The mouth of Portage Creek on the Missouri River
The Portage
by Phil Scriver
Although the actual portage of men and equipment around the five falls of the Missouri River required eleven days starting on June 22 and was completed by July 2, the total time from June 17 through July 15 was a flurry of activities. While Clark was surveying a portage route Lewis was getting the baggage ready and excess items cached; the white pirogue was pulled onto shore and stored for future use and the dugout canoes were taken upstream to a point they could be taken out of the water and hauled overland. If this wasn’t enough to be done Lewis sent hunters out to maintain the food supply and to get elk hides to cover the iron framed boat. To even further complicate things Sacajawea was deathly ill.
When Jefferson and Lewis were making the initial plans for exploring the northwest they determined the route would be to traverse the Missouri to its headwaters then make a short overland portage to the headwaters of the Columbia. They then would follow that river to the Pacific Ocean. The best geographic knowledge of the time supported the theory that if the waters of these two river systems did not join a short half-day portage would be required. So the plan was formulated to take the pirogues as far as the portage where they would be cached. After portaging to the waters of the Columbia the collapsible iron framed boat would be assembled to replace the pirogues for the trip down river to the ocean. On the return trip, since the iron framed boat would be very light and easily carried by a few men, it would be taken over the portage and used for the trip back down the Missouri along with the pirogues.
But the realities of the route the Expedition followed forced changes to these plans. One of the pirogues was cached at the mouth of the Marias, along with various other items and food that would be retrieved on the return trip. By the time the Expedition reached the great falls they knew the other pirogue was too large and heavy to be portaged around those falls so it too would have to be cached and the iron-framed boat assembled to replace the pirogues. The portage changed in meaning as the Captains realized the series of five waterfalls were a difficult obstacle to overcome instead of merely a landmark. As soon as the Expedition was settled into their Lower Portage Camp preparations for making the portage got underway.
Clark Surveys a Route
On June 17th Captain Clark took Willard, Colter and three others to start laying out the portage route. Clark says they left Lower Portage Camp at 8 a.m. traveling up the Missouri River then up Portage Creek (frequently referred to as the small river) to the spot they could start the trek across country portaging around the falls. After reaching flat ground above the river canyon and skirting two ravines that fed into the river canyon, the survey party struck the river at the first falls. They followed the river to determine how far they had to go before putting their canoes back into the water to continue their journey.
Clark’s journal entries for this day and the next describe four of the five falls, Giant Springs, Medicine River and the White Bear Islands. He measured the height of each falls with a spirit level, marked a cottonwood tree with his name and the date, and had time to comment on the many buffalo carcasses in the river and formulate a theory why they were so plentiful. The survey crew camped the second night, June 18, at what became Upper Portage Camp. While at that camp the party shot a grizzly, seven buffalo and one calf, one beaver and one elk. In separate incidents Willard and Colter were each chased by grizzly bears. Willard eluded his, but Colter went in the water before Clark was able to scare the bear away.
Clark and his survey party returned to Lower Portage Camp late on the 20th having surveyed “a tolerable good road” to portage the Expedition’s baggage across the prairies
.
Preparations
After Clark and his crew left to survey the portage, Lewis sent two hunters out to get elk for skins to cover the iron boat. He set six other men work building the wagons for hauling the Expedition’s baggage across the prairie. The rest of the crew were put to work unloading the white pirogue and spreading the baggage to dry and be repacked and readied for the portage. After the pirogue was emptied it was dragged into a willow thicket where it was secured and camouflaged. Lewis planned to use it on the return trip. Three men were detailed to build a cache for storing excess baggage; another crew was detailed to take five canoes up the portage creek to the point they would start the overland trip. There the canoes were beached to dry out. One canoe was left at Lower Portage Camp for the hunters to use to cross the river when game was on the north side.
Hunters and Hides
A hunting detail was sent out on the 17th to get elk. They stayed out all night but still returned the following day with no elk. Although buffalo were plentiful and were used to maintain a plentiful food supply, getting elk hides was essential for constructing the iron frame boat.
The hunters had been staying in the area of the Lower Portage Camp with no success in getting elk so on the 19th Lewis sent three of the best hunters upriver about 15 miles to hunt up the Medicine River in hope of better success. They were to be gone for several days to give them the best possible chance to get elk from that area. Other hunters were out daily to maintain the meat supply, primarily with buffalo, however deer and antelope were shot too. Grizzly bear were pursued whenever seen because the oil rendered from the fat was highly valued for cooking.
