Up late today. We set the alarm for 6am, but slept through it and woke at 8am. A mad dash to get breakfast, pack, and out of here because we have a long drive ahead of us today. As it is, we will probably have to miss the Abraham Lincoln State Park in Mandam, ND, which is really too bad.
Anyway, Arthur was driving at 78mph in a 65mph zone in order to make up some time, when a South Dakota policeman saw us and stopped the car. He clocked us at 78.6, but only gave us a ticket for 75, which saved us some money, but the ticket still cost us $80 and half an hour. Sigh…
We drove to the Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park, but we didn't have time to go through the restored Mandam On-A-Slant Village. Maybe we can save it for tomorrow, when we have a free day. We did have lunch there at their picnic tables.
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Ft. Abraham Lincoln in Mandan, ND: Aron Cowen
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Ft. Abraham Lincoln in Mandan, ND: restored guard tower
Dear Journal,
Today we woke up and drove. We got a speeding ticket, but it didn't take long. We kept on driving, and lunched at Ft. Abraham Lincoln. Then we went to the infantry post and looked at some Mandan earth lodges. After that, we went to an interpretive center where we met our boat guide. He had on full costume, and even had moccasins! Then we followed him to the campground, where we parked and piled into his “camper” (see picture on page 33). He then drove us to the boat shove-off place. I got to be in the very front, or the Avante. We shoved off, and began paddling with the current. It was a lot of fun! We docked on a sandbar and received our “possibles bag”. I went to an almost-adjoining sandbar that was so fresh, you had to keep moving in some places just to prevent from sinking into the sand! It was a blast! Then we shoved off, and began paddling again. We had to make a mini-portage across some 2-inch water, but that was fun. When we reached the boat ramp, we docked, got out all of our supplies, and let Doug, our guide, back in the trailer. We then climbed in the jeep, and drove about 2 blocks to his sister's house, where we transferred to a S.U.V, which took us back to the campground. We then got comfortable and put our sleeping bags in the 2nd (out of three) teepees. Then we went down a small slope to the camp-and-cook-fires. Doug taught me how to throw a tomahawk, and I practices 'till I could almost always make it land right. Then I helped feed the fire, (which later became my job) and we sat down to a delicious dinner of buffalo and cooked carrots and potatoes, with blueberries in cream to top it all off. I then fed the fire some more, and closed the air flaps of the teepees with Doug, After which we all went into our selected teepee, along with Dou, and watched while Doug showed us how to make a tepee (see page 20) by setting up a miniature one. Then he showed us how to make sparks with flint and steel, and made a tiny fire using only grass, flint, steel, and charcloth. Then as we stepped out of our tepee, we saw a whole bunch of cows that had (as usual) escaped via a sandbar to our campground, so we (Doug and I) chased them away back to the sandbar by waving our arms and screaming! I went on a mini-cattle drive! After that, I fed the fire (again) and got the campfire so that it was good for roasting marshmallows. Then we all (including Doug) sat around the campfire and roasted marshmallows, but Doug said they were too sweet unless the outside didn't brown until it was practically falling off, so I made him 2 that fit his specifications, and made and ate 2 myself. Then we heard some stories and went in for a long-deserved sleep. (see page 33 for pictures and maps)
Aron
We drove on to Washburn, North Dakota, where we met with Doug, who was going to take us on our canoe trip down the Missouri. Doug took us instead of his brother, Jim, who was going to take us on the canoe trip, because one of Jim's sons came down with acute appendicitis two days before and had to be rushed to the hospital to get his appendix removed. He is doing well now, but Doug agreed to take us so Jim could stay with his boy.
Doug was dressed like a frontiersman in bleached white coarse cotton trousers and shirt and leather boots, tool belt, and hat. He carried a “possibles bag” made from leather, a knife, and a small hatchet.
He took us to Birdwoman River Haven encampment. Sacagawea means “birdwoman” and that is how they named their tipi camp. We left our car and stuff and went in Doug's camper to where the canoe was. The canoe was a 4-seater: Aron in front (avante), Doug was in the rear as the helmsman, and Arthur and I were in the middle (milieu). We paddled downstream (thank goodness) about 4 miles and stopped at a sandbar island where Doug gave us each a “possibles bag” with snacks of pemmican, trail mix, a plum, a ginger cookie, some string cheese, and some candies. On the way we saw some swallow nests, an eagle's nest, and a pair of eagles. On the sand bar, Aron and I took a walk to the end of the sand bar island where Aron decided to walk through the shallow water to another, more recently formed sand bar, It was still unstable, and whenever Aron stood on any place the sand started sinking and filling with water. You could follow Aron's trail from the holes of water left behind from his feet.
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Birdwoman canoe trip, Washburn, ND: Aron Cowen, Arthur Luehrmann, Doug, and our canoe
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Birdwoman canoe trip, Washburn, ND: Aron Cowen, Arthur Luehrmann, and Doug, on an island in the Missouri
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Birdwoman canoe trip, Washburn, ND: Aron Cowen, on a sandbar in the Missouri
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Birdwoman canoe trip, Washburn, ND: Aron Cowen, on a sandbar in the Missouri
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Birdwoman canoe trip, Washburn, ND: Arthur Luehrmann in our tipi
Back in the canoe we piled and went downstream another 3-4 miles to a boat launch by a big bridge. Until we got to the bridge we had seen no people or signs of people. The river was pretty much like Lewis and Clark would have seen it. Just near our take-out point we saw a canoe with two young men who asked if they could use our cell phone. Right after, we saw a boat that was looking for the two young men, and on shore at the landing there was another man looking for the two young men. Altogether there were about 5 men and two boats looking for the guys. It turns out that they were due in to Bismark, North Dakota that day (they wouldn't reach it until late the following day) and were supposed to have called in on their cell phone the previous night, but hadn't done so because their cell phone battery wore out.
