The Lewis and Clark Expedition

Podcast Transcript

When Thomas Jefferson concluded the Louisiana Purchase, it was one of the greatest land deals in history. For a relatively small sum, the young country purchased a large part of the continent.

However, there was a catch. The government had no clue what exactly was in the land that they had purchased. Much of it was unexplored.

To address this problem, an expedition was formed to explore the new land, which would ultimately shape the future of the United States.

Learn more about the Lewis and Clark Expedition on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

If you remember back to my episode on the Louisiana Purchase, a war in Europe, and a slave insurrection in Haiti, led Napoleon Bonepart to abandon his North American holdings.

President Thomas Jefferson secured the Louisiana Purchase for $15 million, doubling the size of the United States at 3 cents an acre. Even adjusted for inflation, it was a really good deal.

The deal contradicted Jefferson’s mission to shrink the federal government, yet westward expansion was central to his vision for the United States. Jefferson had been interested in the West since the American Revolution.

Most Americans in Jefferson’s time lived within 50 miles of the Atlantic Ocean. To Jefferson, the West represented possibility, potential, and mystery. His focus on Westward expansion was old news by the time he was elected president in 1800.

In fact, his fascination with the West began before he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was infatuated by the Mississippi and the uncharted river systems west of it; he hoped that there was a direct river system to the Pacific.

The historian Stephen Ambrose put Jefferson’s visions of the West into perspective when he wrote: “In an age of imperialism, he was the greatest empire builder of them all. His mind encompassed the continent.”

The limited knowledge he had came from reports of fur traders. French explorers also brought news from the fur-bearing regions of the Great Lakes. However, these reports lacked the scientific rigor Jefferson sought.

Jefferson secured funding for a western expedition as early as January 1803, before the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson asked Congress for a mere $2,500 to fund the mission. To keep costs low, Jefferson paid the expedition members a soldier’s salary and drew on funds from the defense budget. He dubbed the expedition the Corps of Discovery, a unit of the United States Army.

Jefferson asked Meriwether Lewis to lead the mission. He outlined his ambitions for westward expedition but noting, “The purpose of your mission is to explore the Missouri River…and by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean…”

Although Lewis already held a captain’s commission in the U.S. Army, he knew his military training wasn’t enough. To meet Jefferson’s ambitions, he had to become a scientist to fulfill the wide-ranging goals of Jefferson’s mission.

Jefferson wrote to Lewis in June of 1803, giving a lengthy description of his objectives and wrote: “Your observations are to be taken with great pains & accuracy, to be entered distinctly & intelligibly for others as well as yourself.”

Lewis was not a scientist, so he needed to study to prepare to take the observations that Jefferson requested. He spent the summer of 1803 in Philadelphia. There, he got a crash course in many areas of scientific study. He worked with experts in botany, geology, zoology, cartography, and astronomy.

Benjamin Rush, a Revolutionary-era doctor, gave Lewis medical training for the expedition. Rush famously provided the expedition with 600 ‘Thunderbolt’ pills, a powerful laxative of his own design. He claimed they would produce ‘explosive’ bowel movements that would relieve any ailment.

After his training, Lewis went to Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, to gather supplies. Lewis shipped the supplies to Pennsylvania and traveled there to meet his former military commander, William Clark.

Lewis and Clark were very different leaders. Jefferson selected Lewis for his bookish mind, but Lewis recruited Clark for his grit on the frontier. Clark was recruited to bolster the group’s spirits, serving as a steadfast and dependable anchor for the entire expedition.

Clark distinguished himself as an exceptional cartographer despite having no formal education in the field; his maps are still considered high-quality by modern standards. Data from the National Park Service highlights that he was a highly skilled mapmaker who utilized tools such as a telescope, a quadrant, and a compass to achieve his results.

In guiding the men on their journey, he had kept remarkable records of their distance. He was off by a mere 40 miles in his calculation of how far they had traveled from Camp Dubois outside of St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean.

Clark should be taken with a grain of salt. On the expedition, Clark brought his enslaved servant, York, who became the first African American to cross the continent.

York was indispensable, helping with river navigation and hunting through harsh winters. The Corps treated York as an equal on the trail, even granting him a vote during the brutal winter of 1805, widely considered the first vote cast by an African American in US History.

York’s equality ended upon return. While every other man walked away with 320 acres and their promised double pay, York received nothing. When the expedition ended, York asked Clark for his freedom and Clark refused.

The expedition began from Fort DuBois upstream from St. Louis on the Mississippi, where they had spent the winter of 1803-4. They spent that fall and winter recruiting, bringing the group to 40.

Lewis and Clark handpicked every member of the expedition for a specific, vital skill. Each man excelled in woodworking, hunting, sailing, or blacksmithing. After loading all of the supplies into the 55-foot keelboat that Clark and a crew had constructed, the men set out on the Missouri River.

Lewis and Clark began keeping detailed journals, a practice that defined their expedition. Their journals offer vivid details of every stage of the journey. Historians access the digitized journals more frequently than almost any other set of primary materials in American History.