After the Upper Portage Camp was established Lewis went up the Medicine River looking for the three hunters that had been sent to that area four days earlier. He found one of the men who had dried 600 pounds of buffalo meat but had no elk. The other two hunters were nowhere to be found. The story of the other two hunters unfolded over the next two days and Lewis learns they had shot buffalo and dried 800 pounds of meat, but they, too had shot no elk. As the main party worked getting everything portaged hunters continued their efforts to get sufficient elk hides having limited success upstream from the Upper Camp. They eventually got 28 elk, but only had enough hides to cover 7 of the 8 sections of the boat. The last section was covered with buffalo hide. While this was not what Lewis wanted, he was quickly learning that the Expedition had to make do the best they could with whatever was at hand.
Although the hunters failed to get enough elk hides to completely cover the boat, their efforts at maintaining a good food supply were well done. During the month the Expedition spent near the Great Falls everyone ate as well or better than they ate at any other time of the journey including while at Camp Dubois before the journey began.
The Portage Begins
By June 21 all the baggage had been dried and repacked for hauling overland, selected items had been cached and the white pirogue had been pulled out of the water and store for later use when the Expedition returned the following year. Everything was ready for the portage to begin. A canoe and baggage would be loaded onto each wagon. In preparation for the first trip across the portage baggage was hauled from Lower Portage Camp up onto the plain while one canoe was moved from Portage Creek to the rendezvous point where the baggage waited.
The portage was to be done is a series of trips using the two wagons to haul as much as they could each trip. The baggage would be carried three miles up out of the Missouri River canyon to the plains where they would rendezvous with the canoes that had been taken up the hill from the takeout spot on Portage Creek. Lewis, Gass, Shields and Rueben Fields were to stay at the Upper Camp to receive the baggage and assemble the iron framed boat. Clark remained at the Lower Camp to oversee operations there while Sgt Ordway took charge of the actual portaging of the baggage and canoes. Because the only wood to be found was softwood tongues, axletrees, etc were constantly breaking causing delays while the repairs were made.
Early morning on the 22nd the portage began. The crew went five miles to Willow Run where they stopped to eat and repair the wagons before continuing. The crew almost made it to the Upper Portage Camp, getting within a half mile before the wagons again broke down. It was just after dark so everyone took what they could carry and continued to camp. The next morning the wagons were repaired and the baggage brought into camp along with the canoe. Clark and the portage crew returned to the Lower Portage Camp. The wagons were hauled back across the portage then two canoes were brought up from Portage Creek and the next load of baggage was taken to the rendezvous. Everything was ready for an early start on the second trip the 24th.
The portage crews started out from the three mile rendezvous point the morning of the 24th. Clark had gone that far with them but found his feet were “very sore from six days continuous walking over the hard, rutted ground” so he returned to the Lower Camp leaving Sgt Ordway to supervise the crew making its way across the portage. They reached the Upper Camp late in the evening. This was the day that a sail was rigged on one of the wagons and canoes and the crew “was saleing on dry land.” The wind was strong enough to equal the effort of four men pulling on the wagon.
An evening storm quickly covered the ground with small hail before turning to rain that lasted an hour. Clark recorded his amazement that on the north side of the Missouri all the gullies were running full of water while on the south side the ground was hardly even wet.
Clark and Charbonneau were the only men left at the Lower Camp and, although Clark was sick, they took the canoe that was still at that camp out of the water so it could be dried out in preparation for being hauled to the Upper Camp. They spent much of the day rendering three kegs of buffalo tallow and cooking the evening meal in preparation for the portage crew’s return. The crew returned late in the afternoon in time to haul one canoe up to the rendezvous point from Portage Creek and get the next load of baggage ready.
When the portage crew arrived at the Upper Portage Camp late the 26th they had made three trips having hauled five canoes and a good part of the baggage across the prairies. They had been able to make a complete trip from the Lower Camp to the Upper Camp and return in two days. The fourth, and final, trip would take almost as long as the first three had altogether. A storm that swept through the Upper Portage Camp on the 27th just behind the portage crew’s departure was a portent of things to come.
