Triumph and Torment

At 8 am, Clark and his party arrived at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers and made camp at the same point between the two rivers where they had encamped on April 26, 1805. Only days remained before they would reunite with Lewis and the rest of the expedition, but there was little cause for celebration. Their belongings were wet and had to be laid out to dry, their meat reserve had spoiled, and the skins they were saving for clothing had also spoiled. Worst of all were the swarms of mosquitoes. They were so numerous that when Clark climbed a hill to shoot a bighorn sheep, he could not sight his rifle with certainty. Clark wrote that the mosquitoes were so troublesome that no one in the party slept half the night, and that they found their way into his mosquito net and tormented him through the night and into the morning.

Montana · United States