MADDOGS

TUESDAY--June 29, 2004--Fort Clapsot, the last stop for Lewis and Clark before heading back to St. Louis. The fort is about 50' X 50' and housed 32 people. The flagpole is in the actual spot of the original, the rest of the fort may be a few yards off in one direction or the other. The original fort was built to get the company through the winter; it was not built to last ie. they didn't peel the bark off the logs. So the original fort decayed fairly quickly. This is a recreation from Clark's drawings and the details of his journal. The expedition was very miserable, their hide clothing actually rotting away as they wore them, in part because it was raining all the time. On the other hand, the Native Americans lived through the same winter,experiencing the same conditions, in comfort. It is puzzling to Jude why Lewis and Clark (& all others who came West) didn't adopt some of the ways of the Native Americans rather than clinging to the European way of doing things--after all, during the Revolutionary War the whites fought like the Indians rather than like the British or French.