Chapter 14
Three Forks
The Three Forks of the Missouri, near present-day Three Forks, Montana
The Missouri River begins at Three Forks, Montana, where three rivers meet. Lewis and Clark reached it in late July 1805 and named the rivers the Jefferson, the Madison and the Gallatin. Sacagawea recognised it as the place where she had been captured as a girl.
19 July 1805
Above the falls the Missouri turns south, into the mountains. On 19 July the canoes enter a deep, narrow canyon where the cliffs rise straight up from the water on both sides, about 1,200 feet high. There is hardly a spot to land.
Lewis writes that “this place has so singular an appearance that I call it the gates of the rocky mountains.” Today it is called the Gates of the Mountains, and tour boats still go through it.
The river is getting smaller and faster. The men walk in the water for hours at a time, hauling the canoes over rapids, their feet cut by sharp stones.
25–27 July 1805
Clark has gone ahead on foot with a few men, hoping to find the Shoshone. His feet are torn by cactus spines and he is running a high fever. On 25 July he reaches a place where three rivers of almost the same size come together to make the Missouri.
Lewis arrives with the canoes two days later. The captains decide to camp and rest. Clark is too sick to go on, and the men are worn out. They have now followed the Missouri, against its current, for about 2,800 miles, all the way to its beginning.
28 July 1805
The captains name the three rivers for three important men in Washington. The south-east fork is named for Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury. The middle fork “we called Maddison’s River in honor of James Maddison the Secretary of State.” And the south-west fork, the one they will follow, “we called Jefferson’s River in honor [of] that illustrious per[s]onage Thomas Jefferson President of the United States.”
Sacagawea knows this place. Lewis writes that the camp is “precisely on the spot” where her people were camped when Hidatsa raiders attacked them “five years since.” Several of her people were killed, and she was carried off as a prisoner.
Then Lewis adds: “I cannot discover that she shews any immotion of sorrow in recollecting this event, or of joy in being again restored to her native country; if she has enough to eat and a few trinkets to wear I beleive she would be perfectly content anywhere.”
8 August 1805
The Corps pushes up the Jefferson River, which splits and splits again into smaller streams. The men are hauling the canoes up rapids almost every day. They need horses badly, and they have not seen a single Shoshone.
On 8 August Sacagawea points to a hill on the right. Lewis writes that she “recognized the point of a high plain to our right which she informed us was not very distant from the summer retreat of her nation on a river beyond the mountains which runs to the west. this hill she says her nation calls the beaver’s head.”
It is the best news in weeks. Her people are close. Lewis decides to go ahead on foot and find them, “if it should cause me a trip of one month.”