On October 19, 1805, William Clark and three men traveling ahead of the rest of the party arrived at a Umatilla village near here, where their sudden appearance after Clark had shot and killed a crane caused alarm among the villagers, who ran to their lodges, closed their doors, and seemed to think the strangers had come from the clouds and were not men. Clark entered a lodge with pipe in hand and, by signs, tried to show his friendly intentions to people he found in great distress. He later wrote that the sight of Sacagawea, the interpreters' wife, reassured them and helped confirm the party's peaceful purpose. The Columbia River and surrounding plains provided abundant resources, and the region was heavily populated when the expedition passed through in 1805-06, with horses, many lodges, and tribes able to raise large numbers of men. Communication with American Indian tribes did not always go smoothly, because local peoples spoke a variety of languages unfamiliar to the explorers, and conversations often had to pass through sign language, multiple Native languages, French, and English. The Umatilla tribes lived along the Columbia and Umatilla rivers in the midst of one of the world's richest fisheries and are now part of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indians Reservation.