May 23, 1804

We are finally leaving for the Mandan Indian Village where we will spend the winter. Our ship is a long narrow keelboat boat full of barrels of whiskey, gunpowder, and food. Even with the keelboat’s 22 oars the boat is still very hard to maneuver up the great Missouri River. At this time only about an hour into our journey we have already been caught on 4 sandbars and have had to duck countless times to avoid be hit with a tree limb. Captain Lewis fell today when he was walking with his dog Seaman on a narrow path above the Missouri. I hear that without his knife that he used to stop his fall he would have been dead. Even with all these mishaps I still feel confident about this expedition and I hope that we will all return safely.

Until next time,

Cameron Allen Randolph