Lewis and Clark

The strange language was Salish, and the men reached for a legend to explain it. On September 4 the expedition came down into what is now Ross' Hole in Montana and met a camp of some 400 Salish, the sign's Flathead. Sergeant Ordway wrote that they seemed to have a brogue on their tongues and guessed they might be the Welsh Indians, a people said to descend from a medieval Welsh prince. Talk with them passed through six tongues: Salish to a Shoshone boy in their camp, to Sacagawea, to Charbonneau in Hidatsa, to French, to English.

What the plaque says

Lewis and Clark On their way north searching for a route over Idaho's mountain barrier, Lewis and Clark left this canyon and ascended a high ridge to reach Bitterroot Valley, September 3-4, 1805. No Indian trail came this way, but Tobe, their experienced Shoshoni guide, got them past here anyway. They had to follow a difficult ridgetop divide over peaks more than 1000 feet higher than this highway. They met some Flathead Indians who surprised them by speaking a language stranger than anything they had ever heard. 269 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Gibbonsville — 8.4 mi
• Nez Perce Trail — 12 mi
• Lewis and Clark — 18 mi