Episode 33 : Travelers’ Rest : an interview with Dale Dufour [transcript]

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:26:13 Debbie Lee: Welcome to the Subway Bitterroot Wilderness History Project, which is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The University of Idaho, and Washington State University. Part of the project’s mission is to collect, preserve, and make public oral histories documenting the history and people of the subway. Bitterroot wilderness. For more information, please visit our website at SPW Lib argue.

00:00:26:13 - 00:00:29:15 Debbie Lee: Idaho. Edu.

00:00:29:17 - 00:00:54:15 Debbie Lee: And then I think people, I think people get so much out of being in a wilderness setting. Once you take away cars and money and telephones, people are different and they are different to each other, I think. And, and, and then they draw on things in themselves that maybe are a little rusty from our crazy life out here.

00:00:54:15 - 00:01:25:22 Debbie Lee: Now, I think the ways that people get along when they’re isolated in a place like that, that they place that they want to be, are really it’s a wonderful thing.

00:01:25:25 - 00:01:52:24 Debbie Lee: Thank you for joining us for the 33rd episode of the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness History Project. In this episode, titled Travelers Rest, Dale DeFore tells us about Lewis and Clark’s famous journey through the Bitterroot Mountains. Dale graduated from the University of Illinois in the 1960s and began work in the forests of the Pacific Northwest just after the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act.

00:01:52:27 - 00:02:17:28 Debbie Lee: On September 14th, 1805, William Clark wrote in his Journal of the Exhausting Trip nine miles over a high mountain, steep and almost inaccessible, much falling timber which fatigues our men and horses exceedingly in stepping over so great a number of logs added to the steep ascents and descents of the mountains, rained and snowed, and hailed the greater part of the day.

00:02:18:03 - 00:02:40:08 Debbie Lee: All wet and cold, before entering the mountains. The Corps of Discovery stayed at a camp in the Bitterroot Valley that they called Travelers Rest. This area had been used for many years by the Native Americans as a campsite. The core stayed at Travelers Rest upon their return journey as well, making this site one of the landmarks of the expedition.

00:02:40:10 - 00:03:08:14 Debbie Lee: In 2001, after archeologist use the now published Lewis and Clark journals to determine more precise locations for the campsites used on the historic journey, Dale began volunteering at Travelers Rest State Park, telling visitors about the Lewis and Clark journey and detailing the findings of recent archeological discovery. Listen as he describes the route they took through the mountains, aided by the Niemi, Pou and Salish Indians.

00:03:08:16 - 00:03:26:26 Debbie Lee: What can you talk a little bit about Lewis and Clark’s journey, through this part of the country? Because I know that it was the most difficult part of the journey, and maybe some of the incidents that stand out for you and at least in along this part of the world.

00:03:27:01 - 00:03:52:26 Dale Dufour: Well, you know, after they they met this is Shawnee, and we’re able to get horses there. Thought of that at first was to go down the salmon River because they knew that was a tributary. They could and that a race fishery they knew from within being with the Indians that that led into the Columbia. And so but the Indians told them that was too rugged.

00:03:52:26 - 00:04:21:22 Dale Dufour: They couldn’t go in. But Clark took a party and went down, in into the vicinity of Shoup, Idaho. Now, and agreed that they couldn’t go that way. So that’s when they came back. Got back with Lewis, and they had an Indian, who they call old Toby. That was, came as a guide with his son with them, and they came across, near Lost Trail Pass today.

00:04:21:24 - 00:04:53:08 Dale Dufour: And when they got into the head of the Bitterroot River, they encountered about 400 Salish that were on their way to a buffalo hunt. And they traded some of their poor horses that they acquired for better ones. And then they made their way down the river until they got here in Lowell. And, they arrived at what is now called Travelers Rest State Park on the 9th of September in 1805.

00:04:53:11 - 00:05:18:10 Dale Dufour: And we’re here the 10th and the 11th and left on the afternoon of the 11th. They lost their horses in the morning, took them all day to round them up, and then they went on up, the what we now call it the name Niemi Trail and the Lolo Trail, over the top and, and on to meet with and they met with the Nez Perce and went on down.

00:05:18:13 - 00:05:41:29 Dale Dufour: And when they came back, they got back to, to this area in on the 30th of June in 1806, and where they stayed at Traveler’s Rest, and it was named Traveler’s Rest by by Lewis in the journals. And, they, they got here on the 30th of June. We’re here the first, the second and the 3rd of July.

00:05:42:01 - 00:06:06:23 Dale Dufour: And this is where they split up on their way back. And Clark took a party at 23 and went back up the Bitterroot to where Sula is now. And then he headed from there to the southeast and, up over the Continental divide and to what they had called Camp Fortunate near Dillon, where they’d cast their canoes. And Lewis took nine men from here and went down there from ten.

00:06:06:26 - 00:06:46:14 Dale Dufour: This rest he went down from their campsite about nine or about a half mile across the creek, and paralleled the river to where, now the Bitterroot and the Clark Fork come together, and he crossed it there and went through essentially what’s downtown Missoula on up the Blackfoot and over the top. So we have a lot of interest, in this area, on the Lewis and Clark in in the fact that one of the toughest parts of their journey was going through, the Selway Bitterroot country and,

00:06:46:16 - 00:07:00:14 Dale Dufour: They, they found out that, trails are not always the easiest to follow. And, and there’s just a lot of fascinating information out there about their trek through, this part of the world.

