Lewis and Clark Expedition | Summary, History, Members, Facts, & Map (2024)

Lewis and Clark Expedition, (1804–06), U.S. military expedition, led by Capt. Meriwether Lewis and Lieut. William Clark, to explore the Louisiana Purchase and the Pacific Northwest. The expedition was a major chapter in the history of American exploration.

Commissioning and preparation

On January 18, 1803, U.S. Pres. Thomas Jefferson sent a secret message to Congress asking for $2,500 to send an officer and a dozen soldiers to explore the Missouri River, make diplomatic contact with Indians, expand the American fur trade, and locate the Northwest Passage (the much-sought-after hypothetical northwestern water route to the Pacific Ocean). The proposed trip took on added significance on May 2, when the United States agreed to the Louisiana Purchase—Napoleon’s sale of 828,000 square miles (2,100,000 square km) of French territory for $27 million. Jefferson, who had already sponsored several attempts to explore the West, asked his personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to lead the expedition. Lewis was dispatched to Philadelphia for instruction in botany, celestial navigation, medicine, and zoology. He also purchased supplies and spent $20 on a Newfoundland dog, Seaman.

Lewis procured weapons at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now in West Virginia), supervised the construction of a 55-foot (17-metre) keelboat, and secured smaller vessels, in addition to designing an iron-framed boat that could be assembled on the journey. As his co-commander he selected William Clark, who had been his military superior during the government’s battles with the Northwest Indian Federation in the early 1790s. The U.S. secretary of war denied Lewis’s request of a shared command, but Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Clark chose to address one another as “captain” to hide this fact from the other members of the expedition. For his part, Clark recruited men in Kentucky, oversaw their training that winter at Camp River Dubois in Illinois, and served as the expedition’s principal waterman and cartographer.

Expedition from May 14, 1804, to October 16, 1805

Over the duration of the trip, from May 14, 1804, to September 23, 1806, from St. Louis, Missouri, to the Pacific Ocean and back, the Corps of Discovery, as the expedition company was called, traveled nearly 8,000 miles (13,000 km). The entourage, numbering about four dozen men, covered 10 to 20 miles (16 to 32 km) a day—poling, pushing, and pulling their 10-ton keelboat and two pirogues (dugout boats) up the Missouri River. Lewis’s iron-framed boat was later assembled and covered with skins near Great Falls (in present-day Montana) but had to be abandoned because the seams leaked and there was no pitch to seal them. The captains and at least five others kept journals. President Jefferson had instructed Lewis to make observations of latitude and longitude and to take detailed notes about the soil, climate, animals, plants, and native peoples. Lewis identified 178 plants new to science, including bitterroot, prairie sagebrush, Douglas fir, and ponderosa pine, as well as 122 animals, such as grizzly bear, prairie dog, and pronghorn antelope. The scientific names Philadelphus lewisii (mock orange), Lewisia rediva (bitterroot), and Clarkia pucella (pink fairy, or ragged robin) are but three examples of the men’s discoveries. The expedition encountered immense animal herds and ate well, consuming one buffalo, two elk, or four deer per day, supplemented by roots, berries, and fish. They named geographic locations after expedition members, peers, loved ones, and even their dog (Seaman’s Creek). They experienced dysentery, venereal disease, boils, tick bites, and injuries from prickly pear, yet only one man perished over the course of the journey.

Another primary objective involved diplomacy with Native Americans. The expedition held councils with Indians, in which the corps had military parades, handed out peace medals, flags, and gifts, delivered speeches, promised trade, and requested intertribal peace. There also was something of a magic show (magnets, compasses, and Lewis’s air gun) and an invitation for Indian representatives to travel to Washington, D.C. Most tribes welcomed trading opportunities and provided the expedition with food, knowledge, guides, shelter, sex, and entertainment. The Lakota (encountered in South Dakota), however, already had British commercial ties and did not view American competition favourably, especially because it would make their enemies stronger. Their attempt to prevent the expedition from continuing upstream nearly turned violent, but Chief Black Buffalo’s diplomacy defused the situation.

The expedition arrived at the Mandan and Hidatsa villages near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota, and constructed Fort Mandan in which to spend the winter. The captains prepared maps, artifacts, mineral samples, plant specimens, and papers to send back in the spring. On April 7, 1805, a small crew departed on a St. Louis-bound keelboat laden with boxes of materials for Jefferson that included live magpies and a prairie dog. Meanwhile, the permanent party proceeded up the Missouri in six canoes and two pirogues. It now consisted of 33 people, including soldiers, civilians, Clark’s slave York, and two newly hired interpreters—a French Canadian, Toussaint Charbonneau, and his Shoshone wife, Sacagawea, who had given birth to a boy, Jean Baptiste, that February. The departure scene was described by Lewis in his journal:

This little fleet altho’ not quite so rispectable as those of Columbus or Capt. Cook were still viewed by us with as much pleasure as those deservedly famed adventurers ever beheld theirs…we were now about to penetrate a country at least two thousand miles in width, on which the foot of civillized man had never trodden; the good or evil it had in store for us was for experiment yet to determine, and these little vessells contained every article by which we were to expect to subsist or defend ourselves.

On June 2, 1805, the expedition party arrived at a fork in the river. Not knowing which waterway was the principal stream, they sent out reconnaissance parties up both forks. Although the evidence was not conclusive, the captains believed the south fork to be the major course while everyone else favoured the north. Lewis named the north fork Maria’s River (now Marias River) and instructed the party to continue up the south fork. This choice proved correct when the expedition arrived at the Great Falls almost two weeks later. An 18-mile (29-km) portage around the falls was made even more difficult by broken terrain, prickly pear cactus, hailstorms, and numerous grizzly bears. On July 4, 1805, the party finished the portage and, to celebrate Independence Day, consumed the last of their 120 gallons of alcohol and danced into the night.

Arriving at the Three Forks of the Missouri River (the confluence of the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin rivers), Sacagawea recognized Beaverhead Rock and informed the others they would soon encounter some Shoshones. Lewis climbed Lemhi Pass, crossing the Continental Divide, only to have his hope for a single mountain portage dashed by the view of endless mountains stretching before him: “I discovered immence ranges of high mountains still to the West of us with their tops partially covered with snow.” Fortunately, in mid-August he met a Shoshone band led by Sacagawea’s brother Cameahwait, who provided the expedition with horses. The Shoshone guide Old Toby joined the expedition and led them across the Bitterroot Range. On the crossing, Clark lamented, “I have been wet and as cold in every part as I ever was in my life, indeed I was at one time fearfull my feet would freeze in the thin mockersons [moccasins] which I wore.” Cold and hungry, the expedition finally spilled out of the mountains onto the Weippe Prairie, homeland of the Nez Percé. Upon the recommendation of a respected elderly woman, Watkuweis, the Nez Percé befriended the expedition. After leaving their horses with Chief Twisted Hair, the explorers hollowed out five cottonwood canoes and floated down the Clearwater and Snake rivers, reaching the Columbia River on October 16.