Interpreters with Lewis and Clark: The Story of Sacagawea and Toussaint Charbonneau

CHAPTER FIVE Fort Clatsop

47 Toussaint Charbonneau’s first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean came toward evening on November 18, 1805. It may have been his first sighting of any ocean. Or perhaps, between his birth near Montreal and his arrival at the Mandan villages, he had made it down the St. Lawrence River and seen the Atlantic. The view he saw of the Pacific was a stunning one. He also had his first look at a California condor that Reubin Fields shot on their first day out. Three days earlier, the Corps of Discovery had settled in for a ten-day stay on the east side of what is now called Baker Bay on the Washington shore of the Columbia. On November 17, Lewis led a party to Cape Disappointment, a promontory at the northern lip of the river’s mouth, and then several miles up the coast. That night, Clark announced he was leaving at dawn to make the same trip. Anyone wanting to go with him should be ready bright and early. Toussaint was among the ten or eleven men who responded. The others, Clark said, were “well Contented with that part of the Ocean & its curiosities which could be seen Fort Clatsop CHAPTER FIVE Chapter Five 48 from the vicinity of our Camp.” After their trip across the continent one can perhaps hardly blame them, but they missed a spectacular jaunt.1 It did not begin auspiciously. Clark and his men ran into cloudy weather all day and a little rain at night. They went around Baker Bay, first hiking on a sandy beach and then making their way over hills covered with evergreens and thick undergrowth. Reaching Cape Disappointment, they climbed 150 feet to the top of a rocky hill, believed to be McKenzie Head in the present Fort Canby State Park. From this point, the hard trudging and climbing was all worth it. “The men,” said Clark, “appear much Satisfied with their trip beholding with estonishment the high waves dashing against the rocks & this emence ocian.”2 Cape Disappointment, at the northern edge of the mouth of the Columbia River, where Toussaint Charbonneau got his first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. “. . . beholding with estonishment the high waves dashing against the rocks and this emence ocian.” The next day, Toussaint and his companions hiked along the Long Beach Peninsula, seen from North Head on the cape. (Photo by Bill Wagner, courtesy Long Beach Peninsula Visitors Bureau) Fort Clatsop 49 They camped that night among the ponds and evergreen woods of the shoreline just north of McKenzie Head. In the morning they stumbled across rock outcroppings onto a sandy beach. About ten miles north of Cape Disappointment, they turned back, cut through the woods and camped on the east side of Wallacut River. Late in the afternoon of the 20th they returned to the main camp, bringing with them the condor—nine feet across the wings and three feet ten inches from bill to tail. Gass, who had stayed at the camp, described the bird as “a remarkably large buzzard.”3 Equally remarkable to the explorers was a robe of sea-otter skins that one of the Indians had and the captains wanted. Gass called it “the finest fur I ever saw.” Lewis and Clark offered two blankets , but the owner said he would not take five. He wanted some of the blue beads that the Indians prized for decorating moccasins and other gear. The only blue beads in camp were on a belt that Sacagawea wore around her waist. The commanders traded her belt for the robe. Later they gave her a blue cloth coat, presumably one of their uniform coats. No one indicated whether Sacagawea was consulted about the transaction.4 In the increasingly dreary weather, the explorers’ thoughts were turning to the need for winter quarters. At an evening meeting on November 24, the commanders asked their men where they thought it would be best to look. The majority opted for locating on the south side of the river, provided they found good hunting. Both captains agreed with this. Sacagawea also agreed, but specified it should be a place with plenty of wapato, a root plant something like a potato.Although both Sacagawea and York expressed their opinions, Toussaint apparently did not express his. Fragmentary notes left by Clark show only blanks after his name.5 On November 29, Lewis and five men braved showers of rain...