Seven Inch Hail
By the time the Corps of Discovery reached the Great Falls region they had grown accustomed to dealing with extremes of temperature, rain, wind and snow. They were about to learn how to deal with one more extreme-hail. Clark learned the hard way that hailstorms are fast-moving and can become extremely dangerous with no warning.
On June 24 Clark noted that a late afternoon storm passed through the area of Lower Portage Camp that included rain and hail. On the north side of the river all the ravines ran full of water and hail covered the ground like a new snow. But on the south side it hardly wet the ground.
Three days later another hailstorm passed through dropping only a small amount in the area of the Lower Portage Camp. However, it put on a most incredible show of wind, violent thunder and lightening, and great quantities of hail for 2 ½ hours at the Upper Portage Camp. A 1 ½’ layer of hail the size of pigeon eggs covered the ground. During the worst of the storm hailstones would hit the ground then bounce 10 – 12 feet back into the area and travel 30 – 40 feet before hitting the ground again. After the storm passed Lewis measured a number of hailstones that were 7 inches in circumference. He speculated that if one of the stones would have struck a man on the bare head it surely would have knocked him to the ground, possibly even fracturing his skull.
But Mother Nature apparently wasn’t quite done. Two days later while the main portaging party was stuck at Willow Run waiting for the prairies to dry enough to continue the last trip Clark took Charbonneau, Sacajawea, Pomp and York with him to the Great Falls. A brief rain chased them to cover under a rocky ledge in a ravine. That storm was soon followed by another severe rain and hailstorm that Clark said was “more violent than ever I saw before.” Water filled the ravine they were sheltered in to a depth of 15 feet in a matter of minutes, barely allowing time for Clark and his party to escape. They hastily returned to Willow Run where there was some shelter.
That same storm caught most of the portage crew out on the prairie where they had been staging the baggage in preparation for the weather to clear up. When the storm hit everyone dropped their loads and made a mad run for shelter at Willow Run. Two of the men were knocked to the ground by the force of the hailstones that struck them while seven others were “much bloodied and bruised on the legs and thighs. The next day many of the men were bruised and sore from their ordeal.
by Phil Scriver
Although the actual portage of men and equipment around the five falls of the Missouri River required eleven days starting on June 22 and was completed by July 2, the total time from June 17 through July 15 was a flurry of activities. While Clark was surveying a portage route Lewis was getting the baggage ready and excess items cached; the white pirogue was pulled onto shore and stored for future use and the dugout canoes were taken upstream to a point they could be taken out of the water and hauled overland. If this wasn’t enough to be done Lewis sent hunters out to maintain the food supply and to get elk hides to cover the iron framed boat. To even further complicate things Sacajawea was deathly ill.
When Jefferson and Lewis were making the initial plans for exploring the northwest they determined the route would be to traverse the Missouri to its headwaters then make a short overland portage to the headwaters of the Columbia. They then would follow that river to the Pacific Ocean. The best geographic knowledge of the time supported the theory that if the waters of these two river systems did not join a short half-day portage would be required. So the plan was formulated to take the pirogues as far as the portage where they would be cached. After portaging to the waters of the Columbia the collapsible iron framed boat would be assembled to replace the pirogues for the trip down river to the ocean. On the return trip, since the iron framed boat would be very light and easily carried by a few men, it would be taken over the portage and used for the trip back down the Missouri along with the pirogues.
But the realities of the route the Expedition followed forced changes to these plans. One of the pirogues was cached at the mouth of the Marias, along with various other items and food that would be retrieved on the return trip. By the time the Expedition reached the great falls they knew the other pirogue was too large and heavy to be portaged around those falls so it too would have to be cached and the iron-framed boat assembled to replace the pirogues. The portage changed in meaning as the Captains realized the series of five waterfalls were a difficult obstacle to overcome instead of merely a landmark. As soon as the Expedition was settled into their Lower Portage Camp preparations for making the portage got underway.
Clark Surveys a Route
On June 17th Captain Clark took Willard, Colter and three others to start laying out the portage route. Clark says they left Lower Portage Camp at 8 a.m. traveling up the Missouri River then up Portage Creek (frequently referred to as the small river) to the spot they could start the trek across country portaging around the falls. After reaching flat ground above the river canyon and skirting two ravines that fed into the river canyon, the survey party struck the river at the first falls. They followed the river to determine how far they had to go before putting their canoes back into the water to continue their journey.
