The first season
The expedition started from Camp
River Dubois on May
14th, "in the presence of many of the neighboring
inhabitants,
and proceeded on under a jentle brease up the Missouri."
The long and painful up-stream journey
during the summer and autumn of 1804 was followed
by a winter spent in log huts enclosed by
a stout palisade,
among the Mandan Indians not far from the present
Bismarck,
North Dakota. Making a fresh start from Fort Mandan,
upon
the seventh of April, 1805, there ensued a toilsome experience
all the way to the headspring of
Jefferson Fork of the
Missouri, which was reached August 12th. Then came
the
crossing of the rugged, snow-clad Bitterroot Mountains, which
here constitute the divide, and the descent of the foaming
rapids
and cataracts of the Columbia, until the Pacific Coast
was reached in
November. By Christmas the party were safely
housed within Fort Clatsop, a
rude structure—like Fort
Mandan, log huts within a palisade
covering a plot of ground
some fifty feet square.[20]
