In 1803, Thomas Jefferson commissioned Capt. Meriwether Lewis and Lt. William Clark to explore what is now the northwest United States. The Louisiana Purchase later the same year altered the character of the planned expedition from an exploration of French territory to a first glimpse of lands that, in the view of many contemporaries, were essential to maintaining the agrarian, republican character of the nation.
The party of nearly thirty men—including Lewis and Clark, three sergeants, twenty‐two enlisted men, volunteers, interpreters, and Clark's slave—departed St. Louis in May 1804 heading up the Missouri River. They wintered at the present site of Bismarck, North Dakota, where they acquired a guide and translator, the Shoshone woman Sacagawea. In spring 1805, they continued to the headwaters of the Missouri River, struggled across the Continental Divide, and headed west along the Salmon, Snake, and Columbia Rivers to the Pacific. They returned to St. Louis the following year.
Their exploration revealed both the absence of a trans continental water route and a wealth of information, including detailed maps of their route, the earliest descriptions of Plains Indian culture, and observations of the environment. Until the development of the railroad and steamboat, however, the region they had explored remained a fur‐trapping ground and repository for removed Indians.
[See also Native Americans, U.S. Military Relations with.]
Bibliography
- James P. Ronda, Lewis and Clark Among the Indians, 1984.
- Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, 1996
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