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Continuance Fall / Winter 2003-2004Cairo and Alexander County Louise P. Ogg
We do not know exactly what took place while the Corps of Discovery was camped at the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers (near Cairo, Illinois). We do know that Clark and Lewis were busy working with the navigation equipment, using it in the daytime and staying up nights. After leaving the region, they note in detail the river's sandbars and islands; today, people familiar with the river can recognize where the men were, even though the river has undergone many changes in the intervening 200 years. The Lewis & Clark expedition left Fort Massac on November 13, 1803, in a hard rain. Captain Lewis was seized with a violent ague, which was succeeded by a fever before he had left Fort Massac. Fortunately, his fever let up some by sunrise. Historians assume that he had malaria, for when he awoke he took a dose of Dr. Benjamin Rush's pills, which "operated extremely well." While traveling down the Ohio, River, the men note their passing Wilkinson Ville at about noontime. Here, Lewis in his diary, also comments on passing the "first of a great chain of rocks stretching in an oblique manner across the Ohio" [Grand Chain]. It was nighttime before the party landed on the point of land at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Later in the diary, Lewis writes that the height of the bank at that point on the Ohio was 36 feet, 8 inches above the level of the water, which he thought must mean that the river was low. The Ohio had been shallow from Pittsburgh to the confluence region. Celestial Navigation It was here that Lewis began to teacher William Clark the lessons he had learned on celestial observation. These efforts were their first in determining latitude and longitude. Lewis had received three weeks' instruction in surveying and the use of the chronometer from Andrew Ellicott at Philadelphia. Clark had earlier traveled the territory with his older brother, George Rogers Clark, when George was doing early surveying, and had a working knowledge of the instruments. No matter what problems they may have had, William Clark drew an accurate map of the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi, giving the distance of the Kentucky shore across the Ohio and the Missouri shore across the Mississippi. This experiment was his first in drawing the maps that he would make of their journey to the Pacific Ocean. While at the confluence, they first set foot on the Spanish side of the Mississippi, the Louisiana Territory, crossing the Mississippi near what is now known as Bird's Point, Missouri. They encountered Shawnee and Delaware Indians camped in the area. When they returned to the land at the confluence, they were surprised to find that the men had caught a huge catfish, probably a blue catfish. It seems they were accustomed to catching 30- to 60-pound catfish, but this one weighed 128 pounds. In fact, it was so large they had to cut it up and weigh each piece separately to get the total weight. Because Pres. Thomas Jefferson had asked them to record all the wildlife they found, they took measurements of the fish and noted them in their journals: length 4 feet, 3 inches; size of the head, 44 inches; dimensions of the mouth when open, 8 inches. On November 18th, they set out early in the morning with a canoe and a crew of 8 men to go down the Mississippi to inspect the ground on which Fort Jefferson stood. This was the fort that Clark's brother, George Rogers Clark, had founded in 1780. Lewis describes the Fort as having been on rising ground north of a bayou and west of the creek (Mayfield Creek). He made no further about what they found there. On their return up the river, they landed on the Spanish side and visited the homes of some of the people who were living there for the purpose of trading with the Indians. They also found a number of the expedition's men--drunk. The men had left camp, contrary to their instructions, but the diary abruptly ends there, and we do not know if they were reprimanded. On the 19th, Lewis recorded astronomical observations in the diary. Swift Current of the River About 10 a.m. the morning of November 20, when they left their mooring on the Ohio side of the point, they turned away from the relative ease of downstream travel on the Ohio and toward the swift currents of the Mississippi. Lewis recorded a sand bar that extended about 3/4 of a mile from an Island and reached below the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Historians assume this to be Angelos Towhead. Other islands were recorded that day, some in much detail. "We came too on the starbd [starboard] side and stayed all night. Opposite our landing is the lower pt of an island on the larbd [larboard]. We came by my estimate 10 1/2 miles today." Just upstream from the second island he noted another island, probably Two Sisters Island, as it is known today. They had not made much progress on their first day upstream, and the remaining portion of the diary page is blank. (Historians assume that they spent this first night up the Mississippi almost where the Cache Diversion Channel meets the Mississippi.) On November 21, Lewis writes about the size of the islands and the sandbars and makes navigation observations. Another estimated 7 miles or so up the Mississippi, he comments on a large quantity of "mssel toe" [mistletoe] on the trees bordering the river and writes that they had seen quite a bit when coming down the Ohio. Lewis writes that their first sight of the mistletoe is the "point at which I date the commencement of the fever and ague and bilious fever to commence or become common among the inhabitants of its borders; [mistletoe] continues in large quantities on trees at this place were perfectly loaded with it." Neither Lewis nor his crew associated mosquitoes with "the fever" and instead blamed the mistletoe. They spent their second night up the Mississippi on the Illinois side of the river and hunted in the Horseshoe Lake area. They spent the night of the 22nd on the rocks that jut out into the Mississippi above what is now Thebes. The diary tells us that they were about a mile below where a stream empties into the Mississippi, probably Sexton Creek. The river has been low the last two years (2002-03), allowing us to see that these rocks would have made a good campsite. It was in their traveling the Mississippi, with its strong currents, that made the captains know that they would have to increase their manpower before heading up the Missouri River. |