40 Fun Facts About The Captain's Dog

Which breed is Seaman, the narrator of Roland Smith's Lewis and Clark novel The Captain's Dog?

Newfoundland dogs are strong swimmers known for water rescues, which is why Meriwether Lewis chose one for a river journey. He paid $20 for Seaman, half a month of an Army captain's pay.

Which animal bit Seaman's hind leg so badly that Lewis feared his dog would bleed to death?

A beaver severed an artery in Seaman's leg in May 1805, and Lewis struggled to stop the bleeding. The dog lived to finish the whole journey.

Which enslaved man, owned by William Clark, crossed the continent with Seaman and the Corps of Discovery?

York took part in the vote on where to winter at the Pacific, yet Clark repeatedly refused to free him once the journey was over.

Which animals did Seaman pluck from the river mid-swim so that Lewis could eat them fried?

Squirrels were swimming across the river in September 1803, early in the trip. Lewis wrote that his dog killed them in the water and swam back with them in his mouth.

Which president, who once employed Meriwether Lewis as his private secretary, sent the Corps of Discovery west?

Thomas Jefferson commissioned the journey in 1803 and named Lewis its leader. Lewis then invited William Clark to share the command with him.

On the journey home from the Pacific, what happened to Seaman that made Lewis send three men after him?

He was stolen by Native villagers early in the return trip. The three men Lewis sent got him back, and Seaman went on to finish the whole journey.

Which washed-up sea creature did Sacagawea insist on travelling to the Pacific beach to see for herself?

A whale had washed ashore south of the explorers' winter fort, and Sacagawea insisted on her right to go and see what the journals call a monstrous fish.

A misreading of Lewis's handwriting led historians to call Seaman by which wrong name for decades?

Scannon was the accepted name until the mid-1980s, when historian Donald Jackson studied a Montana place name that Lewis had chosen for his dog and read the word afresh.

An 1814 account says Seaman refused to leave Meriwether Lewis's grave and soon died of what?

Grief is the cause given by a historian of the time, who wrote that the dog would take no food after his master died in 1809.

Roland Smith jokes that The Captain's Dog is written not in first person but in first what?

Canine is Smith's word for it, because Seaman tells the whole story himself. Short diary entries by Captain Lewis sit beside the dog's version of events.

The Captain's Dog opens in 1808 with Seaman living among which people of the Northwest?

Nez Perce villagers are looking after Seaman when two former members of the expedition find him. Hearing Lewis's old journal read aloud sets the dog's memories going.

In The Captain's Dog, Lewis's leather-bound journal, rescued by Seaman, is which colour?

Red leather covers the journal, and the entries read aloud from it are genuine text from Lewis's own writings. Each one triggers one of Seaman's flashbacks.

The full title of Roland Smith's novel is The Captain's Dog: My Journey with the Lewis and Clark what?

Tribe finishes the title. A Publishers Weekly review praised the dog's fresh, original view of the many customs and peoples the explorers met.

Roland Smith, author of The Captain's Dog, spent about twenty years in which job before writing novels?

Zookeeper was Smith's job for two decades in Oregon and Washington, and his earliest books were nonfiction about the animals he worked with.

Roland Smith, who wrote The Captain's Dog, published his first book after helping save wildlife from which disaster?

The Exxon Valdez oil spill fouled the Alaskan coast in 1989. Smith turned the rescue effort into Sea Otter Rescue, a true account of how the animals were saved.

In The Captain's Dog, Lewis shows he trusts the dog he has just bought by not using what?

A rope is what a buyer would normally tie on, but Lewis lets Seaman walk free after buying him from a greedy sailor. The scene marks the captain as trusting and compassionate.

In The Captain's Dog, Lewis berates himself when which of his own inventions fails on the trail?

An iron boat was Lewis's pet scheme, and its failure stings him in the novel. Seaman responds by running through everything his master has already achieved.

As a pup in The Captain's Dog, Seaman chases rats on the banks of which river before meeting Lewis?

The Ohio is where young Seaman expects to spend his life catching rats. The real Lewis set off down the same river from Pittsburgh in August 1803.

Booklist's review of The Captain's Dog praised it as a marvelous piece of which genre?

Historical fiction is how a Booklist reviewer described the book, calling it a marvelous example. The diary lines are real, while Seaman's thoughts are the author's invention.

Roland Smith, author of The Captain's Dog, was born in which Oregon city?

