Archaeology at William Clark's Canoe Camp on the Yellowstone River

In July of 1806, William Clark and 13 members of the Corps of Discovery came along the Yellowstone River and we believe that they walked on this very ground right here and created a camp where they built canoes to descend not only the Yellowstone River but all the way down to St. Louis. If this is indeed the site, this would only be the third known site. It's on the other hand also only one of many different sites that people say is this is the site and many of them are well down there because grandpappy told me it's on that thing and everybody wants it to be on their land. In addition to all the other maps and aerials that we did to find out where the river had moved, we went back to Clark's map himself and used that and so anytime I do a morphology study on any river that has been involved with Lewis and Clark, that's the very first map I will start with in doing a fluvial morphology study. Reap Point in this area and he went down and got to Columbus, went over the Columbus West Hill right at the edge of it. He came up over the top of the Indian above Columbus of the Indian Fort and the Columbus East Hill dropped back down again across the flats and went down to where they made the canoes. On the way down the Yellowstone River Valley, a member of the party fell and a stick went several several centimeters into his leg and he was severely injured and he was in enough pain that it was very difficult to ride horses and so Clark was looking for a place anyway to make canoes and this probably advanced his thinking, his agenda to get the canoes made so that he could carry the injured person much more comfortably. He came here, thought that these were a tolerable size, still continued after he was here to send people downstream the next morning to see if there were any larger ones and there were no bigger ones downstream and so he said well this is what we'll do and so he made two canoes that he then lashed together. The site not only did it have trees that were big enough and straight enough, there was also the way that the river bent there was a nice place where they could launch the canoes load and launch the canoes fairly effectively and at least according to the study of our fluvial geomorphologist and so this really does seem to be a prime location to have made the canoes even if the trees weren't quite as big as he would have liked. We've been doing this since 2011 so this is our third and hopefully final year. It started out as a class project for Historical Archaeology of the Americas at MSU Billings so most of the people that have come out and moved most of the dirt have been students. A number of those students have continued to come out even after the class is wrapped up and so that's been absolutely wonderful. I started with this project in 2011 with the archaeology class at MSUB and after the class I continued to work on it with Dr. Rust on this project through present day and even after I graduated I've continued to work on it. We've been out here in all the elements. I mean there's been days where it's been a fourth season day where it's snowed, it's rained, sun comes out and then you get covered with ticks all in one day. It was, I mean those are things that you learn and then those are things that bring good memories you know and laughter I guess. If we can confirm that this is the site it would be one of the three sites that they where they actually can pinpoint where they camp which is I mean amazing for considering that they traveled from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean in this Oregon and then coming back through Montana. I mean that's just amazing and then to be a part of that you know I mean like who knows in 20 years people may be coming here to you know just look at the area and to know that you were a part of that is is pretty impressive and a great opportunity. Being able to go out with Dr. Rust and on an archaeological dig in your own backyard and discover something about where you live and somewhere you consider a part of your life that you never knew. It's not something you can you can just read about. It's not something you can just memorize on a flash card or fill in on a bubble on a test. I mean this is a real life experience and it's in your hands. It's physically you're holding it in your hands. You're holding history in your hands. There's there's nothing better than that. What really struck me with this archaeology project was the fact that I first wanted to be on an archaeology project at some point so it was one of those bucket lists things and then the second of second thing is the fact that we keep finding evidence and that it that it's scientific evidence that links back to Lewis and Lewis and Clark in the in the campsite which is very interesting and that's what really intrigued me. Well we have a number of of incidents of shall we say lines of evidence that would suggest that this is the site. First of all it's where possibly the data from the journals not only from the descriptions and the maps but also his survey data would suggest that that this is the site which Ralph Sanders figured out. So we took Ralph's work and he said it's here so then we came in with our plan and we we've surveyed we've done geophysical surveys we've done which kind of looks below the surface before we excavate we've done test samples small excavation units and then larger excavations and what we've discovered is that we have a fire feature with a geophysical trail which anomaly of some sort that looks like a trail from that fire feature to the river in Clark's day it looks like it's perpendicular to the river in Clark's day and the fire feature itself carbon dates within an acceptable range for for the for it to be possibly related to Lewis and Clark. The 300 feet approximately 300 feet from that fire feature we've also found localized spots of mercury. Now in and of itself we have one line of evidence with the fire feature the localized mercury is is very intriguing because that is oftentimes what is as close to a smoking gun as you can get on a Lewis and Clark site especially if it follows military protocol and the military protocol at the time which was something called the blue book or the regulations of the time there's a longer title to it but it's kind of nicknamed the blue book was written by Baron von Steuben during the Revolutionary War for George Washington and it states from your fire from your kitchen your latrines are to be 300 feet away and there's to be one dug every three days or more frequently in in warm weather well we found two localized spots both of which are about 300 feet away from the fire features. This is the area that we thought or we believe is the latrine we were out here on the spring day kind of similar to this not as warm and about what 25 to 50 centimeters down we started noticing mercury. Dr. Russ did an Irish jig around the the dig here and all of us were just ecstatic. And about two meters away from one of those localized mercury we found a a small lead ball it's about 375 inches in diameter 0.375 inches in diameter which would be a little over 37 caliber or maybe 38 caliber somewhere between 37 38 caliber. We've done a lead isotope analysis on that which is looking at the chemical signature of the lead and that chemical signature is is nearly exact to a lead artifact found at Traveler's Rest which is a another known Lewis and Clark confirmed Lewis and Clark campsite and why I say nearly exact is because there's some instrumentation variants and so but it's within that so I mean statistically what we're saying is that it's it's an exact myth and in fact of the what's called the USGS DOE database of samples of lead from around the world the closest that our lead matches is the Traveler's Rest isotope signature and we've looked at thousands of of isotope signatures so that feels very good to us as well so we're starting to starting to get more and more confident that that this is the site then. We have a number of artifacts that are also possibly though not as diagnostic as we'd like as say the artifact the lead ball artifact but we found a buckle we found a piece of strap iron we found other lead we found some some bones so it that have cultural signs on them marks that looks as though they've been cut so therefore we feel fairly confident that this was a campsite and that the probability of it being related to Lewis and Clark can be considered fairly high. Normally people would look at the amount of change in this river and if you look at a map and see how the river has moved all around here it's just it's miraculous that this particular site is still here. The second part of that though however is that it is in a process of receiving significant erosion on the bank immediately adjacent to the site. How long it will be there we do not know and it could be there for maybe just a year or two and maybe decades and maybe forever who knows. We're about 20 meters from what we believe is the latrine area and so as we continuously lose we've lost about three meters of bank just in the last month as the water's risen we could lose significantly more and in a few years it may just completely obliterate the site. The Yellowstone River today is still an amazing resource the longest undammed river in the United States and it's which has its good points and its bad points to it and one of the bad points is that it could severely threaten the site but on the other hand it allows this wonderful riparian habitat to remain intact in a nearly natural state as to what Clark would have seen it perhaps in his day.