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"Toute est Pret,” thus did Pierre Cruzatte indicate that “all is ready” as he prepared to run the boiling rapids of the unmapped river. Pierre, as you probably know, was a member of the Corps of Discovery, the expedition charged with finding a route across the continent to the Pacific Ocean.

The Indians living along the river had told the expedition’s leader, Capt. Meriwether Lewis, that is was impassable, but Pierre, undaunted by this warning, was willing to try. Would you agree that he probably said something like, “Tabernac, am I not the best boatman, the most fearless and skilled river man of all the expedition members?”

A trait, it should be noted, that would characterize other French Canadians, like those who immigrated to our region and became renowned for their daring ability to run logs flushed through the white water of local rivers. Men with wonderful names like Gerard Arsenault, Alphonse Beaudette, Napoleon (Nap) La Bonadventure, Jean Boudreau, and let’s not forget Mr. Hache (Zeno) drove rivers near here right up to the last major drive in the spring of 1950, when Finch Pruyn ran pulp down the upper Hudson.

By the way, as a part of our local history, it may be interesting to note that the transporting of logs by rivers had its origins here in the Adirondacks. Two lumbermen, the Fox brothers, drove the Schroon River on the current of spring freshets in 1813. An experiment that proved successful for many years, right up until the time that trucks like those beautiful machines in Jeannel Lizotte’s outstanding fleet and improved highways would supersede the rivers as arteries of transportation and make such a method obsolete.

Perhaps in a later time with improved craft like jam boats or the high-sided, double-ended dory type that Zeno Hache would have been familiar with, the expedition would have made it down the river.

However, despite their best efforts, they found the passage impassable, especially in their hand-hewn dugout canoes.

Capt. Clark named the river The Lewis. Today it is called the Salmon, also known as The River of No Return. (Not in the sense of finality, but only because once you go down, it is difficult to return upstream.)

Clark’s journal tells of their dilemma: “The water runs with great violence from one rock to another on each side, foaming and roaring through rocks in every direction so as to render the passage of anything impassable.”

They would have to go on horseback. There could be no turning back. President Jefferson had picked them personally for this mission, and they were determined to fulfill that directive.

Remember, in that time the United States ended on the eastern backs of the Mississippi River. The West remained an immense blank. To add urgency to their commission was the fact that President Jefferson had just made a surprising deal with Napoleon Bonaparte, who was preparing for another war with England. He had purchased the entire Louisiana Territory, 820,000 square miles, for three cents per acre. With a single stroke on his pen, the President had doubled the size of his country. Lewis and Clark had to find out just what it was Thomas Jefferson and our tax dollars had purchased.

Yes, it was an exploration for the sake of scientific knowledge, but it was also one of imperialism, according to some historians. The President wanted unchallenged possessions of the new and huge country he had just purchased from France. The Indians were soon aware of that fact, and while some were friendly (thanks, in part, to Sacajawea), many tribes were hostile.

Peter Lourie, who is a seasonal resident here, followed the trail of the expedition this summer with his family (Melissa and children Walker and Suzanna). They went by foot, by car, by horseback, and by boat in what had to be a special and rewarding family adventure. While in Kamiah, Idaho, where the corps had been met with “generosity and courtesy” by the Nez Pierce tribe, Peter talked with Allen Slickpoo, who still follows the traditional ways of his ancestors. Peter noted that “Slickpoo was not bitter but the message was strong — Lewis and Clark brought death to the Nez Pierce way of life. They had opened the way for the missionaries that came a few years later and took away much of their culture.”

“It is like a beautiful plant or berry,” Slickpoo told Peter, “and you are starving. That fruit looks nice and plump, but then you eat it and it turns out to be poison.”

As readers of this column know, the explorers would make it to the Pacific and return safely. They faced bitter cold, sickness and hunger, a nightmarish trip across the Rockies, where they nearly perished, hostile confrontation with Teton Sioux Indians, desperate fights to the death with the Blackfeet, the unknown vastness of the plains and the raw power of raging rivers. It would take them two and one-half years to travel the 4,200 miles from the mouth of the Missouri across unmapped mysterious lands to the Pacific Ocean. These deeds of the men of the Corps of Discovery would stand forever. Their exploits would become an American legend, a part of our history. Others would follow. But they were the first, and never again would the West be the same.

Expedition member and translator Toussaint Charbonneau was originally from eastern Canada and uncle to Michael Charbonneau, who was this community’s first settler in 1840.

Toussaint stayed among the Indians of the upper Missouri the rest of his life. He interpreted for government officials, explorers and artists well into his seventies. Sacajawea, his wife, remained with him. In 1809 they traveled down the Missouri to St. Louis, where they entrusted their son, Baptiste, and his education, to Capt. Clark before heading back upriver.
Sacajawea

In 1812 at Fort Manuel, a fur trading post in what is now South Dakota, Sacajawea gave birth to a daughter, Lisette. But that winter she grew ill with fever and died. More about Sacajawea in our next column.

Baptiste Charbonneau:
After being educated by Clark as promised, Baptiste, who was born during the exploration and was carried on his mother’s back, never settled down. He traveled to Europe with a German prince for five years, learning several languages. When he returned, Baptiste became a mountain man, not unlike his father and cousin Michael. A guide for the United States troops in the war with Mexico, a magistrate of San Luis Key mission in California. In 1866, at age sixty-one, he heard of gold discoveries in Montana and set on with a wagon train, but died of pneumonia on his way.

Cameahwait, chief of the Shoshones and Sacajawea’s brother, was killed in a battle with the Hidatsas, which may have been the same tribe that earlier had taken his sister captive.

Copyright William C. Frenette Collection