00:07:00:19 - 00:07:05:19 Debbie Lee: And didn’t they, they almost starved at one point. They had to kill some.

00:07:05:19 - 00:07:13:21 Dale Dufour: They, had difficult time hunting.

00:07:13:24 - 00:07:35:27 Dale Dufour: While they were here, they were able to kill some deer. But as soon as they started up, the trail game got more scarce. They ended up eventually having to kill some of their horses and at the bottom, of course, of the other side of of the west side of the pass is what was called Cold Kills Creek and change to White Sands.

00:07:35:27 - 00:07:53:22 Dale Dufour: And now it’s back to cold killed again. and that wasn’t the only horse that they died, I guess. But, yeah, the hunting was, not what people envisioned. They just feel game was everywhere. It wasn’t like out on the plains.

00:07:53:24 - 00:08:01:13 Debbie Lee: Right. And where elk in this area at that time or. I don’t think they’re much now.

00:08:01:15 - 00:08:04:14 Dale Dufour: they talk about deer. but,

00:08:04:17 - 00:08:06:00 Debbie Lee: And grouse maybe.

00:08:06:02 - 00:08:06:19 Dale Dufour: Right.

00:08:06:22 - 00:08:22:04 Debbie Lee: Yeah. I remember Patrick Gas and his journals said, at the top of Lolo. He called the better. It’s the most terrible mountains I’ve ever beheld.

00:08:22:05 - 00:08:24:08 Dale Dufour: Yeah, the tremendous.

00:08:24:08 - 00:08:25:12 Debbie Lee: Mountains. Yeah.

00:08:25:13 - 00:08:25:24 Dale Dufour: He called.

00:08:25:24 - 00:08:28:10 Debbie Lee: Them. Yeah. And,

00:08:28:13 - 00:08:51:00 Dale Dufour: And we were, you know, we talk about weather changes. Well, there was a mini ice age in, that was in the early 1800s. Was winding down. And so it only takes a few degrees temperature to make a huge difference in the the amount of snow and how long it when it comes and how long it stays.

00:08:51:00 - 00:08:59:14 Dale Dufour: And so they encountered a lot more snow then I think they figured the end of that mini ice age was about 1855.

00:08:59:17 - 00:09:00:13 Debbie Lee: So they were there.

00:09:00:13 - 00:09:07:24 Dale Dufour: And they were there. And while they were still, in the air, feeling the effects of of cooler weather.

00:09:07:26 - 00:09:14:13 Debbie Lee: So why are you so interested in the Lewis and Clark journey?

00:09:14:16 - 00:09:54:27 Dale Dufour: I’ve lived here in Lowell since 94, and, I didn’t know much about it at all in, I heard about a meeting of the local chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, and so I joined that organization in about 95 or somewhere in there. And then when. When, the hunt was on to find the Lewis and Clark actual campsite.

00:09:54:29 - 00:10:22:26 Dale Dufour: I used to go over here that to the park area. Now, where it was. It’s the only archeologically proven campsite on the entire trail from Saint Louis to the coast. And, so originally. It was designated a National Historic Landmark without a site. They just had a sign on the highway in 1960. And then in in 1976, three historians got together, and nobody knows what they use for their information.

00:10:22:28 - 00:10:56:00 Dale Dufour: But they said while the campsite was at the mouth of the creek where it goes into the river, and it stood that way for many years. But the journals were readily available for people to read. They were they were out there but not published. And, when, doctor Gary Moulton from Nebraska University, published the journals in the late 80s and early 90s, as soon as you read, you knew that they didn’t camp at the mouth of the creek.

00:10:56:03 - 00:10:59:03 Debbie Lee: Well, I met Kirk Kircher, you know, a little quick. Okay.

00:10:59:05 - 00:11:13:00 Dale Dufour: which Lewis named Travelers Rest Creek. The Salish called it Thompson, which means no Salmon Creek. But.

00:11:13:03 - 00:11:43:00 Dale Dufour: After people realized that they probably didn’t camp at the mouth of creek, and they started hunting for the site up here, things started coming together, and, the first item that was found was a military button in 1998. And then a couple of years later in eight in, in 2001, the archeologist, came in with a magnetometer to come through in the area that turned out to be the campsite.

00:11:43:00 - 00:12:12:20 Dale Dufour: And it shows them the magnetometer shows areas of disturbance where either ground has been dug or, there’s been real hot fires. And so, they were able to, using their technology, find two of the three cook fires. They also found the latrine site. And then, they recovered, rock that was cracked from the fire and, and charcoal, which was carbon dated and a tiny trade bead.

00:12:12:22 - 00:12:41:10 Dale Dufour: And, the men were melting, lead pouring bullets, and they spilled some land. Scientists at MIT analyzed the isotopes from the lid and trace it, just like a fingerprint from a person back to the mines in Kentucky, where the military got their lid. So there’s a there’s sort of like a CSI here in law. And and they also, they found the latrine, which was a 15ft, three inch long trench that had organic matter in it.

00:12:41:12 - 00:13:08:21 Dale Dufour: And they knew that two of the men were ill as they came back from the coast and were taken medicine that was 60% mercury. Well, mercury doesn’t disappear. So, they had, a device in about found the mercury about five inches beneath the organic layer. So there was a whole bunch of things. It’s what’s the archeologists called a preponderance of the evidence.

00:13:08:24 - 00:13:35:24 Debbie Lee: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness History Project, which has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The University of Idaho, and Washington State University. The project coordinator is Debbie Lee, recorded and produced by Aaron Jepson.