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CHAPTER THREE Against the Current
- University of North Texas Press
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25 The Missouri River was a stern antagonist. Its murky water hid fallen logs, which on the trip up from St. Louis had snagged the keelboat and stove a hole in one of the pirogues. Often the men could make no headway with oars against the mainstream current , and sought calmer water near the shore. There they mounted a catwalk and tried to push the craft along with poles fitted against their shoulders. When even this didn’t work, they would break out a long rope and walk along the bank with it, engaging in a grim tug of war with the mighty stream. Sometimes they just jumped into the river and pushed. Canoes would upset or fill with water when faced with rapids or beaver dams.1 It was no wonder that Toussaint, more experienced as a woodsman than a boatman, was in trouble before the expedition had been on the river for a week. There was a foretaste on the first full day. Bucking a strong northwest wind, one of the canoes filled with water. Half a bag of biscuit and two-thirds of a barrel of gunpowder were soaked.2 Against the Current CHAPTER THREE Chapter Three 26 On Saturday,April l3, with Toussaint at the tiller, a sudden squall threatened an even more serious loss. The wind had been favorable all day, and the explorers had ordered both the fore-and-aft spritsail and the smaller square sail hoisted on the white pirogue. They made good time until the squall came up about two P.M., turning the craft on its side. Toussaint panicked and threw the pirogue with its side to the wind. The spritsail whirled so violently on its diagonal pole that the boat nearly overturned. Had it done so, its priceless cargo of instruments, papers, medicine, and trade goods would have been swept away by the Missouri. Lewis stepped in and ordered Drouillard to take over. With Drouillard’s steady hand at the helm the sails were quickly taken in and the vessel was sailing before the wind again. “We fortunately escaped,” Lewis said. Fortunate indeed. They were more than 200 yards from shore, amid high waves, with Sacagawea, her infant, and three men who could not swim. Lewis ordered that the boat go on with only its less vulnerable square sail in the wind.3 The next day Sergeant John Ordway noted in his journal, no doubt with relief, that the wind was “gentle from the South.” It carried them past the mouths of two creeks that Toussaint recognized . They flowed into the Missouri just below an island that could hardly be missed. It was two-and-one-half miles long counting its sandbar. Toussaint said he had once camped on the uppermost of the two streams for several weeks with a Hidatsa Indian hunting party. Ordway said the interpreter “had been to the head of it which is further up the Missourie than any white man has been.” Not quite. Toussaint said two Frenchmen who were with him lost their way and straggled a few miles farther.Although one of the Frenchmen , Jean Baptiste Lepage, was now part of their permanent party, the explorers could not determine how far the stragglers had gone. They named the stream Charbonneau Creek. The honor was not to last, however. It is now called Bear Den Creek.4 [3.95.233.107] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 04:50 GMT) Against the Current 27 A few mornings later, Clark, vexed by needing to referee a squabble over a beaver caught in two traps, walked up a hill to clear his head. The river, he could see, took a deep bend toward the south near what is now the Montana border. Deciding to investigate , he took Toussaint with him. As Toussaint could not swim, he may well have preferred walking to the perils of the river. Sacagawea came along with the child Baptiste in her arms. There were many such walks. Sacagawea would bring the captain the yellow fruit of the Missouri currant, or wild licorice, or the turnip-like root vegetable that Lewis called the “white apple.” As early as April 9, Lewis had written, “When we halted for dinner the squaw busied herself in serching for the wild artichokes which the mice collect and deposit in large hoards. this operation . . . soon proved successful and she procured a good quantity of these roots.”5 Toussaint was proving himself worth his pay as a cook, making...