Lewis and Clark Expedition
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the Corps of Discovery from St Louis to the Pacific and back between May 1804 and September 1806, covering some 8,000 miles. Jefferson had planned the expedition before the Louisiana Purchase and had asked Congress for funds in a secret message. Its instructions were commercial and scientific: to find a practicable water route across the continent for trade, to establish American claims, and to record the plants, animals, minerals, rivers and peoples encountered. Lewis was Jefferson's private secretary and had been trained for months in botany, celestial navigation and medicine; he chose Clark, under whom he had served, and treated him as an equal captain although the army refused the rank. The party of about thirty-three wintered among the Mandan in North Dakota, where they engaged the French trader Toussaint Charbonneau and, more usefully, his Shoshone wife Sacagawea, who interpreted and whose presence with an infant signalled to nations along the route that the party was not a war expedition. The critical moment came at the Continental Divide, where they learned that no water route existed and had to buy horses from the Shoshone — whose chief turned out to be Sacagawea's brother. They reached the Pacific in November 1805 and wintered miserably in the rain at Fort Clatsop. They lost one man, to what was probably appendicitis, and killed two Blackfeet on the return. They brought back some 178 plants and 122 animals new to science, and detailed maps. No practicable water route existed, which was the expedition's headline finding and a commercial disappointment. Its journals remain a primary source for the Plains and Columbia nations before sustained contact. Lewis died in 1809 of gunshot wounds, generally judged a suicide, at thirty-five. Clark spent decades as the government's principal official for Indian affairs in the west.
- Year: 1804 CE
- Category: Exploration
