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THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION Life at Fort Clatsop It was on the seventh of November, 1805, that the explorers recorded in their diary their first vision of the ocean which for so many months had beckoned them. Resolved to spend the winter on the coast, the party found a landing-place near the estuary of the Columbia River, and looked about for a temporary camp site. For days on end the wind blew in from the sea (which they refused to call "the Pacific") and the rain fell without ceasing. Bedding and stores were soaked; sails and pieces of canvas, raised to give temporary shelter., fell to bits; the men had scarcely enough protection to cover their beds. They were wet and hungry. "We have nothing to eate but a little pounded fish," runs the melancholy record. "Aded to this the robes of ourselves and men are all rotten from being continually wet, and we cannot procure others, or blankets in these places." Day after day members of the party went out to hunt, but "without suckcess." While the hunters searched the wooded hills on the storm-driven coast for elk, others made salt by evaporating sea water in an improvised cairn that is still visible. In spare time they mended socks and leather clothes that were by now in sad need of repair. The hunt for game being at last rewarded (one hundred and thirty-one elk were killed during the winter), plans went forward for the building of huts near the places where the most elk had been found. About the middle of December they began to erect the winter cabins on a site six miles south of Astoria, on the "first point of high land," near a stream that now bears the name of the Captains. The logs they used were, in Clark's words, "the streightest and most butifullest." During the days that followed they were busy "chinking, dobbing, cutting out dores, etc." Constantly the workman were beaten by gusts of rain, hail and snow, all about them. "Rained as usual all night, continued all day without any intermition," was the burden of repeated entries. Without exception the men were thinly clad, and had no proper protection for their feet. By Christmas eve the huts were covered in. "At daylight," wrote Clark, December 25, 1805, " we were awoke by the discharge of fire arms of all our party and a Selute, Shouts and a Song which the whole party joined in under our windows after which they retired to their rooms, were chearfull all the morning." Christmas presents were exchanged-tobacco, handkerchiefs, underwear. The Captains received moccasins and white weasels' tails, the last-named from Sacagawea. Dinner consisted of elk meat unsalted, "some spoiled pounded fish and a few roots." Before the New Year, a stockade about fifty feet square was completed. A long cabin containing three rooms were ranged along the upper wall; along the lower wall were four cabins. The parade ground measured twenty by fifty feet. New Year's Day was celebrated by a dinner of elk, "wappetoe root" and "pure water." A sentinel guarded the fort night and day to watch for the possible approach of hostile savages. The journals kept by the Captains and Patrick Gass, the Irish carpenter, give us a realistic of life within the rude little fort, called "Clatsop" for a tribe of Indians that lived in the vicinity. Indians of various coast tribes brought food and skins to barter for blue and white beads, fish-hooks, files and tobacco. Both Lewis and Clark were unremitting in their inquiry into the habits of the aborigines who paid them curious visits. They spent weeks in the surrounding forests observing plants and animals, and setting down painstaking descriptions. On one of his walks about the region, Captain Clark climbed to the top of an eminence from which he saw "the grandest and most pleasing prospects" that his eye had ever surveyed...ocean waves breaking on the rocks of Cape Disappointment, Indian villages huddled beneath glowering promontories, "the meanderings of three handsom streams, the Columbia River with its Bays and Small rivers, high land, inoumerable rocks of emence Size out at a great distance from the shore." Anyone that has visited the coast below Astoria, Oregon, will recognize the description. the height, now known as Cape Falcon, was called by the leaders of the party, "Clark's Point of View." By the end of March the scarcity of game became so serious that it was determined to leave Fort Clatsop and begin the ascent of the river. Canoes were made ready, salt was packed in kegs, the fort was presented to the friendly chief, "Comowool," and the last week in the month the part was ready for the homeward journey. Until about the year 1860, the remains of the winter station of the explorers were still visible; also the path they used to reach the beach. Our gravure shows the site of the fort as it looks today. The man pointing toward the Lewis and Clark River is Silas Smith, a grandson of the Clatsop chief, Comowool .
Written for the Mentor by Ruth Kedzie Wood Copyright 1919 |
