Through Wallula Gap

Meeting Chief Yelleppit

Before passing through the Wallula Gap on the sunny Saturday of 19 October 1805, the captains met with Great Chief of the Walla Wallas, Yelleppit, “a bold handsom Indian, with a dignified countenance about 35 years of age, about 5 feet 8 inches high and well perpotiond.” They hit it off well, and Yelleppit begged them to stay awhile, but with a promise to visit a little longer on their way home, they excused themselves and proceeded on. They kept their word, though, and on 29 April 1806, Yelleppit threw a big party for them.

Twin Sisters, Wallula Gap

Although the Twin Sisters were not mentioned by the journalists, several nearby landmarks were. Chief Yelleppit’s village was across the river and just upstream from this location. The Walla Walla River enters just upstream to the right. Finally, the Corps were camped on or near the island to left of the twin towers when Chief Yelleppit came to visit them.

Mountain Sightings

They encountered several rapids that nineteenth of October, including “a verry bad one” about two miles long. While the men cautiously jockeyed the canoes through it, Clark climbed a 200-foot “clift” from which he could see many miles across the high desert. But the sight that arrested his attention was the tip of a snow-capped peak on the western horizon. He figured it was one of the mountains named by Captain George Vancouver on his hundred-mile exploration up the Columbia in 1792. It would be, Clark thought, either Mt. Hood or Mt. St. Helens.

He was wrong. It was a live strato volcano that would soon be named Mount Adams. In 1839, inspired by Lewis and Clark’s naming of Mount Jefferson, southeast of Mount Hood, for their commander-in-chief, one Hall J. Kelly would launch a well-intentioned but short-lived scheme to turn the Cascade Range into the Presidential Range.^[1]The long, long history of the mountain, and the short story of its name, can be read at U.S. Geological Service’s website, http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Glossary/StratoVolcano/description_ … Continue reading Clark estimated the mountain was “destant about 120 miles,” then crossed out those figures and wrote 156 miles. He was right the first time.

Sacagawea Helps Out

The high point of the day was an incident that dramatized Sacagawea‘s real importance to the expedition, surpassing the feeble fiction that she guided the whole trip. It began when Clark bagged a crane and a duck in full view of a couple of Umatilla Indians, who fled and spread an alarm, whereupon all the terrified villagers cowered in their lodges, awaiting certain death. Clark, however, with the help of George Drouillard and the Field brothers, Joe and Reubin, at length cajoled and bribed some men into coming out and smoking with them. Then came the explanation. “They said we came from the clouds &c &c and were not men &c. &c.” Later, Nicholas Biddle, after pressing Clark for more details, summarized the situation:

Unperceived by them, captain Clark had shot the white crane, which they had seen fall just before he appeared to their eyes: the duck which he had killed also fell close by him, and as there were a few clouds flying over at the moment, they connected the fall of the birds and his sudden appearance, and believed that he had himself dropped from the clouds; the noise of the rifle, which they had never heard before, being considered merely as the sound to announce so extraordinary an event.^[2]Nicholas Biddle, History of the expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark. . . . (2 vols., 1814; reprint, with an introduction by John Bakeless, New York: Heritage Press, 1962), I:297.

Sacagawea’s timely appearance restored the Indians’ courage and congeniality. The cowering villagers “immediately all came out and appeared to assume new life,” wrote Clark, continuing, “The sight of This Indian woman, wife to one of our interprs. confirmed those people of our friendly intentions, as no woman ever accompanies a war party of Indians in this quarter.”

To top off the day, there was music, and Clark gave us the one hint in all the journals that there was more than one fiddle player in the Corps: “Two of our party Peter Crusat & Gibson played on the violin which delighted [the Indians] greatly.” Maybe George Gibson‘s performance didn’t come up to critical standards, for it appears to have been both his first gig and his last.