I watched a documentary on their time traversing the great falls and meeting grizzly bears. The Native Americans warned them of the perils. They dismissed the tails at their peril.
They didn’t have accurate information about how far the distance between the “Great Divide” was and the coast, it’s a lot farther than they thought. Initially they thought it was just a couple days portage. They practically starved in the mountains of Montana and Idaho. A lot of the game animals are actually plains animals, or at least migrated to lower elevations back then.
Jefferson had provided them a draft payable by the Treasury, to be used when they got to the coast, if they happened to run into a ship they could catch a ride back to the states. They just missed one or two sailing ships by maybe by a month.
“They dismissed the tails at their peril.”
I thought bear tails didn’t exist? :)