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Historical Background

The final downriver sweep

At 2 o'clock in the afternoon on August 17—after bidding adieu to Colter, who set out upriver with the two trappers, and the Charbonneaus—the expedition continued downstream. Four days hence, it made an overnight stop at the Arikara villages. The two captains counciled with the leaders, as well as some visiting Cheyennes, and as usual stressed intertribal peace. Present was the principal Arikara chief, Gray Eyes, who had not been on hand when the expedition passed by in 1804. None of the chiefs of either tribe would agree to make the trip to Washington. They all dreaded the Sioux, and the Arikaras were particularly concerned because Chief Ankedoucharo, who had departed with Warfington the previous year, had not yet come back.

The trek resumed on the 22d. Eight days later, a parley was held with some Tetons, who were encountered at or near present Yankton, S. Dak.—much farther downstream than on the westbound journey. But other close contact with this troublesome group was avoided. Any exchanges were limited to unpleasantries at a distance.

On September 1, near the mouth of the Niobrara River, a council was conducted with some friendly Yanktons. Three days later, Lewis and Clark and a few men, momentarily casting aside their joy as they neared journey's end, made a sad pilgrimage. Visiting Sergeant Floyd's grave, they found that the Indians had opened it and left it half-covered; they refilled it. By this time, Lewis had recovered sufficiently from his thigh wound so that he could walk again.

As the happy voyagers sped home down the Missouri—past the site of Omaha, the mouth of the Platte, the future location of Kansas City, and eastward across present Missouri—they sometimes averaged 70-80 miles a day. Almost daily they met or camped with trading parties moving upriver to trade with the Indians. The Lower Missouri was becoming a thoroughfare. Fellow Americans were a welcome sight. The delicacies they furnished—biscuits, sugar, flour, pork, chocolate, tobacco—were greedily consumed and paid for with corn or a thanks. Whisky, the first since July 4, 1805, brought a grin and a snort. Several men exchanged their leather tunics and beaver hats with traders for linen shirts and cloth hats.

Ears long attuned only to wilderness noises heard news from St. Louis and the East: Alexander Hamilton's death in a duel with Aaron Burr, the founding of Cantonment Belle Fontaine near the mouth of the Missouri, strained governmental relations with England and Spain, Gen. James Wilkinson's assumption of the governorship of Louisiana Territory, and the departure of Capt. Zebulon M. Pike to explore the Red and Arkansas Rivers. The men also learned that most people in the United States—believing rumors they had succumbed to wild animals or Indians, drowned in far-off waters, or suffered enslavement by the Spaniards—had long ago given them up as lost. [147] Yet President Jefferson, who had received no word from the expedition since the keelboat returned from Fort Mandan to St. Louis in the spring of 1805, nevertheless still entertained some hope for its return.

To the surprise and delight of Lewis and Clark, one of the trading parties they met was led by former Capt. Robert McClellan, with whom Clark had served during the 1790's in General Wayne's campaign against the Indians of Ohio and Indiana. With McClellan were Joseph Gravelines and the old Pierre Dorion, who had been associated with the upriver phase of the expedition. The former, hired as an interpreter at the Arikara villages, had returned from the Mandan villages with the keelboat; the latter, who joined as an interpreter not far upriver from St. Charles, had been left behind with the Yankton Sioux to arrange for the visit of chiefs to Washington, D.C.

The two men, under instructions from President Jefferson to make inquiries concerning Lewis and Clark, were carrying messages and gifts from him to the Indians. Gravelines was charged with the dificult task of expressing regret to the Arikaras for the death at Washington, D.C., in April 1806, of Chief Ankedoucharo, whom he had been escorting, and with instructing them in agriculture. Dorion was to help Gravelines pass safely by the hostile Teton Sioux and try to influence some of the chiefs of that tribe to visit President Jefferson.

Another chance occurred to renew an old friendship. John McClallan, also a onetime Army captain and an acquaintance of Lewis, headed another party. He was pursuing a plan that foreshadowed the Santa Fe trade. He intended to travel to the Spanish settlements on the Rio Grande via the Platte River, where he hoped to inveigle some Otos and Pawnees into guiding him to Santa Fe. There he expected that large gifts would convince Spanish officials to establish a route and fix rendezvous points in the Louisiana Territory for trade, which he planned to conduct with packhorse trains.

On the morning of September 20, the two lashed-together canoes that Clark had built on the Upper Yellowstone were set adrift and the party consolidated in the other craft. This was necessary because the eyes of a few of the men had become swollen and inflamed, apparently caused by looking into reflections of the sun on the water, and they were unable to row.

That afternoon, the sight of cows on the bank near La Charette brought enthusiastic shouts. As the voyagers landed at the village, three rounds of small arms fire were returned by nearby trading boats. In the evening, the citizens, whose homes many of the men visited, provided food and entertainment. Dancing with or watching the ladies, the first nonnative women the party had seen in more than 2 years, was a favorite pastime. Departure time in the morning, Sunday, was 7:30 a.m.

Sighting St. Charles late in the afternoon, the boatsmen "plyed thear ores with great dexterity" Clark said, and saluted the enthusiastic and hospitable villagers lining the banks with three rounds from a blunderbuss and small arms fire. Old friends renewed acquaintances during another evening of merriment. Celebration was the new way of life. Cannon boomed a welcome the following night, September 22, at Cantonment Belle Fontaine, on the south bank of the Missouri 3 miles above its mouth. General Wilkinson had established this post in the spring of 1805, the year after the expedition had left Camp Wood, and artillery under Col. Thomas Hunt now occupied it.

Ending of Sgt. John Ordway's journal, dated September 23, 1806, recording the arrival at St. Louis. The entry reads as follows: ". . . the Town and landed oppocit the center of the Town. the people gathred on the Shore and Huzzared three cheers. we unloaded the canoes and carried the baggage all up to a store house in Town drew out the canoes. then the party all considerable much rejoiced that we have the Expedition Completed and now we look for boarding in Town and wait for our Settlement and then we entend to return to our native homes to See our parents once more as we have been so long from them—finis." (American Philosophical Society.)

Journey's end—the triumphant arrival at St. Louis

Dawn of September 23, 1806, brought the last day of the epic voyage. After traversing the last few miles of the river that had borne them so long and they knew so well, the men crossed the Mississippi and briefly visited Camp Wood, the departure point that rainy day 2 years, 4 months, and 10 days before. The boats then swept downstream to St. Louis and docked at noon. Just about everybody in town, hearkening to advance word from St. Charles or Cantonment Belle Fontaine of the arrival of the group, lined the riverfront cheering.

LONG given up for dead, the men of the expedition must have resembled Robinson Crusoes. These strangers to roofs and beds, with a far-off look in their eyes, the first U.S. citizens to cross the continent, were a special breed. Until the day they died, no matter what fate might inflict or where it might scatter them, they would always stand apart from other men—united in memory with their old comrades of the 7,000-mile trip to the Pacific that no one else could ever share.

THE long and momentous "voyage of discovery" had ended. Its manifold consequences were yet to unfold.