Lewis and Clark Read Free Page B

pirogue. The water was so low that horses or oxen had to be hired at times to drag the boat across shoals. Clark joined them at Louisville, Kentucky, with more volunteers, and the two made their way down the Ohio, purchasing another pirogue as they went. When they reached the Mississippi, they traveled to the village of St. Louis and established their winter camp opposite the mouth of the Missouri.
    All winter, they worked, planned, recruited more men, and readied every detail. By mid-May 1804, the expedition was prepared to depart. By early June, the little “Corps of Discovery” was on its way up the river that was to be its road to hardship, adventure, and glory.

 

On May 26, 1804, Lewis made an exhaustive entry in the Corps of Discovery’s orderly book, detailing the group’s organization for the journey upstream. Most of the orders concerned the expedition’s two most essential activities: getting enough to eat and maintaining a strict guard.
    The three sergeants, John Ordway, Nathaniel Pryor, and Charles Floyd, were assigned specific duties aboard the keelboat. Meanwhile, the French “patroon” was responsible for the watermen on the red pirogue, and Corporal Warfington was given command of the white pirogue.
    “One Sergt. shall be stationed at the helm, one in the center on the rear of the starboard locker, and one at the bow,” wrote Lewis, arranging for the three men to alternate duties on the keelboat each day. The sergeant at the helm, responsible for steering the boat, ensured that no baggage, “cooking utensels or loos lumber” were stored on the decks, and kept an eye on the compass.
    The sergeant at the center was to “command the guard, manage the sails, see that the men at the oars do their duty; that they come on board at a proper season in the morning, and that the boat gets under way in due time.” The sergeant was also charged with looking for topographical features that might interest his captains, “attend to the issues of sperituous liquors,” and post sentries whenever the boat stopped. He was part of reconnaissance parties dispatched to explore “the forrest arround the place of landing to the distance of at least one hundred paces;” at night, this radius was to be increased to 150 paces. To those duties, Lewis added a regular check on the mooring of each boat.
    The sergeant at the bow was to keep a lookout “either of the enimy, or obstructions” and to report “all perogues boats canoes or other craft which he may discover in the river, and all hunting camps or parties of Indians in view of which we may pass.” He was given a pole to help the French bowmen, Cruzatte and Labiche, maneuver the boat through the currents and around the shifting sandbanks of the Missouri River.
    Additionally, each sergeant was ordered to keep a daily journal, and Ordway also was responsible for issuing provisions and scheduling men for guard duty. Each sergeant had eight men in his squad, one of whom was appointed cook, or as Lewis put it, “Superintendant of Provision.” In exchange for exemption from guard duty, pitching tents, and collecting firewood, the cooks had the challenge of making the expedition’s rations palatable. “Lyed corn and grece” were issued one day, “the next day Poark and flour, and the day following, indian meal and poark; and in conformity to that rotiene, provisions will continue to be issued to the party untill further orders.”
    Since the expedition’s stores did not include vegetables or fruit, the men ate the fruits that grew in the woods and on the prairies: plums, raspberries, currants, grapes, and gooseberries. At least once, Clark’s servant, York, swam across the river to gather fresh greens and watercress for the evening meal. Despite this, many of the men suffered from dysentery and boils. Clark believed the dysentery came from drinking river water, but the boils were likely the result of the men laboring from sunup to sundown in eighty- to