A Shortcut

By editor

Missoula, Missoula County, Montana

There is a certain kind of optimism that only exists in the exploring business. It is the belief that if you just split your party in half, plunge into an unmapped wilderness, and agree to meet up somewhere on the other side of a continent, everything will work out fine.

On the morning of July 3, 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark put this theory to the test. They were at Traveler's Rest, preparing for the long journey home, and they had a problem. They had spent fifty-seven miserable days the previous year dragging themselves west across the Rocky Mountains. Now, they had heard rumors of a shortcut.

The plan was simple, which is usually the first sign of trouble. Clark would take the bulk of the party south to explore the Yellowstone River. Lewis would take nine men, seventeen horses, his Newfoundland dog Seaman, and five Nez Perce guides, and head east to see if this rumored shortcut actually existed.

Lewis was excited, but he was not entirely immune to common sense. As he watched Clark ride away, he confided to his journal: "I could not avoid feeling much concern on this occasion although I hoped this seperation was only momentary."

The shortcut got off to a rocky start. Lewis and his nine men arrived in the Missoula Valley and immediately had to cross the Clark Fork River. They built three small rafts, which proved to be entirely inadequate for the job. Lewis himself was swept off his raft and had to be hauled ashore by a bush, soaking his chronometer in the process. They spent the night camped just west of here, along Grant Creek, drying out and reconsidering their life choices.

But the next morning, July 4, things began to look up. The Nez Perce guides pointed out a "well beaten" Indian road heading east. Then, having delivered the Americans to the trailhead, the guides announced they were turning back. They were afraid of running into the Blackfeet, and they figured Lewis and his nine men were on their own.

It turned out the guides were right about the road. It was the great buffalo trail, the Cokahlarishkit, and it was a masterpiece of indigenous engineering. Lewis and his men followed it east, and they reached the Great Falls of the Missouri in just nine days.

Nine days. It had taken them fifty-seven days to cover the same distance going the other way.

It is a profound historical irony that the Salish people, who had built and maintained this magnificent road for generations, were eventually forced off it. In 1855, the Bitterroot Salish, the same people who had offered friendship, food, and horses to Lewis and Clark when they were starving in the mountains, were ordered to move to the Flathead Indian Reservation by a treaty they did not sign.

The shortcut worked perfectly for the Americans. For the people who actually built it, the road led somewhere else entirely.

See also

• Northwest Passage, detailing Lewis's conclusion that the water route to the Pacific was a myth
• Danger Ahead!, the story of the Nez Perce guides who refused to travel further east
• Journey Through the Blackfoot, covering the next leg of Lewis's journey along the buffalo road to the buffalo