A Note from Cottonwood Corners

Consistent with naval law and practice, from the beginning of the expedition Lewis and Clark ordered the men in charge of the boats to fly the American flag.  It was important to them that those who they met along the river knew that they represented the United States of America.

The 13th state ratified the Constitution on May 29, 1790.  Fourteen years later, almost to the day, Lewis and Clark began their journey from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean.

Eighty percent of the Corps of Discovery’s round trip expedition was by water.  A total of twenty-five vessels of various types — the custom-built keeled boat (called the ‘boat’ or ‘barge’ but never the ‘keelboat’), two large flat-bottomed rowboats called ‘pirogues,’ fifteen dugout canoes made from logs, four canoes bought from Indians, one stolen Indian canoe, and two buffalo-skin bull boats.

Between St. Louis and Mandan, the “keel boat” and two “pirogues” were used to transport their supplies, scientific equipment, clothing, and other necessities up the river.  The two “pirogues” served as supplementary cargo carriers accompanying the barge (keel boat) from the mouth of the Missouri to the Mandan villages.  One of these became the command boat on the return trip from the Marias River in Montana to St. Louis.  One “pirogue” was painted red and the other white, undoubtedly so that they could easily be distinguished at a distance.

As the “Corps of Discovery” was ascending the Missouri above the Great Falls in Montana, they anticipated meeting Sacagawea’s people any day, and they saw evidence that unidentified Indians were nearby, perhaps watching them.  On July 23, 1805, Lewis “ordered the canoes to hoist their small flags in order that should the Indians see us they might discover that we were not Indians, nor their enemies.”

Furthermore, American naval tradition dictated (up until 1912) that flags on small boats were to be of the 13-star, 13-stripe design established by the Flag Act of 1777.  On August 6, 1804, Clark noted that the red pirogue had “lost her Colours” in a severe thunderstorm near Omaha

How many flags they had with them is not known, but if they had no replacement, the captains might have considered the loss potentially serious.  The absence of “colours” could have suggested that the boat was out of commission.  This would have made it fair game for fresh-water thieves or pirates who could assume that its crewmen were prepared to surrender.

The captains might not have expected Indian observers to think of this; however, experienced British or Spanish boatmen may have taken the sign seriously.  They were still found traveling on the lower Missouri River.

Lewis listed a “Keeled Boat” in his pre-expedition shopping list, but after he finally got it, he and the other members of the expedition simply called it “the boat” (190 times) or less often, “the barge” (32 times).

In fact, the term “keel boat” — spelled either as two words or one — appears only four times in all their journals.  It is then used only in reference to the watercraft used by other travelers they met on the lower Missouri, coming or going.

Altogether, the men carved fifteen dugout canoes.  At Fort Mandan they hewed six from cottonwood logs, which they paddled, poled, and towed up the Missouri to the Great Falls.

Above the falls, they carved two more cottonwood canoes to continue their journey.  They abandoned one at the confluence of the Jefferson and Wisdom (today the Big Hole) Rivers, and stashed the rest at Fortunate Camp.  Here, they transferred their baggage to horses which they purchased from the Lemhi Shoshones.

West of the Rockies they used ponderosa pine logs to craft five new canoes.  One of those was wrecked at the Columbia Falls, and was replaced with one the captains purchased from the Indians.

The Corps left Fort Clatsop on March 23, 1806 in three of their own pine dugouts, four Indian canoes they bought, plus one they found.  All were either sold or destroyed by the time they reached the Columbia Falls.  It was here that they bought horses for the overland journey back to the Nez Perce village where they had left their Shoshone horses.  They carved one small ponderosa pine canoe for commuting back and forth across the Clearwater River.  Later, it broke up on a large rock and sank.

After they had crossed the Continental Divide and was back at Fortunate Camp in early July of 1806, Sergeant Ordway and eleven men retrieved their five cottonwood canoes and paddled them down to the Great Falls of the Missouri.  Meanwhile, Clark proceeded overland to the Yellowstone River and made two small dugouts a few miles above today’s Billings.    Because they were unstable, Clark had them battened together, catamaran style.

Generally, the dugouts which the member of the Corps constructed were about thirty feet long and up to three feet wide.  They had a capacity of between two and three tons, including four to six men.  They probably knelt in order to keep the center of gravity low and prevent tipping.  Empty, each canoe may have weighed about a ton.

 

Author Clarence Shoemaker, originally published in the Gregory Times-Advocate on June 29, 2022