Day 22 - All day in Great Falls, Montana - 20 Miles (estimate)

The Lewis and Clark Expedition discovered the Great Falls of the Missouri on June 13, 1805, and Meriwether Lewis was the first white person to see this magnificent wonder of nature.

Today Concetta and I set out to "discover" the Great Falls of the Missouri for ourselves, and at one point we actually thought we had done so. As it turned out, we had only arrived at Black Eagle Falls, and our quarry was still more miles downriver. If the rain that has been hampering our movements off and on for the past two days lets up, we're going to make another attempt. We have a map, so perhaps we'll be able to locate it the second time around.

Here's a little more Wiki information on the Lewis and Clark Expedition:

The United States purchased the area around the Great Falls of the Missouri from France (which claimed the area despite Native American habitation) in 1803, as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Thomas Jefferson, then President of the United States, had long desired to send an expedition into the area. Jefferson sought and won permission and funding for an expedition from Congress in January 1803.

On May 14, 1804, the Lewis and Clark Expedition departed St. Louis, Missouri to map the course of the Missouri River; establish whether a river route to the Pacific Ocean existed; study the Indian tribes, botany, geology, terrain and wildlife in the region; and evaluate whether British and French Canadian hunters and trappers in the area posed a challenge to American control over the region.

Expedition leaders Meriwether Lewis and William Clark first learned of the "great falls" from the Mandan Indians while wintering at Fort Mandan from November 2, 1804 until April 7, 1805. When Lewis saw the falls, he wrote in his expedition diary:

"...my ears were saluted with the agreeable sound of a fall of water and advancing a little further I saw the spray arrise above the plain like a collumn of smoke which would frequently dispear again in an instant caused I presume by the wind which blew pretty hard from the S. W. I did not however loose my direction to this point which soon began to make a roaring too tremendious to be mistaken for any cause short of the great falls of the Missouri. ... I hurryed down the hill which was about 200 feet high and difficult of access, to gaze on this sublimely grand specticle. ... immediately at the cascade the river is about 300 yds. wide; about ninety or a hundred yards of this next the Lard. bluff is a smoth even sheet of water falling over a precipice of at least

eighty feet, the remaining part of about 200 yards on my right formes the grandest sight I ever beheld, the hight of the fall is the same of the other but the irregular and somewhat projecting rocks below receives the water in it's passage down and brakes it into a perfect white foam which assumes a thousand forms in a moment sometimes flying up in jets of sparkling foam to the hight of fifteen or twenty feet and are scarcely formed before large roling bodies of the same beaten and foaming water is thrown over and conceals them. in short the rocks seem to be most happily fixed to present a sheet of the whitest beaten froath for 200 yards in length and about 80 feet perpendicular. the water after descending strikes against the butment before mentioned or that on which I stand and seems to reverberate and being met by the more impetuous courant they role and swell into half formed billows of great hight which rise and again disappear in an instant. this butment of rock defends a handsom little bottom of about three acres which is deversified and agreeably shaded with some cottonwood trees; in the lower extremity of the bottom there is a very thick grove of the same kind of trees which are small, in this wood there are several Indian lodges formed of sticks. ... from the reflection of the sun on the spray or mist which arrises from these falls there is a beatifull rainbow produced which adds not a little to the beauty of this majestically grand senery. after wrighting this imperfect discription I again

viewed the falls and was so much disgusted with the imperfect idea which it conveyed of the scene that I determined to draw my pen across it and begin agin, but then reflected that I could not perhaps succeed better than pening the first impressions of the mind; I wished for the pencil of Salvator Rosa or the pen of Thompson, that I might be enabled to give to the enlightened world some just idea of this truly magnifficent and sublimely grand object, which has from the commencement of time been concealed from the view of civilized man; but this was fruitless and vain. I most sincerely regreted that I had not brought a crimee [camera] obscura with me by the assistance of which even I could have hoped to have done better but alas this was also out of my reach; I therefore with the assistance of my pen only indeavoured to traces some of the stronger features of this seen by the assistance of which and my recollection aided by some able pencil I hope still to give to the world some faint idea of an object which at this moment fills me with such pleasure and astonishment, and which of its kind I will venture to ascert is second to but one in the known world. ..."

