On May 26, 1804, the Lewis and Clark Expedition camped on an island at the southern end of Loutre Island near present-day Hermann after making some 18 miles with help from a wind that let them use the sail on the keelboat, and while there Captain Meriwhether Lewis issued Detachment Orders dividing the 24-man keelboat crew into three messes under Sergeants Floyd, Ordway, and Pryor, an elite corps chosen to make the entire journey to the Pacific Ocean and back; the hired French boatmen assigned to the red pirogue formed a mess under Patroon Bapiste Deschamps and returned to St. Louis from Fort Mandan in the spring of 1805, while another mess of army personnel under Cpl. Richard Warfington crewed the white pirogue and was to pilot the keelboat back to St. Louis from Fort Mandan in the spring of 1805 with reports from the captains and specimens to be forwarded to President Thomas Jefferson. On May 27, 1804, the expedition encountered several canoes and boatloads of traders coming from the Omaha nation about 700 miles upriver, from the Pawnee nation on the Platte River, and from the Grand Osage village on the Osage River, then passed the site of present-day Hermann and continued to the mouth of the Gasconade River, where it stayed through May 28.