The Return Trip through North Dakota Having proceed onward, the Corps of Discovery would succeed in their goal of reaching the Pacific, but be disappointed by the discovery that the Northwest Passage (all water route) did not exist. After spending a miserable winter of 1805/1806 in Fort Clatsop at the mouth of the Columbia River, they began their return journey. They split up, with Clark heading down the Yellowstone river, while Lewis went overland to explore the Marias river. They planned to reunite at the junction of the Yellstone and Missouri rivers in a month. Anxious to return home, and now traveling downstream, they made up to 80 miles a day and passed quickly through present day North Dakota. But not without incident; Lewis would be shot in a hunting accident the day before re-uniting with Clark, Charbonneau, Sacagawea and their son, Babtiste, would remain with the Mandans, John Colter was permitted to leave the expedition and join two American trappers heading back up river, and the Mandan chief, Sheheke, joined them to return and meet President Jefferson.
Captain Clark wrote: "Thursday 12th. August 1806 - I was alarmed on the landing of the Canoes to be informed that Capt. Lewis was wounded by an accident. I found him lying in the Perogue, he informed me that his wound was slight and would be well in 20 or 30 days this information relieved me very much." "Thursday August 15th. 1806 Mandans Vilg. - after assembling the Chiefs and Smokeing one pipe, I informed them that I still Spoke the Same words which we had Spoken to them when we first arived in their Country in the fall of 1804. we then envited them to visit their great father the president of the U. States and to hear his own Councils and recieve his Gifts from his own hands" "Saturday 17th. of August 1806 - we also took our leave of T. Chabono, his Snake Indian wife and their child who had accompanied us on our rout to the pacific ocean in the capacity of interpreter and interpretes...I offered to take his little son a butifull promising child who is 19 months old to which they both himself & wife were willing provided the child had been weened. they observed that in one year the boy would be sufficiently old to leave his mother & he would then take him to me if I would be so friendly as to raise the child for him in such a manner as I thought proper, to which I agreed"	The Interior of the Hut of a Mandan Chief Karl Bodmer A Mandan Hut George Catlin Mandans at Play George Catlin