Two weeks ago my daughter Mimi and her husband, Cliff, both from Durango, Colorado, and this writer pulled our canoes from the Salmon River at a tiny settlement called Shoup in Idaho’s Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.
We had just completed a nine-day river trip down the Salmon’s middle branch. One of the original eight rivers designated Wild and Scenic (1968), the middle branch flows 106 miles northeast through one of the deepest gorges in North America. It is a route of continuous rapids (over 100 in all), many of which are downright intimidating. Fortunately, I had Mimi, a nationally ranked paddler, in the bow of the our white-water canoe and Cliff, a former Utah river guide, helping to pick the proper course in the more difficult sections that required thorough study and scouting to avoid the holes and cataracts that have flipped eighteen-man rafts end over end. Rapids with names like Powerhouse, Pistol Creek, Haystack, and Redside to name a few. The kind of rapids that make you nervously bite your lip, give you a sick feeling in your stomach, and push your heart rate beyond the max. The kind that makes you wonder if you perhaps shouldn’t have gone to church more often. The kind where you hope God doesn’t think you are a hypocrite as you mutter a silent prayer before you enter the maelstrom, asking that He lets you make it through safely. Moments of anxiety aside, and ignoring a discussion of what causes us to express some deep-seated need to take risk and to participate in activities close to the metaphorical edge where danger, skill, and fear combine to give us a sense of pushing our personal boundaries, the river we ran is beautiful.
The water is an emerald green and so clear you can see the bottom in twenty feet of water. Honed by wind and water over thousands of years, the canyon walls rise high and bold from the river’s edge. The river itself rushes like a run-away train through the Big Horn Crags among the most rugged and wild mountain ranges in the nation.
If that were not enough, it also has numerous, narrow sand beaches for camping, many with hidden hot springs of warm mineral waters to soothe aching muscles and revitalize clammy and cold feet soaked for too long in the frigid river water that had slashed into our open canoes.
All too soon, it seemed we found ourselves entering the main Salmon, and at a take-out called Cache Bar we unloaded our gear and tied our canoes on Mimi’s station wagon, which had been left there by a shuttle service.
We were reluctant to leave the river, having achieved, we felt, just the kind of alchemy that such trips, whether we know it or not, often are designed to engender.
Our first stop after leaving the river was a traditional one for Salmon River paddlers. A small general store just upstream from the take-out which advertises itself as making “the thickest milk shakes available anywhere.”
The owner turned out to be an attractive girl in her late thirties. She could have been straight out of a Louis L’Amour western novel. Lanky but graceful in her movement, she was wearing a wrist bracelet of stunning turquoise gem stones, and a wide belt fastened with a large buckle on which was welded a caliber 45 silver bullet that held up a pair of loose-fitting carpenter jeans with deep pockets and a hammer loop. The jeans were tucked into a pair of well-worn, hand-tooled cowboy boots. Hanging from her belt was a mini mag flashlight in a holster, a sheathed leatherman tool, and a pager.
She appeared the quintessential rugged individual who holds our imagination as a symbol of the wild West.
I soon learned that the modern gadgets on her belt were due to her being not only the owner of the Shoup Store, Cafe and Cabins, but she was also an outfitter and the resident paramedic in Shoup, Idaho, population 60.
As you might suspect, business in the cafe was not like McDonald’s during lunch time, and between spoonfuls of milk shake, I was able to engage her in conversation: “The backboard and the stokes litter behind the counter?” She was also the river medic, she informed me. “Had she lived here long?” “Yep!” came the reply. “All my life, born here. Family came to these parts around 1880.” Seems a fellow named Bill McKay discovered lead in the dump of a badger hole on which he had sat down to rest while hunting stage horses. The result was a mining boom that created the Viola Mine and attracted her great grandfather. It became one of the richest lead mines in the world, but when the mine ran out, so did most of the 3,000 inhabitants who had been lured by the discovery. But her ancestors had stayed. “No regrets, Mister. I love it here. Clean air, clean water, unsurpassed mountains, great fishing and hunting. This is the last frontier.” Sensing my interest, she pulled up a chair, straddling it backwards like she was riding one of her horses, which filled the corral in the rear of the store. Looking me straight in the eye, she threw out a question, half query, half informative: Did I know that the first white men to come to these parts were members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition? She explained that the explorers were seeking a contact with the native Shoshoni Indians in order to obtain horses to enable the expedition to cross the mountains as they sought out a route to the unmapped Pacific Ocean.
“It was a well-known fact,” she continued, “that the Shoshoni Indians had taken horses from the Spaniards in earlier times.” During their winter stay at Fort Mandan in 1804, the explorers discovered a young Shoshoni squaw who had been captured when about eleven years of age and sold as a slave to an enemy tribe. At fifteen years of age, she had become the wife of a French Canadian trapper named Charbonneau. In order to secure her services as an interpreter, Lewis and Clark induced Charbonneau to join the expedition.
When the explorers finally found the Shoshonis, the Indian girl who came to be known as Sacajawea joyfully recognized the place of her birth and her own people. (Unable to speak English, Sacajawea suddenly began sucking her fingers and dancing with joy among these people who had suckled her as a baby.) When she was called to the council to interpret, she recognized the Shoshoni chief as her brother, afterward called Cameahwart. This remarkable coincidence together with the promise of future trade for the white man’s goods were what induced the Indians to supply horses for the journey over the mountains and the eventual success of the expedition.
At this point, our new friend paused to take a sip of black coffee flavored with a splash of Jim Beam. My own hometown pride refused to be stilled and I interjected that I was fascinated by her stories and to be informed that I was sitting near the birth place of Sacajawea was not only exciting but slightly incredible, particularly because there was a connection: Touissant Charbonneau was the uncle of Michael Charbonneau, also originally from Eastern Canada and Tupper Lake’s first settler! I went on to explain that I also lived in a special place where some of the rivers still ran free and wild and the mountains, while more gentle than her Bitterroot Range, were also spectacular in their own way. I wanted to tell her more about the Charbonneaus, but just then Mimi gave me a gentle kick under the table with the suggestion that “Dad, we have a ten-hour drive to Boise and if you want to catch your flight to Chicago, we had better hustle along.” Reluctantly, I agreed, and we made our goodbyes and thank yous for what had been a pleasant and informative half hour with a very interesting and charming young lady from Shoup, Idaho, birthplace of Sacajawea, the bird woman, captive wife of Touissant Charbonneau.
Next column: Sacajawea is chosen as the main image of the new silver dollar due out in a couple of months.