Chapter 8
Forty Below
Fort Mandan, near present-day Washburn, North Dakota
Sacagawea’s son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, was born at Fort Mandan on 11 February 1805, in a winter so cold the thermometer fell to 40 degrees below zero. Clark later nicknamed the boy “Pomp.”
December 1804
Winter comes down hard. The river freezes over so thick that people and horses walk across it. When the Mandan find a herd of buffalo nearby, the captains take out parties of men to hunt beside them. The Mandan ride right in among the running herd on horseback and shoot with bows and arrows. The soldiers, on foot, struggle through the snow.
On 8 December Clark writes: “a verry Cold morning, the Thermometer Stood at 12° below 0.” Men come back with frostbitten faces, fingers and feet. Ten days later it is much colder.
Christmas 1804
On Christmas morning Joseph Whitehouse writes: “We ushred [in] the morning with a discharge of the Swivvel, and one round of small arms of all the party, then another from the swivel, then Capt. Clark presented a glass of brandy to each man of the party.”
The captains have asked their Mandan friends not to visit, explaining that it is “one of our great medicine days.” The men raise the flag over the fort, eat the best food they have left, including flour and dried apples, and dance to Pierre Cruzatte’s fiddle all day and into the night.
New Year’s Day 1805
On New Year’s Day, sixteen of the men cross to the Mandan village with their music, to dance at the chiefs’ request. Clark goes over later and finds the Mandan “much pleased at the danceing of our men.” Then he writes: “I ordered my black Servent to Dance which amused the Croud verry much, and somewhat astonished them, that so large a man should be active.”
Notice the words “I ordered.” York was not one of the men dancing for fun. He was an enslaved man being made to perform, and Clark did not think twice about writing it down.
10 January 1805
On 10 January Clark writes: “last night was excessively Cold the Murkery this morning Stood at 40° below 0 which is 72° below the freesing point.”
That morning a Mandan boy, “13 years of age,” comes to the fort with his feet frozen. He was caught out on the prairie overnight, “without fire with only a buffalow robe.” Lewis soaks his feet in cold water and cares for him for weeks. In the end he has to cut off some of the boy’s toes, but the boy lives.
11 February 1805
On 11 February Sacagawea goes into labour. It is her first child, and it goes on for hours. A trader named René Jessaume tells Lewis that a little crushed rattlesnake rattle, stirred into water, never fails. Lewis happens to have one.
Lewis writes that Jessaume gave her “two rings of it,” broken into small pieces and added to a little water. “Whether this medicine was truly the cause or not I shall not undertake to determine,” he writes, “but I was informed that she had not taken it more than ten minutes before she brought forth.”
The baby is a boy, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. Clark later nicknames him “Pomp.” At eight weeks old he will set out with his mother to cross a continent.