He started down the Ohio by boat from Pittsburgh. At Louisville he picked up his former neighbor, William Clark, brother of George Rogers Clark. He had been a mighty hunter and Indian fighter, and had served his country under General Anthony Wayne. Captain Lewis thought it best that there should be two leaders, in case of any accident to himself. The two captains were real comrades and generous commanders, keeping the respect and friendship of their men through the many hardships of their wanderings in the wilderness.
They started out from St. Louis in May, 1804, with thirty-two experienced hunters, scouts, and woodsmen, on their great adventure. They had only a barge with sails and two smaller boats to go up the “Big Muddy,” as the Indians called the Missouri River. With the aid, later, of a few Indian canoes they were to find their way to the far-distant purple mountains and into the hazy regions of mystery beyond. The President had charged his two young neighbors: “Keep in peace and good-will with the savages,” so the wise partners and their picked men joined in councils and powwows with the various Indian tribes all the way up the long river. They had brought with them bright medals which the chiefs admired. Though the red men could not read the words printed on them, “Peace and Friendship,” they could understand the two clasped hands, one red and the other white, under the lettering, for that was the way they expressed the same thought in the Indian sign language. And the big chiefs hung the shining medals around their sturdy necks, and grasped the white captains’ hands in token of their lasting good-will.
The Indians were experts in signs. When a red scout came to invite the white travelers to join in a council with the chief men of his tribe, he would hold a folded blanket above his head, and, with a slow flourish, unfold it. Then he bent forward and spread it on the ground like a carpet, sat on it himself and motioned to the white “chiefs” to do the same. Then he would tell them, with signs, that his chief had invited them to come and join in a solemn “peace-smoke talk” at the Indian lodge. The city which stands on the place of one of these friendly powwows is called Council Bluffs.