Back at camp, Doug showed Aron how to throw a tomahawk. Aron practiced for awhile, and by the end, he was knifing the tomahawk consistently into the logs of wood that Doug had set up.
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Birdwoman canoe trip, Washburn, ND: Aron Cowen's job was to tend the fire.
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Birdwoman canoe trip, Washburn, ND: Aron Cowen learns to throw the tomahawk
Dinner was cooked over three ingenious cooking fires that Doug and his sister Deanne had built. They had iron fittings to hold the iron cook pots at different levels above and to the side of the fire. One had 4 uprights and 2 horizontal bars. One of the horizontal bars was fitted with about 12 metal slats with rings on one end that went around the bar. You could flip those slats over to the ground to give yourself room to build the fire, and then flip them back to rest over the second horizontal bar so you have a place for pots. Another was a vertical metal bar at the corner of the main cook stove with an attached horizontally placed horseshoe which could swivel towards or away from the fire and on which you could put a pot on to keep warm. A third was three poles set in a basic tipi structure with a chain hanging down over the fire on which you could hjang pots with an S-shaped metal ring.
Anyway, using these cookfires, Deann made us an incredibly good buffalo meat stew with onions, potatoes, carrots, and garlic and bacon wrapped around the buffalo meat. FABULOUS! Buffalo meat is usually a little stringy and tough and too lean, but the bacon and slow cooking made it so tender it practically melted in our mouths. She also had fresh corncobs boiled over the fire, and home-made bread. For dessert she gave us blueberries in cream. YUM!
After dinner she showed us some birdsongs for a mourning dove, and told us of a strange experience she had in one of the tipis. They had a tipi fire going, and there was some smoke in the air, and she got into her sleeping bag to go to sleep. She woke up suddenly to see an Indian staring down at her in a threatening angry manner. She just froze, and after a bit he backed off and just stared at her - not threatening any more, but just curious. She described him as having painted a black wide stripe across his eyes and cheeks, edged in white. She also described his clothes.
The next day she was telling this to a friend who was an expert on Indian tribes. He just stared at her. She had described exactly the dress and paint of a Mandam Indian chosen by the tribe to be the guard of the encampment. He was supposed to go from tipi to tipi to check that things were ship-shape. He always was painted across the eyes in black edged with white, a fact very few people knew!
After this tale, Aron practiced more with the tomahawk, and then Doug took us up to one of the tipis and showed us how a tipi is put up, starting with the long eastern pole, measured to fit the nearly circular tipi cover (made from buffalo skins lashed together with buffalo sinew). You lay the east log down on the longer “radius” of the cloth and mark where it should be tied to the other. You lay the other 2 main poles along a shorter radius and mark where they will be tied. Then you lay the 3 main poles out on the ground with the east pole down and the 2 others in parallel crossing at the marks, and you securely tie the poles together.
You walk the tied point up and then split the 2 shorter poles to make a steady tripod. You then lay 2-4 more poles just right of the east pole, 2-4 more poles just left of the east pole, and 1-3 more poles opposite of the east pole. You've saved out the one pole that will be opposite to the east pole. Now tie all the poles together by wrapping rope around the poles four times. You tie the reserved pole, while it is on the ground, to the center of the tipi cloth, and then walk that up so it fits in the missing place. Wrap the cloth around using rope or poles to move it. The tipi we had, also had a second cloth inside the tipi that was tied to the poles and to a rope that was tied horizontally around the inside of the tipi about 3 feet up. The bottom of this cloth was buried in the ground so that any wind that came in at the bottom of the tipi was funneled up to the top between the outside cloth and the inside cloth.
The tipi also had a lean-chair, which consisted of many twigs threaded together on sinew or rawhide ropes and hung from a peg on one of the tipi posts. You sat on one part and could lean your back against the rest.
Doug also taught us how the Indians would have used dried grass held between two pieces of cottonwood with a hole drilled in one where you would twirl a pointed stick with a little bow to generate fire. After the European travelers came and introduced steel, fire was made with flint and steel on dry grass. The flint breaks off tiny pieces of the steel that spark. The sparks don't hold much heat, so it is hard to get the dry grass started with just flint and steel, but the early trappers would carry charcloth, cloth that had been charred in an airless place much like you make charcoal (wood charred in an airless place). The charcloth will catch the cool flint-and-steel sparks and start to smolder. Careful blowing with a blow-stick will then ignite the dry grass.
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Birdwoman canoe trip, Washburn, ND: Doug teaches us how to set up a tipi
In the middle of all this discussion we heard mooing and rustling outside. The cows in the neighboring pasture had found a break in the fence, gone down to some sandbar in the river, and come back up at our camping site. It was very comical to see those wide-eyed surprised black faces just outside our tipi! Doug and Aron yelled and waved their arms until the cows stampeded away back to the sandbar. One brown cow stood rear guard until all the others were safely clear, and then scampered after them. Aron was beside himself with glee! Doug apologized for the cows, but we assured him we loved it, saying he must have arranged for the stampede and round-up just for us! All that night there was lowing in the sandbar from the poor cows who couldn't find their way home to their pasture.
That night I had to leave the tipi to go to the outhouse to pee, and I was surprised by some mooing right near me. The next morning we found that the cattle had raided our site again. By the way, that night the sky was clear and bright with a zillion stars. I saw the Milky Way!
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Birdwoman canoe trip, Washburn, ND: Aron Cowen cheers after chasing the cattle away
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Birdwoman canoe trip, Washburn, ND: Doug teaches us how to start a fire
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Birdwoman canoe trip, Washburn, ND: Arthur Luehrmann in our tipi
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Birdwoman canoe trip, Washburn, ND: Aron Cowen in our tipi