy food.

12.
Lewis & Clark lived on food they bought from the Indians, 250 dogs for example, all along the Columbia both going west and returning east.
(At Celilo Clark estimated he saw 10,000 pounds of dried salmon and was amazed at the Indians' ingenious way of preparing and storing it.)
Clark estimated the Indian population of the tribes they encountered as 100,000.

13.
The Clatsop and Chinook Indians in Washington and Oregon helped Lewis & Clark survive the winter of 1805-06 at Ft Clatsop in Astoria.
"Obviously the Corps of Discovery could not have gotten through the winter on the coast without the Clatsop and Chinook."

14.
Five Nez Perce young men/teens guided Lewis & Clark back over the mts.
Lewis & Clark were so eager to get home they started too soon against the advice of the Nez Perce and without guides.
They returned after a couple of days struggling in the mountains.
It was the only time the Corps had to retreat on their voyage.
Once they had the five guides and the Indians they agreed the route was passable.
They made an easy crossing with grass for their horses at every camping site but one (as the Indians had told them it would be).
They covered 156 miles in 6 days (it took 11 days to cross westward with Old Toby -- they were lost 2 days on the way west).
Lewis wrote in the journals that without the Indian guides they wouldn't have made it.
"Without the assistance of our guides I doubt much whether we who had once passed the mountains could find our way to Travelers rest."

Compiled by:
Robert J. Miller
Associate Professor
Lewis & Clark Law School