Lewis and Clark Read Online Free PDF Page B

pirogue taking them from shore to the anchored keelboat was being handled by an inexperienced man, and coming alongside the boat, he brought the pirogue against the anchor cable and snapped it. The keelboat started to drift away, and Clark was forced to order in a loud voice: “all hands up & at their ores.” The order, and the bustle of men rushing to their stations, alarmed The Partisan, who shouted to his camp that the Omahas were attacking. In about ten minutes, Clark wrote, the bank was lined with armed warriors, with Chief Black Buffalo at their head.
    Despite the shouting about the Omahas, the captains suspected that the Sioux were afraid the expedition was trying to leave and had raised a false alarm to stop it. That guess was confirmed by Cruzatte, who spoke the Omaha language. There were a number of Omaha captives taken by the Sioux on a recent raid in the village, and they had warned Cruzatte that the Sioux planned to stop the expedition if they could.
    With its anchor lost, the keelboat was exposed to possible attacks, and Lewis and Clark spent a sleepless night. In the morning, a group of Indians boarded the boat, and the captains had difficulty getting them to go ashore. When everyone but Black Buffalo had gone and the crew was ready to cast off, there was fresh trouble: Several warriors were sitting on the mooring rope. The exasperated commanders prepared to shoot, but Clark managed to touch the pride of Black Buffalo by implying that he had no control over his men. Whereupon “. . . he jurked the rope from them and handed it to the bows-man [and] we then Set out under a Breeze from the S.E.”
    In fact, Black Buffalo, was inclined to be friendly, although he did not dare show it openly in front of The Partisan, who hated whites and was behind all the trouble. Black Buffalo remained with the party as they proceeded upriver, probably to prevent any further mishaps. Several Teton Sioux on the banks invited them to come ashore, but Lewis and Clark refused, sending them tobacco and good advice instead. On the second day, the keelboat hit a log and heeled over so far she almost capsized. This was too much for Black Buffalo, who insisted on being put ashore. In any case, he said, the expedition was past Teton Sioux territory and would have no more trouble.

 

Once they left Teton Sioux country, Lewis and Clark continued up the Missouri. The channels between the sand bars were becoming shallower each day, but the captains lightened the keelboat by transferring some of their stores to the pirogues. The men still had to strain with ropes and poles to get the heavy boat through the shoals - and the weather was becoming colder.
    On October 8, the party reached an Arikara village, which was occupied by the Sioux, and met two French traders who could serve as interpreters. The Arikaras were not tepee-dwelling nomads like the Sioux; they lived in houses with roofs made of willow branches covered with a layer of mud. Each village was surrounded by a rough picketed fence, and inside its protective wall, the Arikaras cultivated beans, squash, pumpkins, and tobacco. The Indians supplemented their diet by occasionally hunting buffalo.
    For two days, Lewis and Clark met with the Indians, discussing the new government. The Arikaras, unlike the Tetons, seemed friendly, but once they discovered Clark’s slave, York, they became more interested in him than anything else. They had never seen an African. York, who had a penchant for acting, awed the Indians with feats of strength and told them he had been a wild animal “and lived upon people” until Clark had caught him and tamed him. His master felt he overdid it somewhat: “Those Indians wer much astonished at my Servent, they never Saw a black man before, all flocked around him & examind him from top to toe, he Carried on the joke and made himself more turribal than we wished him to doe.”
    On October 11 and 12, the captains visited the other two Arikara villages – only