The falls which Lewis had seen were the lowest of the five falls, the Great Falls. Exploring the following day, Lewis discovered Crooked Falls, Rainbow Falls, Coulter Falls, and Black Eagle Falls. At the final waterfalls, Lewis saw an amazing sight:

"I arrived at another cataract of 26 feet. ... below this fall at a little distance a beatifull little Island well timbered is situated about the middle of the river. in this Island on a Cottonwood tree an Eagle has placed her nest; a more inaccessible spot I believe she could not have found; for neither man nor beast dare pass those gulphs which separate her little domain from the shores. the water is also broken in such manner as it descends over this pitch that the mist or sprey rises to a considerable hight. this fall is certainly much the greatest I ever behald except those two which I have mentioned below. it is incomparably a greater cataract and a more noble interesting object than the celibrated falls of Potomac or Soolkiln &c."

While Lewis quite possibly is, along with his co-commander, William Clark, the most successful explorer in history, we can tell by reading his account that expertise in spelling wasn't one of his strongest talents. Still, the things that Meriwether's Corp of Discovery, known popularly as the "Lewis and Clark Expedition," accomplished in their 8,000 mile, two-year and four month journey are indeed phenomenal. Realizing that fact is what brought Concetta and me to the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center at the Great Falls of the Missouri today.

Perhaps the most interesting thing we learned about the Corp's time at the Falls is the fact that Lewis estimated the time it would take to bypass all five cataracts at about a half day for some reason. In reality, the 31 explorers who had to portage overland each and every piece of gear and the canoes in which the gear had been stowed, spent around a month at the Falls and were very hard pressed to accomplish the feat even that quickly.

Another fascinating fact that we learned in the Center is that, as you might expect, Lewis and Clark couldn't communicate with most of the Native Americans with whom they encountered. I had always just assumed that they used sign language to get their ideas across. While this was true for some simplistic requests or ideas, Lewis and Clark would not have been able to depend on the tentative nature of sign language to convey to non-English speakers more complex subjects.

What we learned was that it often took three other Corp members between Lewis or Clark and the Native American with whom they wanted to converse. Sacagawea spoke Shoshone, her native language, and Hitdatsa, the language of her Indian captors. Sacagowea's husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, spoke French because he was born in Montreal, and Hidatsa because he had lived with that tribe for eight years. One of the boat crew spoke French and several other Native American languages.

A session might start with Meriwether Lewis asking the boat crewman in English a question that he wanted a Native American to eventually receive. The crewman would translate from English into French for Toussaint Charbonneau. Toussaint would translate from French to Hidatsa for his wife, Sacagawea. Sacagawea would then translate into Shoshone if they were speaking to a Native American who understood Shoshone or a related language. Thus, though it might take hours to convey any complicated idea, some communication among so many non-English speakers was possible.

A question that I've long had was just exactly what a "Bullboat" was? When you read about the fur trappers of the early part of the 19th century, you find them often making such a craft to get their furs safely across a river or flooded area, or perhaps even moving the furs downriver if the occasion required it. I always envisioned something not very big, and perhaps not very stable.

Today I finally got to see just such a craft at the Interpretive Center. My photo of the explanatory card didn't turn out well, but in essence a Bullboat is constructed with a sapling wood lattice framework, then the frame is covered with a bull buffalo hide

(hence the boat's name). The example in the photograph here is about four feet in diameter, however real Bullboats were around seven feet in diameter, and about 16 inches in depth.

One very, very nice thing about the Interpretive Center today is what I had wished for at the Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning: freedom to photograph anything and EVERYTHING that we saw. We could shoot display cases, dioramas, mockup settings of boatmen, Indian encampments, artwork on the walls, even the employees if we asked nicely. This last photo is of a painting that I especially liked. It is of the moment of contact when Sacagawea is reunited with her Shoshone people. Here she recognizes, not only the woman who the Hidatsa tried to kidnap along with her, but her brother who had become a chief in her absence. It portrays one of those incredible lucky moments in history when luck seems to overrule fate. Were it not for Sacagawea, her brother, and the Shoshone people, the Corp of Discovery might never have made it back to civilization. Who knows?

And when you set off into the vast wild lands of America to find and follow some of the momentous events in history, we wish you exciting destinations and memorable travels from the Davises, the Happy Wanderers.