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Pompey's Pillar National Monument
N 45° 59.710’ W 108° 0.324’
Photo: B. Perry |
Pompey’s Pillar is a sandstone rock formation on the banks of the Yellowstone River about 50 miles east of Billings, Montana. As you pull into the parking lot, it is not evident why Pompey’s Pillar is a National Monument and why some 50,000 visitors a year stop here. There are some stairs that take you to the summit of this 150 foot rock for a wonderful view of the river valley - but that’s not the draw. Halfway up the stairs, you might find a small cluster of folks looking at something behind a glass enclosure. Joining them, you see it’s a signature and a date craved into the soft rock: “Wm Clark July 25 1806”. It was carved there by William Clark, co-leader with Meriwether Lewis of the Corps of Discovery, that intrepid group of Americans who first crossed the American West from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean and back. This inscription is often cited as the only remaining physical evidence of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
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| William Clark (left) and Meriwether Lewis |
Soon after Thomas Jefferson became President of the United States, he asked Congress for $2,500 to fund an expedition up the Missouri River and down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. The goals were to collect information on the Indian populations, document the geography, botany and zoology, and to find a waterway across the continent. He selected a young army officer, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to head the expedition. Lewis was a smart and courageous fellow with training in botany, mineralogy and astronomy. Lewis asked Lieutenant William Clark to share the command of the expedition. As they assembled their Corps of Discovery, Jefferson closed the greatest real estate deal of all time with France, the Louisiana Purchase: 828,000 acres extending from Louisiana to the Dakotas for $15 million or about 3 cents an acre. A man of unlimited interest in the natural world, Jefferson wanted to know more about this enormous territory he’d bought for his country.
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| Have you ever noticed... |
On May 21, 1804, the expedition left St. Charles near the mouth of the Missouri River in a 55-foot keel boat and two smaller vessels and headed west. The party consisted of Lewis, Clark, 27 Army regulars, three civilians, Clark’s slave York, twelve boatmen, and Lewis’ dog, Scannon. For the next several months, the men sailed, rowed and dragged their boats against the current of the mighty river. Snags, quicksand, and mosquitos tormented the men. By July, they were only making 10 or 12 miles a day. On August 20, the only fatality of the entire expedition occurred when Sgt. Charles Floyd died of an unknown illness. In October, with the snow beginning to fall, the expedition halted for the winter at the Mandan Village, just north of where Bismarck, ND is today. On their first day in camp, they were visited by a Frenchman named Charbonneau. One of his three wives was Sacajawea, a Shoshone who had been captured as a small girl by a Gros Ventre war party. During the long, freezing winter, Sacajawea gave birth to a baby boy, Baptiste Charbonneau.
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| ...how in all these paintings... |
As the ice broke up the following spring, Lewis and Clark planned their trek into the unknown region beyond the headwaters of the Missouri River. They knew they would have to acquire horses from the Shoshone to cross the mountains. Therefore, Charbonneau and Sacajawea (with the baby in arms) joined the expedition to act as interpreters. Dealing with rattlesnakes, waterfalls, flashfloods, and grizzly bears, the Corps fought their way up the Missouri into the Rockies where the river became no more than a small stream. Approaching the Continental Divide, Lewis and Clark made contact with the Shoshone. The negotiation for horses with Chief Cameahwait must have been laborious and frustrating with Lewis and Clark speaking English, Labiche translating English into French, Charbonneau translating French into Gros Ventre, and Sacajawea translating Gros Ventre into Shoshone. But spirits were lifted when Sacajawea recognized Chief Cameahwait as her long lost brother (I would have loved to have seen that).
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...of Lewis and Clark...
(and in this case Sacajawea and Baptiste)... |
Lewis and Clark had hoped that the land beyond the Divide would look much like what they had just traversed with a gently sloping plain and a wide, deep Columbia River to take them west. Instead, they as they looked west there was nothing but mountains for as far as they could see. Without the help of the local tribes, it is doubtful that the Corps of Discovery would have survived. Even with their help, the crossing of the Bitter Root Range was dangerous and lonely with many false trails and exhausting days. At last, they came to the Clearwater River, a crystal-clear mountain stream deep enough to safely navigate. They made five canoes and headed downstream. Shooting many dangerous rapids, they took the Clearwater to the Snake River, and the Snake to the Columbia River. Tamed as it is today by dam after dam, it is hard to imagine what the journey down the wild Columbia must have been like as it tumbled through its deep canyon. But as they approached the sea, the river widened until it was a mile across. The journey west ended on November 16
th, 1805 when they arrived at the Pacific Ocean.
