May 14th, 1804
My name is Regal. I will be
going on the Lewis and Clark expedition as an Indian Affairs expert.
On this expedition I will be looking forward to seeing a lot of different
Indian tribes. Some of the things
that we will have are a surveyor’s and hand compass, quadrants, two sextants,
a telescope, a thermometer, a set of plotting instruments, and a few pairs of
pants.
I will be attending this expedition with Lewis, Clark, John Ordway,
George Drouillard, a slave named York, and me.
I’m very experienced with Indian affairs and have been assigned this
task. If anybody gets lost Lewis
said that they will be left behind. I plan to not get lost.
May 21st, 1804
We’ve been on the journey for a week.
We encountered Indians for the first time.
We were all very excited. The
tribe that we met were the Mandan Indians.
The Mandan Indians live in two villages. Those are called Matootonha and Rooptahee villages.
The Matootonha was located on the western bank of the Missouri River
while Rooptahee was located directly north of there.
After we set up camp, we went fishing.
I caught two bags of fish and collected some water for all the men on the
expedition plus Seaman, the dog. After
we brought all the fish back we made a big feast of fish.
That night we all went to sleep with full stomachs.
Since we had fish, a grizzly bear came to visit us.
I stayed in my hut so I wouldn’t be seen. The grizzly bear took one bag of fish that we saved for
tomorrow. When we all woke up in
the morning most of us knew that the bear had come, but some didn’t. We didn’t have any dinner because we didn’t feel like
fishing in the morning. We packed
up our stuff and moved on our way. We
passed several different Indian villages as we went along the Missouri River.
January1, 1805
We didn’t have any food or water that whole day.
A few of us are dehydrated. We
wanted to eat, but Clark said that we cannot stop for anything at the speed
we’re going. We will keep moving
till the sun goes down and it’s very dark.
I was extremely hungry, so I found some berries.
I don’t know if they are poisonous or not, but I ate them anyways.
I’m very worried if I’ll get sick or even die.
I will find out soon if I have a reaction to whatever kind of berries
they were.
I feel fine. The berries I
actually ate were blueberries. I
know that because I saw some growing on our way down the mountain. During the day a swivel gun fired two shots. We
celebrated the New Year.
February 1st, 1805
It’s been a long time since I wrote in my journal.
I lost it in one of the bags. Luckily
while I was packing up camp this morning, it fell out of the bags.
I was so excited to find it so I could record data again.
We are all doing fine on this trip.
Today it started to rain while we were fishing.
We were able to only get a bag and a half of fish today.
It’s a good amount, but since it is raining we had to wait to cook it.
The fish tasted good because we hadn’t eaten in a day.
Since it was raining we collected water by using pails and bags.
Eventually the bags ripped and we only had a small supply of water for
that night.
Grizzly bears can be a big help or a big problem.
They can be a big problem because they are ferocious animals.
They can be a big help if you are able to kill them, you can eat them.
Bear have a lot of meat and fat on them.
Also fat works a little like soap, so I can wash my body with the fat.
Mosquitoes are a big problem because at night when we are sleeping they
can come and annoy us so we will be very tired in the morning.
Another creature that is a problem is a spider because they can be
poisonous and bite me. I could
become very, very sick.
This morning, the sun sprouted out.
It was a hot, sunny day. We
decided to go to the river and swim and maybe even catch some fish with our
spears. Indians showed us how to do
this. It ended up that we only
caught a couple of fish so we decided to cook them and eat every bit of meat
since there wasn’t that much. In
a while we went fishing again because people were still hungry.
We had more success this time. We
are all doing fine and decided to have a big bonfire.
The next day we all packed up camp and decided to move on.
We were on the west side of the Rocky Mountains.
As we were walking around the side of the mountain we saw the Shoshone
Indian tribe. I was so excited to
see a Shoshone Indian. When I first
saw the Shoshone, they thought we were a threat to them because we had guns.
To show them that we came in peace, we handed them some spears for
fishing. They looked at us very
blankly. The chief welcomed us into
his hut. We had corn for dinner
with our new friends. We spent the
night there so we didn’t have to unpack all of our stuff.
The next morning we set off on our expedition.
March 10th, 1805
We all awoke from the sound of birds chirping. A thirteen year old boy came to our camp with feet that were frozen. We dipped his feet in cold water. We fed him some fish because it looked like he hadn’t eaten for two days. The boy was very pleased when we gave him some food and water.
March 20,1805
We took the boy fishing with us today.
The boy didn’t know how to use the spear so he grabbed the fish with
his bare hands. Everyone was
surprised to see this happen. It
turned out he caught more fish than all of us combined.
So that night we had five bags of cooked fish.
Guess who showed up? Our
friend Mr. Grizzly, and he took half the fish.
It was very disappointing, especially for the boy because he had caught
most of the fish. Still, we had a
feast.
Tonight the boy sneaked off without anybody knowing.
Everyone was disappointed. We
didn’t want the boy to be cold and alone.
We decided not to search because we had to be on our way.
Since he was most likely a Hidatsa Indian, if we came across any Hidatsa
Indians, we would tell them where the boy was last seen.
March 21, 1805
We wanted to pack up, but then a huge thunderstorm hit and we had to spend the night in a cave. Luckily there weren’t any grizzly bears. We had dinner and we also collected a lot of water with the pail.
March 22, 1805
When we woke up it was still raining. We think we will be set back for two days.
March 24, 1805
The rain has stopped. We
will continue our journey.
September 23rd, 1805
We have encountered the Nez Perce Indian tribe.
Some of our men got sick from gorging themselves on salmon and camas
roots. We met a chief named Twisted
Hair. He showed us how to hollow
out pine trees to turn them into canoes.
November 7, 1805
We are on the Clearwater River with five canoes that we hollowed with the
Nez Perce Indians. For the first
time the current is pushing us forward and we are traveling at a fast speed.
As we are moving, we see a lot of salmon.
Clark estimates he saw 10,000 pounds of salmon drying in a village.
Page created by Deb Gurwicz and Donna
Sullivan-Macdonald
Orchard School faculty members.
This page last updated: 03/24/07 .