Clark’s journal entries for this day and the next describe four of the five falls, Giant Springs, Medicine River and the White Bear Islands. He measured the height of each falls with a spirit level, marked a cottonwood tree with his name and the date, and had time to comment on the many buffalo carcasses in the river and formulate a theory why they were so plentiful. The survey crew camped the second night, June 18, at what became Upper Portage Camp. While at that camp the party shot a grizzly, seven buffalo and one calf, one beaver and one elk. In separate incidents Willard and Colter were each chased by grizzly bears. Willard eluded his, but Colter went in the water before Clark was able to scare the bear away.
Clark and his survey party returned to Lower Portage Camp late on the 20th having surveyed “a tolerable good road” to portage the Expedition’s baggage across the prairies
.
Preparations
After Clark and his crew left to survey the portage, Lewis sent two hunters out to get elk for skins to cover the iron boat. He set six other men work building the wagons for hauling the Expedition’s baggage across the prairie. The rest of the crew were put to work unloading the white pirogue and spreading the baggage to dry and be repacked and readied for the portage. After the pirogue was emptied it was dragged into a willow thicket where it was secured and camouflaged. Lewis planned to use it on the return trip. Three men were detailed to build a cache for storing excess baggage; another crew was detailed to take five canoes up the portage creek to the point they would start the overland trip. There the canoes were beached to dry out. One canoe was left at Lower Portage Camp for the hunters to use to cross the river when game was on the north side.
Hunters and Hides
A hunting detail was sent out on the 17th to get elk. They stayed out all night but still returned the following day with no elk. Although buffalo were plentiful and were used to maintain a plentiful food supply, getting elk hides was essential for constructing the iron frame boat.
The hunters had been staying in the area of the Lower Portage Camp with no success in getting elk so on the 19th Lewis sent three of the best hunters upriver about 15 miles to hunt up the Medicine River in hope of better success. They were to be gone for several days to give them the best possible chance to get elk from that area. Other hunters were out daily to maintain the meat supply, primarily with buffalo, however deer and antelope were shot too. Grizzly bear were pursued whenever seen because the oil rendered from the fat was highly valued for cooking.
After the Upper Portage Camp was established Lewis went up the Medicine River looking for the three hunters that had been sent to that area four days earlier. He found one of the men who had dried 600 pounds of buffalo meat but had no elk. The other two hunters were nowhere to be found. The story of the other two hunters unfolded over the next two days and Lewis learns they had shot buffalo and dried 800 pounds of meat, but they, too had shot no elk. As the main party worked getting everything portaged hunters continued their efforts to get sufficient elk hides having limited success upstream from the Upper Camp. They eventually got 28 elk, but only had enough hides to cover 7 of the 8 sections of the boat. The last section was covered with buffalo hide. While this was not what Lewis wanted, he was quickly learning that the Expedition had to make do the best they could with whatever was at hand.
Although the hunters failed to get enough elk hides to completely cover the boat, their efforts at maintaining a good food supply were well done. During the month the Expedition spent near the Great Falls everyone ate as well or better than they ate at any other time of the journey including while at Camp Dubois before the journey began.
The Portage Begins
By June 21 all the baggage had been dried and repacked for hauling overland, selected items had been cached and the white pirogue had been pulled out of the water and store for later use when the Expedition returned the following year. Everything was ready for the portage to begin. A canoe and baggage would be loaded onto each wagon. In preparation for the first trip across the portage baggage was hauled from Lower Portage Camp up onto the plain while one canoe was moved from Portage Creek to the rendezvous point where the baggage waited.
The portage was to be done is a series of trips using the two wagons to haul as much as they could each trip. The baggage would be carried three miles up out of the Missouri River canyon to the plains where they would rendezvous with the canoes that had been taken up the hill from the takeout spot on Portage Creek. Lewis, Gass, Shields and Rueben Fields were to stay at the Upper Camp to receive the baggage and assemble the iron framed boat. Clark remained at the Lower Camp to oversee operations there while Sgt Ordway took charge of the actual portaging of the baggage and canoes. Because the only wood to be found was softwood tongues, axletrees, etc were constantly breaking causing delays while the repairs were made.
