Seven huts, known as Fort Clatsop, were knocked up on the south side of the Columbia’s harbor for winter quarters; and a wretched winter the little fort spent, beleaguered not by hostiles, but by such inclement damp that all the men were ill before spring and their very leather suits rotted from their backs.  Many a time, coasting the sea, were they benighted.  Spreading mats on the sand, they slept in the drenching rain.  Unused to ocean waters, the inland voyageurs became deadly seasick.  Once, when all were encamped on the shore, an enormous tidal wave broke over the camp with a smashing of log-drift that almost crushed the boats.  Nez Perces and Flatheads had assisted the white men after the Snake guides had turned back.  Clatsops and Chinooks were now their neighbors.  Christmas and New Year of 1806 were celebrated by a discharge of firearms.  No boats chanced to touch at the Columbia during the winter.  The time was passed laying up store of elk meat and leather; for the company was not only starving, but nearly naked.  The Pacific had been reached on November 14, 1805.  Fort Clatsop was evacuated on the afternoon of March 23, 1806.

The goods left to trade for food and horses when Lewis and Clark departed from the coast inland had dwindled to what could have been tied in two handkerchiefs; but necessity proved the mother of invention, and the men cut the brass buttons from their tattered clothes and vended brass trinkets to the Indians.  The medicine-chest was also sacrificed, every Indian tribe besieging the two captains for eye-water, fly-blisters, and other patent wares.  The poverty of the white man roused the insolence of the natives on the return over the mountains.  Rocks were rolled down on the boatmen at the worst portages by aggressive Indians; and once, when the hungry voyageurs were at a meal of dog meat, an Indian impudently flung a live pup straight at Captain Lewis’ plate.  In a trice the pup was back in the fellow’s face; Lewis had seized a weapon; and the crestfallen aggressor had taken ignominiously to his heels.  When they had crossed the mountains, the forces divided into three parties, two to go east by the Yellowstone, one under Lewis by the main Missouri.

Somewhere up the height of land that divides the southern waters of the Saskatchewan from the northern waters of the Missouri, the tracks of Minnetaree warriors were found.  These were the most murderous raiders of the plains.  Over a swell of the prairie Lewis was startled to see a band of thirty horses, half of them saddled.  The Indians were plainly on the war-path, for no women were in camp; so Lewis took out his flag and advanced unfalteringly.  An Indian came forward.  Lewis and the chief shook hands, but Lewis now had no presents to pacify hostiles.  Camping with the Minnetarees for the night, as if he feared nothing, Lewis nevertheless took good care to keep close watch on all movements.  He smoked the pipe of peace with them as late as