Clark on the Yellowstone

The Mountain Crow and Awatixa Hidatsa share a common ancestry as do the River Crow with the Hidatsa proper. During the expedition, no one would see any Crow people, but those people certainly noticed the expedition passing through stealing all the horses Clark had with him.

On 23 March 1806, once again battling the rising spring runoff, as it had each of the two previous years on the Missouri, the Corps of Discovery started up the Columbia River towards home.

Dividing into as many as five separate details was part of a bold, diplomatic plan to achieve three of the objectives set by President Jefferson.

Pryor and six privates had successfully driven forty-one horses all the way to the Yellowstone Valley, apparently without any trouble. Then, smoke on the horizon. Twenty-four horses stolen on the twentieth. Seventeen taken on the twenty-fifth.

As he started over the mountains at today’s Bozeman they observed several Indian and buffalo roads heading northeast across the mountains. Clark reported, “the indian woman who has been of great Service to me as a pilot through this Country recommends a gap.”

“This smoke must be raisd. by the Crow Indians in that direction as a Signal for us, or other bands. I think it most probable that they have discovered our trail.”

One week and a hundred miles after starting down the Yellowstone River, Clark finally found cottonwood trees large enough for building canoes. That night some Indians made off with half their horses.

While stinging from having so many of his horses stolen, Clark wrote a speech to the Crow Indians imploring them to return the booty. After all, he needed those horses to complete the captain’s bold diplomatic plan.

Pryor was to proceed downriver to the mouth of the Bighorn River, where Clark, with the canoes, would help him and his detail across the Yellowstone to its south bank. But they happened upon a good fording place at today’s Billings, and seized the opportunity.

On 25 July 1806, Clark and his contingent of nine men, plus York, Toussaint Charbonneau, Sacagawea, and little Jean Baptiste, arrived at “a remarkable rock Situated in an extensive bottom, on the Star[boar]d. [south] Side of the river.”

Members of the Lewis and Clark expedition carved, burned, or painted their names or initials and the dates when they did so, more than fourteen times according to the journals. They were practicing what had long been European explorers’ legitimate means for claiming dominion over other people’s land.

Around midday he passed the mouth of a tributary “40 yards wid Shallow and muddy,” the banks of which can be faintly discerned near the horizon in the picture, and identified it as the stream the Mandan chief Sheheke had called Oak-tar-pon-er.

On 30 July 1806 Clark and his party camped near the mouth of the War har sah, or Powder River. He summarized the Yellowstone’s attractions, directing most of his attention toward opportunities for immediate expansion of the fur trade.

On the Yellowstone, Clark waits for a large herd of buffalo to cross. On the Missouri, Lewis passes the Musselshell River while Pryor’s group tries to catch up to Clark. Everybody is slowed by the weather.

In the morning, Pryor arrives at Clark’s camp having paddled two bull boats down the Yellowstone River. Lewis sets up a camp near present-day Williston to make clothes, repair boats, hunt, and make jerky.

After splitting up into five separate details over five weeks earlier, all the members of the Corps of Discovery were finally reunited 142 miles downriver from the mouth of the Yellowstone.

Clark’s map of 1814 shows his post-expeditionary conclusions regarding the lay of the land from just west of the Three Forks of the Missouri River, roughly 230 air miles eastward along the Yellowstone to the Tongue River.

In 1902, Wheeler followed the Northern Pacific’s course over Bozeman Pass and the Yellowstone River promoting both the railroad and the Lewis and Clark Centennial.