Chapter 17
The Starving Trail
The Lolo Trail over the Bitterroot Mountains, present-day Idaho
Crossing the Bitterroot Mountains on the Lolo Trail in September 1805, the Corps ran out of food. They ate horses and colts, a dried “portable soup” they had carried from Philadelphia, bear oil and even candles, until the Nez Perce fed them on the far side.
4–9 September 1805
North of the Shoshone country, in a wide mountain valley, the Corps meets a big camp of Salish people, whom the journals call the Flatheads: about thirty-three lodges, eighty men and four hundred people in all. They are friendly, and sell the captains more horses.
A few days later the Corps camps beside a creek at the foot of the steepest mountains they have seen. “We called this creek travellers rest,” Clark writes. From here, Toby says, an old Nez Perce trail leads west across the Bitterroot Mountains. The Nez Perce use it to reach the buffalo country, and they know it well.
It will take the Corps eleven days.
11–15 September 1805
The Lolo Trail climbs straight up into a tangle of steep ridges covered in thick forest. Fallen trees lie across the path everywhere. The horses stumble and slide. On 15 September Clark writes that “several horses Sliped and roled down Steep hills which hurt them verry much the one which carried my desk & small trunk turned over & roled down.”
There is almost no game in these mountains. Toby loses the trail at one point and leads them down to a fishing camp, then back up again. With nothing else to eat, they kill one of their colts. Clark writes that they “Killed a Second Colt which we all Suped hartily on and thought it fine meat.”
16 September 1805
On 16 September it snows all day. Snow covers the trail, and every branch dumps more of it on them as they push past. Clark walks in front to find the way.
“I have been wet and as cold in every part as I ever was in my life,” he writes, “indeed I was at one time fearfull my feet would freeze in the thin mockirsons which I wore.” That night they camp in the snow, and eat portable soup and colt.
18 September 1805
On 18 September Lewis writes down exactly how much food they have left: “we dined & suped on a skant proportion of portable soupe, a few canesters of which, a little bears oil and about 20 lb. of candles form our stock of provision.” Candles, made of animal fat, are food now.
Clark decides to go ahead with six of the best hunters, travelling as fast as they can to get out of the mountains and find food to send back. The rest, with Lewis, follow with the tired horses.
20 September 1805
On 20 September Clark and his hunters come down out of the forest onto a wide, open prairie. Three boys see them and hide in the grass. Clark gets off his horse, finds two of them, and gives them small presents. The boys run to their village.
The people who come out to meet him are the Nez Perce. They have never seen white men before. They give Clark and his hunters dried salmon, berries, and bread made from a root called camas, and the starving men eat everything they are given.
Two days later, Lewis and the rest of the Corps stumble out of the mountains to join them.