Descendants of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the West will try to make amends Saturday for a 205-year-old theft committed by their ancestors, the Associated Press reports from Long Beach, Wash.

Clark and Meriwether Lewis, after completing their journey west and spending a miserable winter at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1806, found themselves short a canoe for the journey home. So they stole one from the Chinooks who had kept them alive all winter.

Carlota Clark Holton of St. Louis, Mo., seven generations removed from William Clark, will be among the descendants who will present the Chinook Indian Nation with a 36-foot, custom built replica of the stolen canoe during a ceremony Saturday.

"I think everyone acknowledges that it was wrong, and we wanted to right a wrong," she said. "The family was very much behind it."

Two hundred years after the theft, Clark Holton, working in Washington, D.C., met Ray Gardner, chairman of the Chinook Nation's tribal council. The two worked on a project to bring down dams in the area, and on a trip paddling down a Virginia river, they talked about the canoe theft and its consequences to the Chinook.

On Saturday, the canoe will be cleansed, blessed and named, Gardner said. Then, it becomes a living member of the tribe.

"Once it's named, then we'll take it down and put it in the Columbia River," Gardner said. "I know I'm going to be skippering it."