Part VII · The Way Home
Chapter 24
Homeward
The Columbia River, from Fort Clatsop to the Walla Walla
Seaman, Lewis’s Newfoundland dog, made the whole journey to the Pacific and back. In April 1806 he was stolen on the Columbia River, and Lewis sent three armed men after the thieves, who let him go. The last mention of him in the journals is in July 1806, when the mosquitoes made him howl.
Did Lewis and Clark eat their dog Seaman?
No. On the Columbia River the Corps bought dogs from the people living there and ate them, because the dried fish made the men ill, but Seaman was never one of them. He was still with Lewis in July 1806, on the way home.
March 1806
By March the Corps is desperate to leave. They are sick of rain, fleas and spoiled elk, and they want to reach the Nez Perce and their horses before the snow melts in the mountains.
They need one more canoe, and the Clatsop will not sell one at a price the captains can pay. So, Lewis writes, “we will take one from them in lue of the six Elk which they stole from us in the winter.” They take it without paying. The captains call it fair. The Clatsop, whose canoes take months of skilled work to carve, would not have agreed.
Before leaving, the captains write out a list of everyone’s names and leave copies with the local chiefs. “The object of this list is,” Lewis writes, “that through the medium of some civilized person who may see the same, it may be made known to the informed world” that the party had crossed the continent to the Pacific. If they die on the way home, someone will know they made it.
23 March 1806
On 23 March 1806 the Corps loads the canoes and pushes off from Fort Clatsop for the last time. They give the fort and everything in it to Coboway, the Clatsop leader who has been their neighbour all winter.
Going up the Columbia is much harder than coming down. The river is in spring flood, and the current pushes hard against them. Once again, the men row, pole and haul the canoes up every rapid.
11 April 1806
At the Cascades, where they must haul the canoes up through the rapids, things go badly with some of the people who live along this stretch of the river. There are thefts and threats on both sides. Then Lewis writes that “three of this same tribe of villains the Wah-clel-lars, stole my dog this evening, and took him towards their village.”
Seaman has been with Lewis every day since 1803. He has hunted for the men, guarded the camp and survived a beaver bite that nearly killed him. Lewis sends three men after the thieves “with orders if they made the least resistence or difficulty in surrendering the dog to fire on them.” When the men get close, the thieves let Seaman go and run off. He comes home.
April 1806
Above the rapids, the Corps reaches the Dalles again. This time the villages are full of traders. Clark writes that “this is the great mart of all this country.” Peoples from the coast, the plateau and the plains come here every spring to trade.
The captains want horses now, to get past the next falls and across the plains to the Nez Perce. But horses are expensive here, and the Corps has almost nothing left to trade. They cut up their spare canoes for firewood rather than leave them behind.
27–29 April 1806
At the mouth of the Walla Walla River, a chief named Yellept greets them as old friends. He met them on the way down, and he has not forgotten. His people bring firewood and fish, and sell them horses. There is a party: the Corps’ fiddle comes out, and the Walla Walla and the soldiers dance together late into the night.
Clark spends the next day treating the sick, who come to him with sore eyes, aching joints and wounds. Word of the “doctor” with the medicine chest is spreading up the river, ahead of them.