Portland is Smith's home town, and he studied at its state university. Lewis and Clark's canoes passed the site of the future city on their way to the coast.

Which huge animal blundered into Lewis and Clark's sleeping camp one night until Seaman drove it off?

A buffalo wandered in among the sleeping men, and Seaman had to chase it out. Moments like that are why the explorers came to call him our dog.

Seaman patrolled Lewis and Clark's camp all night to warn the men about which dangerous predators?

Bears were what Seaman watched for after dark, and Lewis wrote that the dog kept barking all night. Shoshone hosts later admired the dog's good sense.

In Lewis's last journal mention of Seaman, the dog is howling from the torture of which pests?

Mosquitoes were so thick in July 1806 that Lewis wrote the men could scarcely exist. After that entry Seaman is never mentioned in the journals again.

A man from which nation offered Lewis three pelts for Seaman, only to be turned down flat?

A Shawnee man made the offer in November 1803, before the party had even started west. Lewis wrote that he had paid $20 for the dog and prized him too much to bargain.

Lewis honoured Seaman by giving the dog's name to which kind of landmark in Montana?

A creek in western Montana became Seaman's Creek, known today as Monture Creek. Every member of the party had some feature of the land named after him.

Which of Seaman's belongings, seen in an Alexandria museum in 1814, bore an inscription about reaching the Pacific?

His collar named him as the dog of Captain Meriwether Lewis and described him as the greatest traveller of his species.

Which fast prairie animal did Seaman once kill and bring back as it swam across a river?

An antelope was the most striking of Seaman's catches, but he also fetched geese and deer for the hunters.

Seaman's breed excels at water rescue partly because of which feature of its feet?

Webbed paws, a muscular build and a thick double coat make the breed a natural lifesaver, which suited a journey made mostly by river.

Which 1803 land deal with France gave Lewis, Clark and Seaman a vast new territory to explore?

The Louisiana Purchase roughly doubled the size of the United States. Jefferson had asked Congress to fund the journey months before the treaty was signed.

In which city on the Mississippi did the Corps of Discovery end its journey in September 1806?

St. Louis saw the party return on September 23, exactly six months after it set out from its winter fort near the Pacific.

Sacagawea helped the Corps of Discovery trade for mountain horses with which nation, led by her brother Cameahwait?

Shoshone leaders agreed to trade horses and to provide guides over the Rockies. In their language one word covers both brother and cousin, so the exact family tie is uncertain.

Which French-Canadian fur trapper joined Lewis and Clark as an interpreter and brought his wife Sacagawea?

Toussaint Charbonneau was the oldest member of the permanent party, and he outlived most of the others during a long career as a guide and fur trader.

William Clark gave which nickname to Sacagawea's baby son Jean Baptiste, born during the journey?

Pomp, or Little Pomp, grew up to be a guide and trapper himself. A sandstone pillar on the Yellowstone River in Montana still carries his nickname.

Which sergeant was the only member of the Corps of Discovery to die during the journey west?

Charles Floyd died in August 1804, apparently of acute appendicitis, and was buried on a bluff above the Missouri River near present-day Sioux City, Iowa.

Where in North Dakota did Lewis and Clark's party spend the winter of 1804–05 and meet Sacagawea?

Fort Mandan sheltered the party through a winter when the temperature sometimes dropped to 45 below zero. Sacagawea's son was born there in February 1805.

Where near the Pacific did Lewis and Clark's party spend the long, rainy winter of 1805–06?

Fort Clatsop was given its name on Christmas Day, in honour of the local people who had recommended the area to the captains.

Which nearsighted hunter, out after elk with Meriwether Lewis, shot the captain in the thigh by mistake?

Pierre Cruzatte fired by mistake in August 1806, just as the two halves of the party were reuniting. Lewis recovered, and the explorers were home within weeks.

Which member of Lewis and Clark's party left early to trap furs and became Yellowstone's first known white visitor?

John Colter was discharged almost two months early in August 1806 so that he could lead two trappers back upriver. He is often called the first American mountain man.

Which great river carried Lewis and Clark's canoes on the final stretch to the Pacific Ocean?

The Columbia was reached only after the party crossed the mountains with pack horses and paddled down two smaller rivers, the Clearwater and the Snake.

Two men of which nation were killed while trying to take guns from Lewis's sleeping scouting party?

Blackfeet men camped beside Lewis's group of four in July 1806 and tried to take their weapons in the night. The explorers then fled more than 100 miles in a single day.