Early morning on the 22nd the portage began. The crew went five miles to Willow Run where they stopped to eat and repair the wagons before continuing. The crew almost made it to the Upper Portage Camp, getting within a half mile before the wagons again broke down. It was just after dark so everyone took what they could carry and continued to camp. The next morning the wagons were repaired and the baggage brought into camp along with the canoe. Clark and the portage crew returned to the Lower Portage Camp. The wagons were hauled back across the portage then two canoes were brought up from Portage Creek and the next load of baggage was taken to the rendezvous. Everything was ready for an early start on the second trip the 24th.
The portage crews started out from the three mile rendezvous point the morning of the 24th. Clark had gone that far with them but found his feet were “very sore from six days continuous walking over the hard, rutted ground” so he returned to the Lower Camp leaving Sgt Ordway to supervise the crew making its way across the portage. They reached the Upper Camp late in the evening. This was the day that a sail was rigged on one of the wagons and canoes and the crew “was saleing on dry land.” The wind was strong enough to equal the effort of four men pulling on the wagon.
An evening storm quickly covered the ground with small hail before turning to rain that lasted an hour. Clark recorded his amazement that on the north side of the Missouri all the gullies were running full of water while on the south side the ground was hardly even wet.
Clark and Charbonneau were the only men left at the Lower Camp and, although Clark was sick, they took the canoe that was still at that camp out of the water so it could be dried out in preparation for being hauled to the Upper Camp. They spent much of the day rendering three kegs of buffalo tallow and cooking the evening meal in preparation for the portage crew’s return. The crew returned late in the afternoon in time to haul one canoe up to the rendezvous point from Portage Creek and get the next load of baggage ready.
When the portage crew arrived at the Upper Portage Camp late the 26th they had made three trips having hauled five canoes and a good part of the baggage across the prairies. They had been able to make a complete trip from the Lower Camp to the Upper Camp and return in two days. The fourth, and final, trip would take almost as long as the first three had altogether. A storm that swept through the Upper Portage Camp on the 27th just behind the portage crew’s departure was a portent of things to come.
Seven Inch Hail
By the time the Corps of Discovery reached the Great Falls region they had grown accustomed to dealing with extremes of temperature, rain, wind and snow. They were about to learn how to deal with one more extreme-hail. Clark learned the hard way that hailstorms are fast-moving and can become extremely dangerous with no warning.
On June 24 Clark noted that a late afternoon storm passed through the area of Lower Portage Camp that included rain and hail. On the north side of the river all the ravines ran full of water and hail covered the ground like a new snow. But on the south side it hardly wet the ground.
Three days later another hailstorm passed through dropping only a small amount in the area of the Lower Portage Camp. However, it put on a most incredible show of wind, violent thunder and lightening, and great quantities of hail for 2 ½ hours at the Upper Portage Camp. A 1 ½’ layer of hail the size of pigeon eggs covered the ground. During the worst of the storm hailstones would hit the ground then bounce 10 – 12 feet back into the area and travel 30 – 40 feet before hitting the ground again. After the storm passed Lewis measured a number of hailstones that were 7 inches in circumference. He speculated that if one of the stones would have struck a man on the bare head it surely would have knocked him to the ground, possibly even fracturing his skull.
But Mother Nature apparently wasn’t quite done. Two days later while the main portaging party was stuck at Willow Run waiting for the prairies to dry enough to continue the last trip Clark took Charbonneau, Sacajawea, Pomp and York with him to the Great Falls. A brief rain chased them to cover under a rocky ledge in a ravine. That storm was soon followed by another severe rain and hailstorm that Clark said was “more violent than ever I saw before.” Water filled the ravine they were sheltered in to a depth of 15 feet in a matter of minutes, barely allowing time for Clark and his party to escape. They hastily returned to Willow Run where there was some shelter.
That same storm caught most of the portage crew out on the prairie where they had been staging the baggage in preparation for the weather to clear up. When the storm hit everyone dropped their loads and made a mad run for shelter at Willow Run. Two of the men were knocked to the ground by the force of the hailstones that struck them while seven others were “much bloodied and bruised on the legs and thighs. The next day many of the men were bruised and sore from their ordeal.