What would they have done without Sacajawea? Dauntless and determined, always cheerful and resourceful, she had in her care the lives and fortunes of the whole party. It was she who gathered plants unknown to the white captains and cooked them into a mush. It was she who varied their monotonous diet by roasting, boiling and drying fennel roots, and stewing wild onions with their meat. It was she who found berries and edible seeds when starvation seemed the only outcome. She searched in the prairie dogs’ holes with a sharp stick and discovered wild artichokes, as valuable as potatoes, with a delicious flavor. She taught the white men how to break shank bones of elk, boil them and extract the grease to make “trapper’s butter.” When Clark was ill she made bread for him with some flour she had saved for her baby--the only mouthful he tasted for days. Late in November they reached the coast and spent the winter, a forlorn group, at Fort Clatsop. There was much sickness and the strength of the men began to fail. There was nothing but dried fish for food, and it rained and rained till their clothes and bedding rotted away. They had a strange celebration on Christmas day, when the men sang songs in the morning, and the Bird-woman brought a gift to Clark--two dozen white weasels’ tails! In January during a brief interval of sunny weather, they planned to go to the beach to get oil and blubber from a whale that was reported stranded there. Sacajawea had heard of the Pacific in the legends of her tribe, she had heard of whales too, and begged to be allowed to go. Had she traveled all that long way only to fail to see the great waters and the great fish? So Clark agreed that she should accompany them. When they arrived the Indians had already disposed of the whale, the skeleton, a hundred and five feet long, being all that was left. Because of sickness and scant stores of food, bitterly disappointed when no trading ships appeared with fresh supplies, they began the return trip early in March instead of in April. Progress was so rapid that the journey which westward had lasted for full eight months, was made in five, and six weeks of this time was taken up by a detour. The party divided and Clark, with Chaboneau and Sacajawea as guides, went to explore the Yellowstone. In August they were once more at the Minnetaree village where the Bird-woman had first seen the white captains and their mill for grinding corn. Here the leaders said good-by to their Indian friend and guide. Clark offered to take the family to the states, give them land, horses, cows and hogs to start farming, or a boatload of merchandise as a stock for trading. But Chaboneau preferred to remain among the Indians, saying he had no acquaintance in the East and no chance of making a livelihood. Clark then offered to take the baby, “my little dancing boy Baptiste,” now eighteen months old, and bring him up as his own child, but Sacajawea refused.