down the mountainside and he reported back to the camp that the black face of York, Clark's manservant, might be a sign of war, though their casual manner said otherwise. The villagers took a chance and met the visitors in peace, even giving them some of the berries and roots in their possession. The tribesmen had no meat to offer because they were, in fact, on their way to join the Shoshone for a buffalo hunt at the Three Forks of the Missouri.
The Salish language of the Indians puzzled the Euro-Americans. Lewis wrote down as many vocabulary words as he could. Ordway detected a lisp, but also a burr-sound rolling off the native tongue. He thought it might be a speech impediment. Or that the village might possibly be the legendary "Welsh Indians," a mythological tribe that supposedly left Wales in 1170 and disappeared into a mysterious, unnamed continent. William Clark knew that popular legend, too, but for his part he thought that if there was a "lost" tribe it was the Mandans on the Missouri River. Still, he agreed that the Salish speech pattern, which he described as a throaty, gurgling sound, was difficult to understand. As a result, when Clark called a formal council to meet with the Flatheads he devised a complex translation system that used five interpreters: Clark spoke in English to Francois Labieche, who then relayed it to Toussaint Charbonneau in French. Charbonneau, in turn, communicated the message to his wife, Sagacawea, in Hidatsa, so that she could repeat it in her native language, Shoshone, to a Shoshone boy who was a prisoner of the Flatheads, but fluent in their language.
On Sept. 6, the Flatheads headed south, then east, to hunt buffalo, and the Corps of Discovery rode north up the Bitterroot River Valley. Clark anxiously eyed the mountain range to the west. The Shoshone had earlier informed him that a gap through the mountains would make itself evident. But when? And would Old Toby recognize it in the maze of mountains?
Next Week: Finding and losing the Lolo Trail; snow-capped peaks come into view.
Robert Carriker has directed eight National Endowment for the Humanities seminars on the Lewis and Clark expedition and is author of Ocean in View! O! the Joy. When he's not out retracing the steps of the Corps of Discovery, he teaches history at Gonzaga University.