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The Salt Cairn, Seaside, Oregon
Photo: B. Perry |
The Corps of Discovery spent the winter at Fort Clatsop near Astoria, Oregon. A small contingent was stationed near the ocean to make salt to be used a preservative for the return journey. They boiled saltwater over a stone cairn oven 24 hours a day for almost two months. They returned to Fort Clatsop with three and a half bushels (28 gallons) of salt. The salt works can still be seen behind a fence in a pretty little neighborhood in the resort town of Seaside, Oregon. It’s an official site of the Lewis and Clark National Historical Park. The cairn was rebuilt with five kettles on top in 1955.
On the return journey in the spring of 1806, Lewis and Clark made their way back up the western rivers into the Bitter Roots. At Traveler’s Rest, the party split up in order to explore more territory. Lewis and company went east directly to the Missouri and downstream to the Great Falls. Leaving a few men to prepare for the portage around the falls, Lewis and others went up the Marias River into Blackfoot territory.
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| ...someone is always pointing? |
Clark meanwhile traveled southeast, up the Bitter Root Valley and over the Continental Divide. At the Beaverhead River, they found their canoes from the year before. At Three Forks, Sgt. Ordway took the canoes down the Missouri to rendezvous with Lewis. Clark, Charbonneau, Sacagawea, the now one-year-old boy Baptiste, and the others traveled overland on horseback to the Yellowstone River where they built new canoes with the small amount of wood they could find. Sgt. Pryor and two others were ordered to take the horses overland to Mandan. The others got in the boats and floated down the Yellowstone. Clark was quite fond of the little boy who he called Pomp or “Little Chief”. On July 25, they came to the sandstone formation that started our story. Clark named it Pompy’s Tower after Baptiste (it would be renamed Pompey’s Pillar in an 1814 history of the expedition). Given that it was covered in Indian Pictographs, I suppose Clark couldn’t resist carving his name into the rock as well. They continued on down the Yellowstone to the Missouri where they intended to wait for Lewis. But the mosquitos were so bad that they decided to keep going, leaving a note for Lewis. Several days later, Sgt. Pryor caught up with Clark. He had lost the horses and taken the note meant for Lewis. (Clark’s reaction is another choice moment to imagine!)
Lewis’ expedition did not go well. While exploring the Marias, several Blackfoot Indians tried to steal their horses. In the skirmish, Lewis shot and killed one of the Indians and Reuben Fields stabbed another to death. Fleeing the Blackfeet, Lewis’ small band rode about 100 miles straight, crossed the Missouri and reunited with Ordway’s group which had come down the Missouri uneventfully. Proceeding down river, Lewis’ troubles weren’t over yet. While hunting an Elk in thick brush, Lewis was shot in the butt by one of his own men (as perilous as this must have been, it’s kind of funny.) When Lewis’ party arrived at the mouth of the Yellowstone, they found Clark’s abandoned camp but no note and no Clark. The party proceeded down the river with Lewis lying in the bottom of the boat, feverish and in tremendous pain. On August 12th, they caught up with Clark.
At the Mandan Village, Charbonneau and Sacajawea said goodbye. Clark offered to take Little Pomp back to St. Louis and raise him like a son but Sacajawea declined the offer. In parting, Lewis and Clark paid Charbonneau about $500 and Sacajawea nothing. In the final leg of the journey, the boats made good time racing down the wide Missouri with the current. As their mission came to a close, they passed many American pioneers already traveling up the river into the new territory. On Sept. 23, 1806, the Corps of Discovery arrived in St. Louis to great excitement and celebration. In just over two years and four months, they had traveled over 8,000 miles from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean and back again. Upon receiving the news that the expedition was a success, Thomas Jefferson reported to Congress “…it is but justice to say that Messrs. Lewis and Clarke and their brave companions have by this arduous service deserved well of their country.”
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The inscription by William Clark on Pompey's Pillar
Photo: B. Perry |
Over the next decades, many pioneers and settlers added their names to Pompey’s Pillar. In 1882, officials of the Northern Pacific Railroad installed an iron grate over the inscription to protect it. While this reduced the incursion of other signers, it did not reduce erosion. By the early 20
th century, the inscription was barely legible. At the request of The Daughters of the American Revolution, the inscription was deepened in 1926 by a Billings granite firm. In 1956, a new private owner replaced the iron grate with an enclosure of bullet-proof glass which allowed the inscription to be seen and photographed while protecting it from the elements. In 2001, Pompey’s Pillar was declared a National Monument and is now managed by the Bureau of Land Management. An Interpretive Center opened in 2006 with exhibits on the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Today, it seems like the Lewis and Clark expedition can only be found in school textbooks, Ken Burns documentaries, "point of interest" road markers, postage stamps, and coins. But standing at Pompey's Pillar where Clark himself stood over two hundred years ago, the whole story comes alive and we can truly appreciate what a monumental achievement it was.
Salisbury, Albert and Jane, Lewis & Clark: The Journey West. Promontory Press, New York, NY, 1950, 1993.
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