The daily logs tell us about their discoveries, triumphs, and tragedies. One tragedy occurred on August 20, 1804, when Charles Floyd died of a ruptured appendix.

Clark’s journal entry from that day chronicles the tragedy. He wrote “Yesterday… Floyd was taken very bad… he died with a composure which justified his Character as a man and a soldier.”

The journals reveal the changing geography, animal discoveries, and relationships with Native Americans. The journals include sketches, maps, animal drawings, and recipes. They offer insight into the Corps members and their remarkable deeds.

Perhaps the journals’ most famous figure is Sacagawea (sah-cah-gah-WEE-ah). Sacagawea first appears in the journals in November 1804 as the expedition reached North Dakota.

William Clark hired a French fur trader named Touissant Charbonneau to help the expedition obtain horses and serve as a representative and translator in Native American relations. However, the only reason they hired him was because of his wife, Sacagawea

The expedition was in desperate need of horses as they entered the Rocky Mountains. They also needed to negotiate and maintain peaceful relations with the Shoshone tribe.

This negotiation was a complicated endeavor, sort of a linguistic game of telephone. Lewis and Clark had to speak to a French-speaking member of the Shoshone tribe., who then spoke to Charbonneau, who then spoke to Sacagawea. She then spoke to the Shoshone, who sent the message back.

The expedition members held Charbonneau in fairly low regard; they derided him for his blunders, including nearly destroying all of their records when he panicked and nearly capsized their boat.

Lewis wrote of Charbonneau, he is “perhaps the most timid waterman in the world.”

Of his wife, their opinion was quite clear; they viewed her as resourceful and essential. In the same passage in which Lewis chastised her husband, he wrote of Sacagawea as possessing, quote: “fortitude and resolution.” It is no understatement to say that she saved the expedition.

Her skill as a negotiator allowed the group not only to gain access to the much-needed horses but also to secure safe passage.

The expedition also carried a secret weapon: the Girardoni air rifle. Capable of firing 20 rounds in under a minute, this rifle stunned the native peoples Lewis and Clark encountered during their formal negotiations.

As they reached the Three Forks of the Missouri, Sacagawea recognized her childhood home. Lewis and Clark quickly arranged a meeting with the local Shoshone band. As Sacagawea began interpreting, providence intervened, and she realized the Chief was her long-lost brother.

The expedition benefited from her deep connections to the region. Her keen geographic instincts and understanding also guided the Corps through unfamiliar terrain. Her knowledge of the region’s plants enabled her to forage for food after the food stores ran out.

She did all of this while caring for an infant son, and as Lewis might have noted, her husband. Clark had a unique relationship with Sacagawea and her infant son, Jean-Baptiste, whom he called “Pomp” and “My little dancing boy.” His bond with Sacagawea was built on a profound platform of respect, while he had a genuine paternal love for the boy.

One of the most interesting side stories of the expedition was the future of Jean-Baptiste. In 1806, upon returning from the expedition, Clark offered to raise the boy and even offered land and a farm to Charbonneau and Sacagawea if they would move the boy closer to him so he could provide the child with an education.

The family took him up on the offer of a farm, but after realizing it wasn’t for them, they left in 1811 to return to the fur trade, leaving Jean-Baptiste in the care of William Clark. Clark became the legal guardian of Jean-Baptiste and his younger sister after Sacagawea’s death in 1813.

While the expedition failed to find the mythical river passage to the Pacific, they succeeded in something far more important: proving it didn’t exist and inspiring a never-ending passion for the American West.

Jefferson had given the expedition the authority of asserting US sovereignty over the lands of the Louisiana Purchase. Lewis presented the groups they encountered, with Sacagawea’s help, statements asserting US dominion in the area as a result of the Louisiana Purchase.

Although the expedition faced friction, especially with the Sioux, it was successful in reaching the Pacific and establishing land claims for the United States.

Jefferson also charged the expedition with a massive scientific mission: to categorize every resource and animal they encountered on their 8,000-mile journey. Their journal entries on plant and animal life may have been Lewis and Clark’s greatest success.

Lewis and Clark documented the discovery of 178 plants and 122 animals previously unknown to American scientists. In the journals, they drew the animals and described their habitats, behavior, and value.

The journals characterize legendary Western animals from the Grizzly to the Bighorn Sheep, to arguably their favorite discovery, the prairie dog. The ‘barking squirrel’ halted the expedition for an entire day in Northeast Nebraska as they watched it and tried to catch one.

After much effort, they caught and caged a live prairie dog, which they then sent to President Jefferson, who was equally amazed by the creature. Despite keeping the prairie dog for several weeks, Jefferson ultimately sent it to the Peale Museum in Philadelphia, where it became a star attraction.

The Lewis and Clark expedition claims a prominent place in the American story. The members of the Corps of Discovery were the first US citizens to see the grandeur of the Great Plains, to traverse the Continental Divide at the crest of the Rocky Mountains, and to see the Pacific Ocean.

Their chronicles of plants, animals, and geological features fueled science and ignited a race to settle the West.

The expedition represented the start of American westward expansion. For better and worse, the events of the next century in the west can be directly linked to the Lewis and Clark expedition.