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34. Sandbars near Springfield, SD
View west, upstream 
Knotty Problem  his labyrinth is made of sandy silt deposited as the Missouri’s current slows upon entering Lewis and Clark Lake near Springfield, South Dakota. Gavins Point Dam created the twenty-five-mile-long, forty-five-foot-deep reservoir in 1957. Such dams have squeezed, shaped, and disciplined the Missouri for so long that it is hard to say how much of it may have been this complex before.
The task of piloting the expedition's boats smoothly through such morasses was the principal responsibility of Pierre Cruzatte, a French Canadian and Omaha Indian mixed-blood who, as a riverman, had the respect and confidence of every member of the party. The many-talented Cruzatte was also admired as an interpreter, a cache digger, and a fiddler. On 2 September, the men came upon the remains of an "antient fortification" of elaborate form and impressive dimensions, which Clark mapped and described in precise detail. Cruzatte informed him "that a great number of those antint works . . . are in Different parts of this Countrey." But it was all a misconception. The supposed bastions were merely old sandbars left high and dry by the errant river. The Corps camped that night somewhere near the area shown in the bottom of this picture. Now two days after the captains concluded their council with the Yankton Sioux, the men were still "all in high spirits" despite blustery weather that slowed their progress. But the good mood was tempered by concern about Pvt. George Shannon, who was seven days overdue from a hunting trip. He had hurried ahead, thinking he was behind his comrades. Nineteen-year-old Shannon, the youngest member of the Corps, would rejoin them at last on 11 September, after surviving for twelve days on wild grapes and one rabbit. From Discovering Lewis & Clark from the Air
Photography by Jim Wark
Text by Joseph Mussulman
Reproduced by permission of Mountain Press.
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33. Yankton, South Dakota 