John Orthmann, portraying Joseph Whitehouse, speaks with Craig Lincoln, of Sunnyvale, California, about the use of animal hides during a Lewis and Clark encampment re-enactment Sunday, July 10 at the Knappton Cover Heritage Center.

KNAPPTON COVE — A pair of moccasins might only last a couple days and buffalo meat was much desired after a diet too rich with roots and salmon.

The daily lives and dining practices of the Lewis and Clark Expedition came to life during a reenactment at an encampment last Saturday and Sunday at Knappton Cove Heritage Center along the banks of the Columbia River, just up river from Dismal Nitch historical site, where the expedition famously struggled to survive in November 1805.

More Information

Known details about the expedition’s men can be found at lewis-clark.org/members/the-enlisted-men/

The five participants included Glen Allison, portraying Capt. Meriwether Lewis; John Orthmann as Joseph Whitehouse; Dewayne Pritchett as John Collins, Dewayne Anderson as Pvt. William Werner and seamstress Mrs. Cane, portrayed by Margaret Fedje.

Each of the portrayed individuals was vital to the Corps of Northwestern Discovery, which Lewis and Capt. William Clark led from St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia River and back with help from Sacagawea, Clark’s Black slave York, and a U.S. Army unit of about three dozen men from 1804-06.

The group, members of the Pacific Northwest Living Historians, demonstrated handling flintlock firearms, fire-starting with flint and steel, camp cooking, making canoe paddles, and clothing from leather.

Flintlock firearms

Pritchett, portraying Collins, demonstrated the different calibers of flintlock firearms used during the Lewis and Clark era, from a .54 caliber to the ‘big’ .69 caliber 1795 Springfield musket.

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‘Moccasins would typically last three days, then you would get in this routine of patching them. When they got to patching patches, they would throw them out.’

Dewayne Pritchett as explorer John Collins

“In modern terms, it’s a 14-gauge shotgun,” he said. “Some of the French river men that were with them might have a musket like that. The Hudson Bay Company would sell these, too.”

Accuracy, however, wasn’t the best, particularly with smoothbore, flintlock firearms.

“They’re not rifled or have a rear site. At that time in the military, the idea was to get as much lead downfield as possible. Aiming was a secondary concern,” Pritchett said. “If they started loaded, they could get four rounds within a minute. The military standard was three rounds per minute.”

Still, the explorers had success, including harvesting 120 elk while on the coast.

“There were several men in the journals who were singled out as being proficient hunters with their muskets — they went hunting grizzly bear, elk and bison with these. These will bring down a buffalo and an elk pretty readily. The ballistics on a muzzleloader are different. It doesn’t move as fast as a modern bullet, which will go right through the animal. These [muskets] didn’t ruin as much meat, because there wasn’t as much hydrostatic shock. Instead, you only lose the meat where the bullet trailed,” Pritchett said.

Daily diet

The daily diet during the expedition, which took more than two years, was also discussed.

“They didn’t like the fish at all. They had a bad experience with the salmon and Wapato roots with Nez Perce,” Pritchett said. “At one point, they came out of the Bitterroot Mountains and hadn’t eaten much of anything — these guys were red meat eaters on the other side of the Rockies — and they came into the oily, rich fish with Wapato and Camas roots and a lot of men got sick. They were all laid out with it coming out both ends. At that point they were very vulnerable and the Nez Perce considered killing them — and having the best arsenal of any tribe West of the Mississippi River — but there was an old woman, Watkuweise, who said not to kill them.”

Buffalo and elk were among their most-desired meals.

“They really looked forward to getting buffalo on the return trip,” said Allison, portraying Lewis. “They considered wintering upriver near The Dalles. But when the local Indians told them there’s good elk herds south of the river, it prompted their decision … They needed the meat, and the hides for moccasins and clothing.”

But the hide moccasins weren’t durable.

“Moccasins would typically last three days, then you would get in this routine of patching them. When they got to patching patches, they would throw them out. They had a lot of time in the evening to make extra moccasins. When they left, each man had around 10 or 11 sets,” Pritchett said.

“By the time they left Ft. Mandan, after their first winter in North Dakota, a lot of their cloth clothing was already gone. You tend to wear out your clothing from your feet up, even with leather. Your moccasins go first and then your leggings/trousers and shirt. At any given time, you could see a guy with a really crusty, old shirt but brand-new moccasins and medium-worn trousers.”

Mindset of the men

One of the most impressive aspects of the expedition was the members’ sheer determination and perseverance, according to Anderson, portraying Pvt. Werner.

“Every man did his duty and assignment without complaining, while being on a camping trip for essentially two years, four months and 10 days,” he said.

Roughly three months into the journey, the expedition experienced its lone fatality, when Charles Floyd died from a suspected ruptured appendix.

“At the time, there was no such thing as abdominal surgeries. Even if he had been treated by the best doctor in New York or Philadelphia, he still would have died,” Pritchett said.

Common misconception

There are many common misconceptions abound about the Lewis and Clark Expedition, including that William Clark was officially a captain.

“His actual rank was lieutenant, but the men didn’t know that. They were both respected as co-captains,” Pritchett said.

“Ten years earlier, when they first met prior to the expedition, Clark was the captain and Lewis was the lieutenant. Then Clark left the military and Lewis kept rising. By the time [Thomas] Jefferson became president, the Lewis family were neighbors of the Jeffersons and so he picked him to be his private secretary.”

Misquitors, misqutors and misquestors

Words such as moccasin or mosquito had multiple spellings at the time, largely based on one’s dialect or pronunciation, as evidenced in journal entries.

“There was no Merriam-Webster dictionary at the time. The first American dictionary came in 1928, so you spelled things the way you pronounced it,” Allison said.

“If you were from the South and pronounced a certain way, you would spell it a certain way compared to someone from the North might. There was no standardized spelling and it could be very confusing. Lewis spelled mosquito 26 different ways throughout the journals.”

A favorite journal entry

For Pritchett, the passage that resonates strongest regards an entry from Clark when the expedition was passing through the Bitterroot Mountains.

“He said his feet were never as cold and wet as they were during that time. If your feet are cold, you whole body is cold; you can’t get away from it. He attributed it to his thin deerskin moccasins,” Pritchett said.

For Glen Allison, a favorite journal entry involved the dugout canoes, which could stretch around 30 feet and weigh 2,000 pounds.

“They were on one of the tributaries of the Missouri River when they went up a wrong river [in search of the headwaters]. Those rivers were pretty rough sometimes with rapids,” Allison said. “[Whitehouse] was in the rear of a canoe that got caught up on a rock. The canoe started to sway and he jumped out and tried to stop it, but the dugout canoes were so heavy — they could weigh more than a ton — that it just swept right over him. Capt. Lewis wrote afterward that had it been two inches shallower it would have probably crushed him to death. All that Whitehouse wrote about it was that the canoe hit him in the leg and lamed him.”