"it was mutually advantageous..."

By editor

Dillon, Beaverhead County, Montana, August 1805

The great enterprise of discovery, having threaded the labyrinth of the Missouri to its utmost fountains, now found itself at a critical juncture. Captain Meriwether Lewis, pressing forward with a small advance party, had crossed the Continental Divide and encountered the Lemhi Shoshoni, a people whose possession of horses was the single hinge upon which the success of the expedition turned. Without these animals to transport their baggage across the formidable barrier of the Rocky Mountains, the explorers could not hope to reach the navigable waters of the Columbia. It was here, at a place they would gratefully name Camp Fortunate, that the two worlds met in a parley of profound consequence.

The meeting was marked by a stroke of providence that seems almost the invention of romance. When the main body of the expedition arrived on August 17, 1805, the Shoshoni chief Cameahwait recognized among them his own sister, Sacagawea, who had been torn from her people by a raiding party five years prior. This joyful reunion smoothed the path of diplomacy. Through her interpretation, the captains negotiated for the indispensable horses and a guide, promising in return that future trade would bring the guns and ammunition the Shoshoni so desperately needed to defend themselves against their enemies. As Captain Lewis recorded in his journal, "...it was mutually advantageous to them as well as to ourselves that they should render us such aids as they had in their power to furnish in order to haisten our voyage and of course our return home." Today, the site of this historic encampment lies submerged beneath the waters of Clark Canyon Reservoir, a silent monument to the fragile alliances that opened the West.

See also

• "it was mutually advantageous..." at Dillon, Beaverhead County (Montana Bureau of Reclamation)
• Camp Fortunate for more on the expedition's stay in the area.