The Historic Grizzly

[brotherbear]

Continued...
Over the next few days, as the party traced the Missouri across North Dakota towards the present Montana border, grizzlies continued to tease their imaginations. On April 14, Clark wrote in his journal that they had at last seen "two white bear running from the report of Capt. Lewis Shot, those animals assended those Steep hills with Supprising ease & verlocity." On the 17th Lewis moved to write that although they "continue to see many tracks of the bear we have seen but very few of them, and those are at great distance generally runing from us...the Indian account of them dose not corrispond with our experience so far." 
The party's first real encounter came on the morning of April 29, 1805, in what is now either Roosevelt or Richland County, near the far eastern Montana town of Wolf Point. Lewis describes their mounting adventures this way: I walked on shore with one man. about 8 A,M. we fell in with two brown or ( yellow ) bear; both of which we wounded; one of them made his escape, the other after my firing on him pursued me seventy or eight yards, but fortunately had been so badly wounded that he was unable to pursue so closely as to prevent my charging my gun; we again repeated our fir and killed him. it was a male not fully grown, we estimated his weight at 300 lbs....The legs of this bear are somewhat longer than those of the black, as are its tallons and tusks incomparably larger and longer....its color is yellowish brown, the eyes small, black, and piercing...the fur is finer thicker and deeper than that of the black bear. these are all the particulars in which this animal appeared to me to differ from the black bear; it is a much furious and formidable animal, and will frequently pursue the hunter when wounded. it is astonishing to see the wounds they will bear before they can be put to death. the Indians may well fear this animal equiped as they generally are with their bows and arrows or indifferent fuzees, but in the hands of skilled riflemen they are by no means as formidable or dangerous as they have been represented. Reply