David Horsey explains:

Because the Lewis & Clark expedition 200 years ago was so central to our own history, my editors sent me on a much more modest mission: to cover in nine days the ground it took Lewis and Clark three months to cross.

Along the way, I contemplated what the bicentennial observance means to us who now live in this place that Lewis and Clark first introduced into the American story.

I also became conscious of one hard and inescapable reality that underlies the celebration of Lewis and Clark’s great journey: Though they are true American heroes, Lewis and Clark were also heralds of doom for a Native American way of life that had lasted for 10,000 years.

Children of both emigrants and Indians are heirs of a sacred land

By DAVID HORSEY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL CARTOONIST

Editor’s note: This is the last of a seven-part series.

DISPATCH FROM CAPE DISAPPOINTMENT, Sept. 26 — The fog stirs out on the Pacific Ocean, but the late afternoon sun still shines above. Here on this breezy bluff where a lighthouse stands to guide ships into the mouth of the Columbia River, I have come to the end of the road.

This little peninsula is the southwestern tip of Washington. It is as far west as Meriwether Lewis and William Clark could go. After this, it was just a matter of waiting 3 1/2 rainy, tedious months inside Fort Clatsop until they could start their long trek home.

My homeward trek is not nearly as far because the Northwest is my home. I grew up with these rocky beaches and dark forests, with the rain and the sea. As I have driven the long road from Lemhi Pass, I’ve thought about how that came to be, how my family’s history fits into the saga of the great migration that followed after Lewis and Clark.

Since legend so often precedes history, I’ve concocted a legend of my own:

It is late September 1803. A young man named Nathaniel Horsey looks up from chopping wood near the Kentucky shore of the Ohio River. He sees a group of soldiers in a big keelboat and a smaller pirogue moving downriver. Such a sight is a welcome interruption in the solitude of the sparsely settled frontier. A man near Nathaniel’s age waves from the back of the keelboat. Nathaniel raises his hand in response. He watches the boats until they disappear around the river’s bend, all the time wishing that it were he heading West to new places.

How much greater might Nathaniel’s longing be if he knew that the young man on the boat is Meriwether Lewis, an emissary of the president of the United States on his way to begin a momentous expedition to the far Northwest.

Historical sleuth tracks explorers’ path

By DAVID HORSEY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL CARTOONIST

Editor’s note: This is the sixth in a seven-part series.

DISPATCH FROM DISMAL NITCH, Sept. 25 — I just parked my Jeep in a rest area on the north shore of the Columbia River a quarter-mile east of the Astoria Bridge. It was near here that Lewis and Clark’s moment of triumph turned into a week of dismal, storm- ravaged misery.

And it was here that a local man named Rex Ziak solved a riddle that professional historians had bypassed for 100 years.

I go over to meet Ziak as he climbs out of his truck and he picks up the conversation pretty much where we left off after dinner last night. Actually, it’s less a conversation than it is Ziak’s monologue, but I do not mind a bit because the story he tells is fascinating.

Ziak (pronounced “zeek”) was born across the river in Astoria and raised in the little town of Naselle here in Washington’s logging country. Growing up, he heard the usual simplified version of the Lewis and Clark tale — how they came down the Columbia and set up camp at Fort Clatsop over in Oregon — and he didn’t think much more about it.

Then, in 1991, Ziak got interested in this riddle: Two months elapsed between the time Lewis and Clark left Canoe Camp on the Clearwater River in present-day Idaho and the time they began to build Fort Clatsop. During the first month, they traveled nearly 500 miles. During the second month they traveled less than 20. What in the world were they doing during that second month? [...read more...]

Rafting with Rooster and Knife Man in search of the long-gone Columbia

By DAVID HORSEY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL CARTOONIST

Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a seven-part series.

DISPATCH FROM THE WHITE SALMON RIVER, Sept. 24 — I’ve joined a crew of five strangers in a raft steered by a guy with a knife sheathed over his heart. We’ve passed several rapids and now are first in line to go over the falls.

Knife man orders us to paddle forward as he maneuvers from the stern. The drop-off approaches. Adrenaline kicks in.

“Hang on! Get down!” Knife Man shouts. I slide to the floor of the raft, grab a strap and wedge my legs against the forward seat. Over we go. A gush of 40-degree water envelops the boat. Then, in the next moment, we are spinning away from the 14-foot falls. It all happens in seconds and I’m thinking, “Dang, that was fun. Let’s do it again!”

Of course, when Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery traveled down the Columbia River, they went over falls far higher and took on rapids much wilder and did it in dugout canoes. And they wore buckskins, not the wetsuit, helmet, splash jacket and life jacket issued to me by the outfitters who are taking 30 of us thrill seekers down a tributary of the Columbia. Nevertheless, this three-hour tour is my modest attempt to get a feel for what the explorers experienced long before 20th century dams turned the Great River of the West into a series of wide, placid reservoirs.

The Columbia River as it once was is almost impossible to fully appreciate today. West of here, the Bonneville Dam plugs a narrow gap where the tumbling Cascades of the Columbia once rushed through. To the east at the Dalles there were falls that William Clark called “horrid” in appearance, an “agitated gut swelling water, boiling and whorling in every direction.” Farther east was the expanse of Celilo Falls, the river’s greatest fishery where an estimated 16 million salmon passed through annually. From the Pacific Ocean, some of those fish traveled 800 miles deep into the mountains, as far as Sacagewea’s homeland near the Continental Divide.

Now, where Celilo Falls once roared, there is only the sound of waves lapping at the shore of a river that looks more like a lake. The millions of salmon have been reduced to a struggling remnant of endangered runs that add up to a mere 1 percent of the numbers observed by Lewis and Clark. [...read more...]

Indians have a message: “We intend to be here forever”

By DAVID HORSEY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL CARTOONIST

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fourth part of a seven-part series.

DISPATCH FROM KAMIAH, NEZ PERCE RESERVATION, Sept. 22 — Few people can tell you where their world began, but the Ni-Mii-Puu can.

A big mound rises on a grassy slope above this Idaho town. Myth says the mound covers the buried heart of a great monster that gobbled up all of the animals in the world. Coyotes killed the monster, cut up his heart and, from the blood, created the Ni-Mii-Puu, better known as the Nez Perce tribe.

The Heart of the Monster site lies just across U.S. 12 from the Lewis and Clark Resort, an RV park with log cabins set back in the trees and a motel office, gift shop and restaurant built to resemble a stockade. The restaurant is the Sacajewea Café. The Lewis and Clark theme is ubiquitous in this part of the country.

This morning, I check out of the resort, drive down the hill and cross the bridge over the Clearwater River. A little farther downstream is a sprawling sawmill built on the place where Lewis and Clark camped out for several weeks in the spring of 1806 on their return trip to the United States. Mountain passes were still blocked by snow, so the explorers had little choice but to stay here in what they called their Long Camp and enjoy the hospitality of the Nez Perce.

Now, as I drive into town, the Corps of Discovery II is situated at the city park. I toured this traveling exhibit yesterday and heard yet again about the meetings between Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery and the native tribes who helped them on their trek to the ocean. Today, I have my own meeting with the Indians. [...read more...]