Exploring The West

Part I

By George DeWan

In 1492 the Spanish king and queen, in the hope of finding a new trading route to the riches of Asia, sent Christopher Columbus on a journey of discovery across the uncharted open seas, a fearful launch into the unknown.

In a remarkably similar quest a little more than three centuries later, American President Thomas Jefferson sent the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark beyond the Mississippi River, up the Missouri River and into the uncharted West. Their primary assignment was to search for a northwest passage, a navigable water route that would connect the east with the Pacific Ocean, opening up trade to the west.

Columbus failed to find the land of the Orient, but instead brought back news of a new world that would beckon adventurous Europeans. Likewise, Lewis and Clark failed to confirm Jefferson's dream of a northwest passage. But their glorious, 4,000-mile journey to the great western ocean is now being celebrated as one of the landmark events in American history. It produced five dozen maps and more information than had ever been known before about the languages and culture of the western Indian tribes, and new knowledge about climate, wildlife, plants and agriculture.

Cold and Hungry

Their two-year, four-month journey was arduous. It included near-starvation and frozen toes and fingers during a Rocky Mountain winter, occasionally hostile Indians, constantly hostile grizzly bears and raging rivers, as well as such illnesses as dysentery. Perhaps surprisingly, only one man died -- of a burst appendix -- during the entire journey.

Of the thousands of lines written in Lewis and Clark's notebooks and journals, there is nothing to equal the six ecstatic words Clark jotted down on Thursday, Nov. 7, 1805. As the boats headed down the lower Columbia River, in what was then called Oregon country, what appeared to be the waters of the Pacific Ocean showed up on the western horizon:

"Ocian in view! O! the joy."

It was a joy well-earned. Leading up to it had been months of intense preparation, followed by a dangerous journey up the Missouri River and through the snow and ice of the Rocky Mountains. It had begun in the brilliant mind of Thomas Jefferson, who began making plans for such an exploration as soon as he became president in 1801. But the idea of a northwest passage was by then an old one, as European explorers after Columbus sought a navigable shortcut to East Asia across the North American continent. By the time such a shortcut was actually achieved in the early 20th century -- through northern Canada and the Arctic -- it was no longer commercially useful.

By the time Jefferson persuaded Congress to approve money for the expedition by the Corps of Discovery, as it became known, in January 1803, Jefferson already had chosen its leader: Lewis, his 28-year- old private secretary, a family friend, a fellow Virginian and formerly a U.S. Army officer. Lewis later chose as his second-in-command the man whom he had once served under in the Army, Clark, 32, who was then running a struggling family plantation on the Kentucky frontier.

Napoleon's Offer

One of many potential problems was that, at that time, the western boundary of the United States and its territories extended only to the Mississippi River, only one-third of the way across the continent. Beyond that, France owned the huge Louisiana province, which extended to the Rocky Mountains. Spain claimed the Southwest and Florida, and there were conflicting U.S.-Great Britain claims to the Pacific Northwest.

Then, in April 1803, the French leader Napoleon I stunned Jefferson with an offer to sell Louisiana for $15 million, more than doubling the size of the United States. It was an offer the president couldn't refuse. The Louisiana Purchase meant that Lewis and Clark would be traveling in American territory, and would represent themselves to the many Indian tribes there as spokesmen for "the great chief, the president."

The expedition, with about 30 men, began on May 14, 1804, at the mouth of the Missouri River, where it joins the Mississippi just north of St. Louis. The group included Clark's black slave, York. The main boat was a 55-foot keelboat made in Pittsburgh, equipped with a mast for sailing as well as spaces for 22 oarsmen, and a bronze swivel cannon; there were also two large dugout canoes, called pirogues. The keelboat could handle up to 10 tons of supplies. These included food, medicine, whiskey, tobacco, fishhooks, cooking pots, various tools as well as gifts for the Indians: blue glass beads (the most prized item), blankets, brass buttons, pots, clothing, wampum, knives, guns, scissors, face paint and rings.

'Barking Squirrels'

The first leg of the trip up the Missouri was a lengthy one, but not unknown, since it had been well-traveled by fur traders. It took them northwesterly against the current of the twisting, turning Missouri River through the huge plains area of middle America, where they would see not only Indians, but flora and fauna totally foreign to Easterners.

Lewis and Clark had no Peterson's field guides to consult when they saw a strange mammal, or bird, or plant. No atlas to help them identify an unexpected river, or, later in the trip, a mountain looming on the horizon. They saw for the first time exotica such as prairie dogs (which they called "barking squirrels"), coyotes, buffalo, white-tailed jackrabbits and pronghorn antelopes.

And although their days were full, one or the other of them was constantly writing, writing, documenting for the ever-inquisitive Jefferson what they saw, heard, smelled and felt. North of what is today Bismarck, N.D., were large communities of Mandan and Hidatsa Indians, perhaps 4,500 in number, living in earth-lodge villages. Across the river from the Indian community Lewis and Clark built Fort Mandan, which would be their home for the winter of 1804-1805.

They were about to pick up an unexpected passenger, a teenage Shoshone Indian woman who would become an American legend. Her name was Sacagawea.

George DeWan is a freelance writer.