During the year of 1803 the then President of the United States Thomas Jefferson organized a masterful foreign diplomacy piece throughout the American Senate known as the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon of France. Jefferson, a man who would become known throughout history as one of the founding fathers, would also become a principal scribe of the Declaration of Independence during the years (National Geographic). Soon after the treaty was signed and agreed on, Jefferson instantiated an exploration of the wondrous land and territory exceeding out past the great rock mountains that lay in the West. He selected his personal secretary, a man by the name of Meriwether Lewis, for the expedition (National Geographic). This was due to the fact he was a literate and thus intelligent person who also had honed skills as a frontiersman. Not desiring to take on such a daunting task on his own, Lewis subsequently enlisted the help of a man known as William Clark; someone who possessed even strong abilities as a draftsman in addition to frontiersman. Lewis harbored such a powerful degree of respect for his colleague that he appointed him co-commanding captain for the expedition despite the fact that Clark would never officially be recognized as such by the federal government. Eventually, they assembled a Corps of Discovery (diverse military group) that would have the means to travel on a two year journey towards the great ocean (National Geographic).
President Jefferson hoped that the two pathfinders would locate a water route that linked the Missouri and Columbia rivers. Furthermore, the link would connect the Mississippi River system with the Pacific Ocean and therefore allow the newly acquired western land permanent access to port markets existing out of eastern cities stretching along the Ohio River and the tributaries therein in addition to the Gulf of Mexico (Buckley). Unfortunately, at this time in history, both European and American explorers had only successfully penetrated what would soon become the endpoints of the Lewis and Clark trail (Buckley). These points would exist several miles up the Missouri all the way to the Fort Mandan trapper headquarters and upwards of Columbia just over 100 miles to present day Portland in the State of Oregon (Buckley).
As the expedition prepared its launch from its starting point in Camp Wood during 1804, a setting just outside of St. Louis, Lewis and Clark began paddling their way downwards of Ohio (HISTORY.com). During the summer and fall that followed, the explorers eventually pulled upstream facing the northwestern direction of the Missouri River on route to the trading post at Fort Mandan. Once there, the Corps of Discovery winter, set up camp, and prepared for their subsequent journey towards the Pacific (Jefferson Monticello). In Spring of 1805, the expedition was lucky to have experienced favorable weather conditions and high water (Jefferson Monticello). Their next objective was to travel up through the Missouri to a location in Montana known today as Three-Forks. To get there, they wisely decided to follow the Jefferson River (the tributary farther to the west). By taking this path, they eventually arrived at the entrance to a village of Shoshone Native Americans; a group of people skilled at traversing the immense mountains of rock with the help of horses (Jefferson Monticello). As soon as they scaled over what were referred to as the Bitterroot Mountains, canoe vessels were shaped by the Corps of Discovery for the purpose of swift transportation downriver towards the mouth of Columbia. There, they wintered at a location on the side of the river where Oregon was known as Fort Clatsop (HISTORY.com).
With their journals at the ready, Lewis, Clark, and several other expedition members made a return to St. Louis in the Fall of 1806 to inform Jefferson of their findings (National Geographic). During this same time, they maintained their trading business with what few good they had left with the Shoshone Native Americans. Furthermore, they recorded their interactions with the tribe and described in both literary and visual depictions of the geography of the landscape and the animals that permeated the western world that were new discoveries for the white man. Through these descriptions they were able to successfully fulfill a large majority of the goals that President Jefferson desired and planned for the expedition (Yankton Media). Along their journey, William Clark concocted a series of remarkably detailed maps with notations for all the creeks and rivers, significant landscape points, river shore geography, and locations where the Corps of Discovery spent the night or portaged or camped for extensive periods of time (Yankton Media). Future explorers would eventually utilize the maps to further dissect the western area of America.
The Corps of Discovery’s expedition shaped a rather crude route through the Pacific waters and marked the starting pathway for the newly christened nation to spread in the west from sea to shining sea, fulfilling what would soon become an obvious destiny to a large amount of the American people (Perry). Over the following 200 years, new Americans and thousands of immigrants would land ashore the western and central locations of what would soon be known as the contiguous United 48 states (Perry). This rapid and shocking developmental wave would vastly transform the grasslands and virgin forests into a revolutionary landscape of farms, harvested land, and cities; displacing many of the fauna including but not limited to buffalos and squeezing the remaining population of humble Native Americans who managed to survive onto the reservations (Perry).
- Buckley, Jay H. “Lewis and Clark Expedition.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, 16 Dec. 2016, www.britannica.com/event/Lewis-and-Clark-Expedition. Accessed 30 Apr. 2017.
- HISTORY.com. “LEWIS AND CLARK.” History, A E Networks Digital, 2017, www.history.com/topics/lewis-and-clark. Accessed 30 Apr. 2017.
- Jefferson Monticello. “Origins of the Expedition.” Jefferson Monticello, Jefferson Monticello, 2017, www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/origins-expedition. Accessed 30 Apr. 2017.
- National Geographic. “The Lewis & Clark Journey Log.” National Geographic, National Geographic, www.nationalgeographic.com/lewisandclark/journey_intro.html. Accessed 30 Apr. 2017.
- Perry, Douglas. “Lewis & Clark Expedition.” National Archives, The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, 7 Sept. 2016, www.archives.gov/education/lessons/lewis- clark. Accessed 30 Apr. 2017.
- Yankton Media. “Timeline.” Lewis & Clark’s Historic Trail, Yankton Media, 2017, lewisclark.net/. Accessed 30 Apr. 2017.
