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The American flag, with its fifteen stars and fifteen stripes, flew nearby. Lewis’s usual speech was interpreted by Dorion: The Sioux were now subject to a new government and a new Great Father who would send traders to provide them all they needed. In the meantime, Lewis said, he expected the Indians to remain at peace with their neighbors. There were gifts: for the leading chief a flag, a medal, some wampum, and a richly laced army uniform; and for the lesser chiefs, tobacco, medals, and clothing.
    The next day, the chiefs “arranged themselves in a row with elligent pipes of peace all pointing to our Seets.” Although they were friendly, they complained about their poverty and how skimpy the captains’ gifts had been the day before. They wanted more gunpowder and bullets and “a little Milk of the Great Father” - the native term for whiskey.
    The captains put them off with promises, and Dorion offered to stay behind to try to arrange a truce between the various Sioux tribes and their neighbors. After equipping him with gifts to aid in this difficult task, Lewis and Clark continued their journey. Thankful they had had no trouble with the Yankton Sioux, they still faced the warlike Teton Sioux farther upriver.
    The Corps of Discovery had no way of knowing they had narrowly avoided another threat. The Spanish army, informed that the expedition was encroaching on territory claimed by Spain, had sent four detachments of soldiers, mercenaries, and Indians from Sante Fe to intercept them. The objective was to imprison the entire Corps. But by the time the Spaniards reached the Pawnee settlement on the Platte River, they discovered the expedition had moved on days before.
    On September 5, the party saw its first pronghorn antelope, an animal new to American science. Two days later, they encountered another new creature when they discovered an area covered with many holes home to small rodents. Lewis wrote, “I have called [it] the barking squirrel. . . . It’s form is that of the squirrel . . . [but] they bark at you as you approach them, their note being much that of little toy dogs; their yelps are in quick succession and at each they [give] a motion to their tails upwards. . . . It is much more quick active and fleet than it’s form would indicate.”
    As they proceeded, trees along the river grew scarce, but the animals were plentiful. Lewis spent one day ashore to “view the interior of the country” and was overcome by the “immence herds of Buffaloe, deer Elk and Antelopes. . . .” They shot a pelican. Grouse were abundant; porcupines were common. In mid-September, they killed one of the bushy-tailed, howling animals they had been calling gray foxes, which were actually coyotes. The expedition had reached the Great Plains, which Lewis described as “a beautifull bowling-green in find order . . . rich [and] pleasing.”
    On September 21, the expedition had a narrow escape. Clark’s account makes light of his presence of mind, which saved them: “At half past one o’clock this morning the Sand bar on which we Camped began to under mind and give way which allarmed the Serjeant on Guard, the motion of the boat awakened me; I got up & by the light of the moon observed that the Sand had given away both above and below our Camp & was falling in fast. I ordered all hands on as quick as possible & pushed off . . .” Within a few minutes of setting sail, Clark wrote, the bank gave way, and by the time they made it to the opposite shore, their camp had washed away.
    Two days later, they met the Teton Sioux. Three boys swam out and told the men that two large parties of Teton were camped upriver where the next river entered the Missouri. The captains gave the boys tobacco to take to their chiefs, with the message that they would meet the chiefs the next day.
    They did not reach the Sioux the following day. John Colter came in from hunting to report that Indians had stolen his horse, one of the precious two without