On June 5, 1804, the Corps of Discovery camped on this side of the Missouri River where a bottomland extended about a mile from the bluffs after traveling 12 1/2 miles from present-day Sugar Loaf Rock. Before breaking camp that morning, the men preserved surplus venison by jerking it into thin strips and drying it. Around 11, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark met two French fur traders returning from up the Kansas River, who said they had trapped many beaver but had lost most of their pelts in a prairie fire and that the Kansa Indians were away from their villages on a buffalo hunt. In the early afternoon, the party passed Little Manitou Rock, a projecting rock on which Clark saw and sketched a painted figure representing the great spirit, or Manitou, of the Algonquian cultural group, possibly painted by Sauk and Fox Indians, and then came to Little Manitou Creek. After encountering swift, shallow water on the left side of the river, the boats had to backtrack two miles, cross to the other side, and thread through islands near present-day Sandy Hook. Because the mast had broken the previous day, the party could not use its sail despite a favorable wind. By day's end, the hunters returned with two deer and news of fresh signs of perhaps 10 Indians; Clark suspected they were Sauk on their way to attack the Osage.