Smoke from Forest Fires in the Bitterroots
Big Hole Battlefield, Montana, site of 1877 battle between non-treay Nez Perce and US
Wheat-covered hills just outside Moscow, ID
Replica of canoes made by L&C at Canoe Camp
Road down into Idaho from Lolo Pass--notice tall trees surrounding road--so unlike Montana side.
"Heart of the Monster"--a sacred spot to Nez Perce where their creation story is embodied. This is close to the bottom of the Bitterroots in Idaho.
This depicts how steep the drop from Contintental Divide is to the West vs. the East. Thus L&C expected the river(s) on the Westy side to rund much fsater, have more falls, etc.; they were right.
Lemhi Pass--looking West, to Idaho and the Bitterroots. See quote from Lewis below.
Looking East from Lemhi Pass
On Saturday and Sunday, Daisy and I very closely retraced L&C's footsteps as they attempted to cross the Bitterroot Mountains. A week and a half after leaving the Missouri Headwaters (Three Forks), Lewis was walking some distance ahead of the main Corps (who were still traveling by water) and crested a hill after a long upward trek. Here he tasted the waters from the initial spring of the Missouri, and he saw the West for the first time. Instead of the plains and river to the Pacific he expected, he saw...the tallest mountains he had ever seen.
In Lewis's words: "the road took us to the most distant fountain of the waters of the mighty Missouri in search of which we have spent so many toilsome days and restless nights. Thus far I had accomplished one of those great objects on which my mind has been unalterably fixed for so many years, judge then the pleasure I felt in allaying my thirst with this pure and ice cold water." Then he says: "after refreshing ourselves we proceeded on to the top of the dividing ridge from which I discovered immense ranges of high mountains still to the West of us with their tops partially covered with snow." (I normalized his spelling)
For a while they had suspected they would need horses to cross the mountains, and the reason Lewis and a couple of others were going ahead was to find the Shoshone to buy horses from them. After Lewis saw the Bitterroots, the need for horses became a dire necessity.
Shortly thereafter he found a few Shoshone and bought a few horses. He also convinced them to accompany him back over Lemhi pass to the rest of the Corps to help them across. When they met up w/ the rest of the Corps, Sacajawea recognized their leader as her long-lost brother, which greatly helped negotiations for horse. (She had been kidnapped 4-6 years before from this band of Shoshone by the Hidatsa's. Thus she was at the Mandan villages in North Dakota, "married" to Pierre Charbonneau, when L&C came though. They were pleased to have her jon her hsband (and their baby too) because they realized she would be invaluable in their future negotiations with Indian tribes, esp. the Shoshone.)
Eventually they set off on the other side of the pass and followed a long route north (over 100 miles) to a meeting/camping area well-known to the natives, which Lewis named Travelers' Rest. After camping there a couple of days (Sept 9-11), they prepared for the arduous route over the mountains. It took 12 days to go about 170 miles, over Lolo Pass to the Weippe prairie. They were cold, faced a blizzard, exhausted by the hard work, and nearly starved as there were no game in the mountains. Once over Lolo Pass, the climbs (down and up) became steeper than on the east side, and several times some of the horses tumbled down the hills. For the most part they only had their "portable soup" to eat, which they reconsituted w/ snow. (Apparently this precursor to Ramen noodles or instant soup was quite vile tasting.)
Once they reached the plain, they met the indiegnous people, whom they called the Nez Perce. Without these people, they might have perished, for they were almost starved. The Nez Perce gave them dried salmon and berries, on which they gorged themselves and then got violently ill. A bit further West they camped for over a week to make canoes for the journey down the river to the Pacific. They gave their horses to the Nez Perce for safekeeping over the winter. Daisy and I stood at this location exactly 204 years after L&C were here.
Modern notes: The "roads" over both passes (Lemhi and Lolo) are, even today, very steep, windy, and in the middle of nowhere. I didn't see power lines on the gravel road to Lemhi pass, nor did I see anyon the Idaho side of Lolo Pass (Highway 12). This was a paved road, but was very steep and windy for about 80 miles from the pass--much steeper than east side and heavily wooded, vs. the open hills on the east side.
Other History notes: L&C came back in May-June 1806 across much of the same routes, although they avoided Lemhi pass as they hadn't needed to go there in the first place. By listening to their Indian guides, they were able to make a shortened and somewhat easier journey, although they had to spend almost a month w/ the Nez Perce until the snows melted on the Bitterroots.
Also, most of the routes we followed Saturday and Sunday are also part of the Nez Perce National Historic Highway. As noted above, the Nez Perce truly befriended the Corps of Discovery. Sadly, white men who followed them were not as respectful. In the mid-1850 the Nez Perce negotiated a settlement that established a fairly large reservation. Almost a decade later, about 2/3 of them renegotiated to a reservation 1/10th the size of the orginal. The rest were known as non-treaty Indians, and in 1877 the US military waged war against them. Some escaped to Canada; the rest who were not killed in a series of battles in Montana and Idaho were relocated to other reservations that are not part of their indigenous lands. There are many informative and heart-rending sites along these drives.
We ended Sunday by driving north from the route to Moscow, ID, amid rolling hills of wheat. I am told this is the most productive winter wheat-producing area in the country. It took us over 7 hours to cross the 170 miles that L&C took 12 days to traverse. I truly cannot imagine going through this landscape on foot, with my luggage on a horse that kept falling down a mountain, with almost no food, inadequate shelter and clothing, through a blizzard, and having no idea what came next. Neither can Daisy, although I remind her that Seaman (the Newfoundland dog) made it all the way.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) we will head south to Lewiston and re-connect on the L&C trail. We'll also see sites on the Nez Perce trail, and may drop south to see few Oregon trail sites. We are on Pacific time now. We'll spend tomrorow night near Walla Walla, WA, and on Wednesday will complete the trip to the Pacific. So I'll have one or two more L&C posts, then who knows. I plan to spend 3 or 4 days in Portland, OR, area to see the area and plan the next 1-2 weeks of our trip (and get the car serviced!).
Today we are staying in most of the day; there is a fierce and smoky wind outside that is making us both sneeze and wheeze again (I am told the smoke is from burning wheat fields after they are harvested).
The Corps of Discovery indeed must have been very fortunate to have befriended the Nez Perce. Then we as a nation close to 70 years later treated them with a great deal of disrespect, killed many of them, and took them from their ancestoral home. All in the name of expansion and greed. That attitude continued on for sometime I have noticed. You can see and hear of it in Ken Burn's documentary on the National Parks. Then you can still see and hear of evidence of that expansion and greed today (see AIG, Madoff, Enron, etc).
ReplyDeleteSeems we do NOT always learn very well from history!