“At this place we had wintered and remained from the 7th of Deer. 1805 to this day, and have lived as well as we had any right to expect.”

Before departing, Lewis posted a notice on the fort wall listing the expedition members and their route — hoping it might be found by any trading vessel that visited the coast. He also gave a copy to the Clatsop chief Coboway.

The return journey would prove faster but no less eventful, including the decision to split into two parties to explore more territory, Lewis’s violent encounter with Blackfeet warriors, and his accidental shooting by one of his own men.

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“We now found the advantage of having guides.”

The Nez Perce guides knew the trail intimately and could navigate even when it was buried under snow. Lewis acknowledged that without them, “we should have been bewildered in these mountains.” The contrast between the desperate westbound crossing and the efficient return highlighted the value of Indigenous geographic knowledge.

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“I sliped behind a rock and spoke to the effect that I would shoot them if they did not give back my horse.”

In the ensuing fight, Reubin Field stabbed one warrior and Lewis shot another. This was the only violent death caused by the expedition during its entire journey. Lewis’s party then rode over 100 miles in 24 hours to escape potential Blackfeet retaliation — one of the most harrowing episodes of the return journey.

This encounter had lasting consequences for American relations with the Blackfeet, who remained hostile to American traders and trappers for decades.

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“I instantly supposed that Cruzatte had shot me in mistake for an Elk as I was dressed in brown leather.”

The ball passed through the fleshy part of his buttock without hitting bone. Lewis dressed the wound himself and spent the next several weeks lying face-down in a canoe. Cruzatte denied firing the shot, but Lewis found a ball in his own leggings that matched Cruzatte’s short rifle.

This was Lewis’s last journal entry for several weeks as he recovered from the wound. It was also, effectively, the end of his journal writing for the expedition — a circumstance that has frustrated historians ever since.

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“We would have Spent this day the nativity of Christ in feasting, had we any thing either to raise our Sperits or even gratify our appetites. Our Diner consisted of pore Elk, so much Spoiled that we eate it thro’ mear necessity.”

The men exchanged modest gifts: Sacagawea gave Clark two dozen white weasel tails, Clark gave a small Indian basket to Lewis, and the men fired their guns at dawn. Clark wrote, “all the party Snugly fixed in their huts.” Despite the hardship, the Corps had reached the Pacific and built a serviceable winter fort in just 15 days.

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“Our present camp is precisely on the spot that the Snake Indians were encamped at the time the Minnetares of the Knife river first came in sight of them five years since.”

The three forks were named Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin after the President, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of the Treasury. The expedition followed the Jefferson fork, the westernmost branch, as they searched for the Shoshone people and the horses they desperately needed to cross the mountains.

Sacagawea’s recognition of the landscape confirmed the expedition was nearing Shoshone territory and increased hopes of making contact soon.

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“Thus far I had accomplished one of those great objects on which my mind has been unalterably fixed for many years. Judge then of the pleasure I felt in allying my thirst with this pure and ice-cold water.”

But the view from the summit shattered any remaining hopes for an easy portage to Pacific waters. Instead of a gentle slope to a navigable river, Lewis saw range after range of snow-capped mountains stretching to the horizon. Jefferson’s dream of a short portage between the Missouri and the Columbia was an illusion.

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“She instantly jumped up, and ran and embraced him, throwing over him her blanket, and weeping profusely.”

This reunion had enormous practical consequences. Cameahwait agreed to provide the horses the expedition needed to cross the Bitterroot Mountains — a transaction that might never have occurred without the personal bond between Sacagawea and her brother.

Lewis named the camp where these negotiations took place “Camp Fortunate” — recognizing how lucky they were that the first Shoshone band they encountered was led by Sacagawea’s own brother.

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“About five Oclock this evening one of the wives of Chabono was delivered of a fine boy. I was informed that her labour was tedious and the pain violent.”

Lewis noted that within ten minutes of administering the rattlesnake rattle remedy, the baby was born. He remained skeptical of the treatment’s efficacy.

The infant, whom Clark would affectionately nickname “Pomp” or “Pompey,” would travel the entire remaining journey to the Pacific Ocean and back — making him perhaps the youngest transcontinental traveler in American history. Clark later sponsored Jean Baptiste’s education and the young man went on to become a notable frontier figure in his own right.

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“This little fleet altho’ not quite so rispectable as those of Columbus or Capt. Cook, were still viewed by us with as much pleasure as those deservedly famed adventurers ever beheld theirs. We were now about to penetrate a country at least two thousand miles in width, on which the foot of civilized man had never trodden.”

The permanent party now numbered 33 people: the two captains, 26 soldiers and civilians, Charbonneau, Sacagawea, and infant Jean Baptiste. Meanwhile, Corporal Richard Warfington led the keelboat back to St. Louis carrying the expedition’s first shipment of specimens, maps, and reports to President Jefferson.

Lewis wrote with uncharacteristic optimism: “I could but esteem this moment of my departure as among the most happy of my life.”

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