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Lewis and Clark Christmas . .

It was Sioux country and snow was on the ground in big drifts soon after the last southward sweep of wild geese across the sky. The cold came down to 40 degrees weeks before the swivel gun was fired over Fort Mandan to hail the dawn of Christmas, 1804.

There were two slaves in the winter camp of 4O soldiers as Christmas came. One was a giant black man named York, owned by Captain William Clark. The qther slave was a little red girl of 17 or 18 years, the property of a Monsieur Charbonneau, who had won her in a stick game with his friends. the Gros Ventres Indians. The tribe had captured her five years earlier, in a battle with the Shoshones, on the headwaters of the Missouri.

The genial gambler and guide had brought three "wives" along when the captains hired him as an interpreter. The two Gros Veltres girls were sent home but the Shoshone slave, Sacajawea, was kept. The captains hoped that she might be of help on the crossing of the unknorvn continental divide-and this proved to be a good hope in 1805.

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The journals of the expedition tell that Christmas dawn was greeted by "small arms fire" and some shots from thc swivel gun and by the first raising of the American flag in tl.rat Missouri River region of Mr. Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase. Brandy was swigged by all hands, both before and after the ceremony, excluding the red slave but including the black one.

It was a "big medicine day" for the white people, the Mandans and Sioux were told, when the captains ordered the natives to stay away from the fort. Then tl-re "merrily disposed" men fell to dancing in squares, lvith tunes brought alive by a fiddle, a tambourine and a "sounden horn" or bugle. Solos were jigged and sashayed by the slave, York, an agile and skilled dancer for all of his lean, muscular bulk and weight. There were entertaining soloists among the white dancers, too. The athletic dances of the day made good play for them all.

The hunters had come in with loads of buffalo meat before the deep snows, then as Fort Mandan was completed the friendly Indians brought in gifts of food. -fhe Mandan wife of Chief She-he-ke had packed in a hundred pounds of fine frozen hump meat, bearing it easily beside her papoose. The Dakota winter provided efficient cold storage for all food supplies. So the Christmas Day feasting was as unrestrained as the dancing, despite the lack of feminine company.

There was no sad repining among the young men for the comforts and companionships of the homes left behind.

Ax, Rifle and Boat .

The start had been made on the mornir-rg of May 14, 1804, when the expedition's hunters crossed the Mississippi and rode up the Missouri's bank. The last boat had spread sail against the muddy current at four in the afternoon.

On Friday, November 2, axmen fell tb work on groves of cottonwood, ash and elm at the place that is today's

Mandan, South Dakota. In three weeks two sets of structures, each set 54 by 14 feet, were in shape to provide shelter. Well before Christmas, puncheon floors, insulated 'ivith grass, lvere bearing bunks, tables and benches.

The food stocks rvere low by the first of February, but then the weather was kind and the prairie yielded good hunting, even if the meat was lean and tough. There was little in camp to cheer about until March 31, when the rains came and the ice broke.

Then the .rvay.west was taken again, with 2,000 miles of travel and toil to the next lvinter camp, rvith ax, rifle and boat. Sacajawea had won a place in the boats for herself and her seven-weeks-old Baptiste. And none was more loved by all hands than the giant of strength and laughter. black York, slave of Captain Clark.

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