On May 14, 1804, forty-five men set out up the Missouri River. They sailed for five months before stopping for the winter at Fort Mandan in present day North Dakota. There they hired Toussaint Charbonneau, a French fur trader and interpreter. As an added bonus, they got his Shoshone Indian wife Sacajawea. Her presence assured other tribes who might encounter them that they were not a war party, as no war party ever took women with them.
In the spring of 1805, a few members were sent back east with the flora and fauna specimens and reports that they had collected so far. The rest of the men, about 33 total, continued on. They journeyed as far as they could by boat. When they reached the Missouri’s headwaters in central Montana, it was Sacajawea that negotiated a purchase of horses from her people. They continued over the Rocky Mountains by horseback. By September, the party reached the Clearwater River. From there they could sail the rest of the way to the Pacific Ocean. The Clearwater dumped into the Snake River, which fed the Columbia. They made good time, averaging about 30 miles a day. On November 7, 1805, they reached the Pacific Ocean.
Their first night was not a pleasant one. The mouth of the Columbia was jammed with floating logs and the current was turbulent. Steep cliffs lined the river so there was nowhere to land. They were forced to sleep on floating logs. There was nothing to eat but the dried fish they had with them and there was no fresh water. It rained all night. After five days, Clark and eleven other men set out to find a place to land. They finally found a place on the north side of the Columbia that would later be called Fort Columbia.
The first few days there saw storms with torrential rains and gale force winds. Their food supply ran low and the local Chinook Indians did not have much to trade. The high humidity was causing their buckskins to rot and mildew. They decided to set up a permanent winter camp on the other side of the Columbia. As soon as they set out, high waves almost capsized them. They had to go several miles up the river, away from the tide, to cross the river.
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