The Lewis and Clark Expedition
One of the most famous expeditions in United States history is that of Lewis and Clark. After the Louisiana Purchase was secured from France, President Thomas Jefferson asked his private secretary Captain Meriwether Lewis to lead an expedition to explore the newly acquired land. Lewis asked his close friend Lieutenant William Clark to co-lead the mission.
Together they lead a team of 45 men called the Corps of Discovery to explore and map out a water route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. The journals they kept along the expedition tell us much about what they experienced along the journey.
The expedition began in St. Louis on May 14, 1804. They packed rifles, surveying instruments, camping supplies, books on botany, geography, and astronomy, food and beads, paint, knives, ribbons and tobacco to trade with indigenous groups they encountered.
The group set sail upstream on the Mississippi River in three boats: one larger barge and two smaller boats known as pirogues.
The expedition faced many difficulties and natural obstacles. A brutal winter was spent at Fort Mandan where temperatures dropped to −45 °F.
They later had to carry their boats and supplies for miles at the Great Falls of the Missouri River. Following that was the Rocky Mountains where they faced hunger, dehydration, freezing temperatures, and exhaustion.
When they finally made it across, they met the Nez Perce Indians who provided them with much needed food and water.
The group established relations with more than 20 Native American nations. Without their assistance, the expedition would have risked starvation during the harsh winters or become hopelessly lost in the vast wilderness.
They also had the assistance of Sacagawea, a Shoshone girl who they met at Fort Mandan. She had been kidnapped by the Hidatsa and was later purchased by a French fur trader named Toussaint Charbonneau. Lewis and Clark recruited them to join the expedition, giving them translators to speak both Hidatsa and Shoshone.
Sacagawea gave birth to a boy named Jean-Baptiste in early 1805 and he was brought on the journey from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean and back. His presence helped assure native tribes of the expedition's peaceful intentions, as they believed that no war party would travel with a woman and baby.
In the summer of 1805, they encountered the Shoshone nation. Sacagawea had a tearful reunion with her brother Cameahwait, who had since become chief. He provided them with horses to cross the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains.
Eventually, they reached the Columbia River and finally the Pacific Ocean in November 1805.
The return voyage began on March 23, 1806 and ended on September 23rd when the group arrived back in St. Louis after an 8,000-mile journey of 2 years, 4 months and 10 days.