Westward Expansion - Lewis and Clark Expedition 1804-6

What was the Lewis and Clark Expedition?

The Lewis and Clark expedition (or Corps of Discovery) was a military expedition and journey of exploration undertaken in 1804-6 under President Jefferson’s direction. It was a remarkable feat of courage, logistical skill, resourcefulness and luck. In their 8000 mile journey those on the expedition were the first “Americans” (as in citizens of the New Republic) to see the Great Plains, struggle over the Rockies, cross the continental divide where the rivers flow west and eventually reach the Pacific by land. 

Incredibly given the dangers they faced, only one person died on the expedition: a Sergeant named Floyd, of a burst appendix.

What the US objectives of the Expedition?

Even before the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson had been intending for the federal government to fund a journey of exploration across the continent.  He had asked his secretary, Meriwether Lewis to command this expedition. But now that the Louisiana Purchase had been agreed the expedition took on a far greater sense of importance.  Jefferson’s instructions stated: “The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri River, & such principle stream of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent for the purpose of commerce”.

Jefferson also had a keen personal interest in science and aimed for the expedition to make botanical, geological and anthropological discoveries. Lewis himself prepared for the expedition with months of study of geology, mineralogy, botany, medicine and many other disciplines. The Expedition was also very much part of a process of laying claim to the Louisiana Territory and  establishing an American presence in the far West beyond the Rockies before European powers arrived.

Jefferson also aimed to make trading deals and alliances with Native Americans. The group was also  tasked with declaring American sovereignty: they were told to explain in a pre-prepared speech to any tribes which they encountered about how the Great Father in the East looked out for his Indian children over whom he now ruled. (Ironically many of these societies were matrilineal which made talk of a Great Father less impressive!)

The Composition of the Group

Lewis invited his close friend, explorer William Clark to co-lead it. Clark brought with him his slave, an African American man named York, who proved a fantastic hunter and communicator with Native Americans.  A selected group of US troops and civilian volunteers joined the expedition.

The Encounter with Lakota/Western Sioux

Lewis and Clark’s party set off from St Louis, Missouri in May 1804 and travelled initially up the Missouri River by the above route.  They had been warned of the so-called ‘pirates of the Missouri’ – the Lakota Sioux, as they had charged tribute to explorers travelling up the river to the Mandans villages.  Gift giving was expected and Lewis and Clark were reluctant to use up some of their store of gifts so early on.  They were also reluctant to give the impression by gift giving that they acknowledged the sovereignty of the Lakota Sioux in this region. So the gifts they gave were thought to be insultingly meagre. There was a standoff which could easily have turned very ugly.  (Lewis wrote in his journal “I felt myself grow very warm”.)  The Lakota Sioux Chief diffused this standoff (possibly because there were women and children nearby) by proposing a compromise in which some tobacco exchanged hands and both sides saved face. Nevertheless this was a bad start to US – Lakota/Sioux relations.

Winter With the Mandans

The Corps of Discovery had to pause for the winter when the Missouri River was frozen.  They spent it in the Mandan / Hidatsa villages.  The Mandans and Hidatsa – living at the very centre of the continent - were used to travellers and operated at the centre of a large network of trade and communications.  They were well known to explorers and Lewis and Clark spent the winter very happily and peacefully with them – even modern Mandan / Hidatsa spokespeople refer nostalgically to this time. (This could make us wonder whether there was an alternative path American-Indian relations could have taken.) The expedition took mercury and syringes with them which was the ‘cure’ for syphilis.  This shows that they were expecting to sleep with Indian women – which may have been largely consensual given different customs and assumption among these tribes (the Mandan saw this as a way of making strangers into friends). 

At Fort Mandan, the expedition also acquired a new and extremely valuable member: Sacagawea, a Lemhi Shoshone woman, then in her teens. When she was about 12, Sacagawea and several other children had been taken captive by a group of Hidatsa.  At 13 she had been was sold (or possibly won in gambling) along with another teenage girl into marriage with Toussaint Charbonneau, a Quebecois trapper. The Lewis and Clark Expedition intended to hire a trapper to accompany them over the Rockies and as Charbonneau spoke many Native languages they decided to hire him along with Sacagawea who could interpret Shoshoni.  She was 16 at the time and pregnant.  She accompanied them all the way to the Pacific and was an invaluable help in establishing relations with Native tribes and increasing the expeditions knowledge of natural history.  She also gave birth on the way and was given the venom of a rattle shake to assist her long labour.

The Shoshones

The expedition left the Mandans in April 2005 when Missouri River melted. By leaving the Mandan villages, they were leaving the known world and entering what for them was completely unchartered territory. The race was then on to meet up with the Shoshones who lived in modern day Idaho, at foothills of the Rockies which L&C knew they would have to cross by winter. They were totally dependent on acquiring horses from these people.

The Northern Shoshones are a good example of how life in the west was already becoming severely disrupted by the arrival of European.  They had acquired horses from the Spanish in the 18^th C and expanded onto the Plains, pushing the Blackfoot into Canada. But then the Blackfoot acquired horses and guns, which enabled them to push the Shoshones back off Plains to the foothills of the Rockies.  The Shoshones were very nervous when the Expedition approached.  Lewis approached them showing the white of his arm (to prove he was not a Blackfoot or other enemy) and shouting a word which he thought means white but actually means ‘enemy’! 

After this bad start, Sacagawea then carried her baby to meet them (a woman with a child indicated peaceful intent) and by an extraordinary coincidence recognised her brother/cousin (same word in Shoshone) as the Chief of this group, Cameahwait. As a reward for reuniting him with his Sacagawea he donated horses to the group and pledged his support to the Corps of Discovery from whom they could acquire guns (one Shoshone actually stole a gun from the expedition and Cameahwait raised his trading terms dramatically at the end of the stay). 

L&C pitied their poverty and recorded Cameahwait’s explanations for it attributable to the disruption caused by colonisation.  Having been prevented by the Spanish in New Mexico from acquiring firearms they had become easy prey to neighbouring enemy tribes and so had to remain in the mountains for two thirds of the year where food was short. Overall this was a positive, even touching encounter and one on which the success of the expedition depended. Lewis and Clark left with horses and guides across the mountains.  The Shoshones also tried to create a type of 3D map for them of the Rockies, having realised that their maps were badly underestimating the size of the mountain range and the distances involved.  Lewis was also excited by his first taste of Pacific salmon with the Shoshone, a tantalising indication that they were nearing the Pacific.  But this was clearly a people ‘struggling to cope with life on the margins of Empire’ (Calloway) and ‘enveloped in pandemic relations of violence’ (Ned Blackhawk).

The Rockies + the Nez Perce

One of the lowest points of the expedition was the realisation that there was no direct water route from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean.  At the headwaters of the Missouri L&C thought they would see the Pacific from the mountains but instead they could just see miles and miles of more mountains.  Not only did the Expedition seem to have failed in its objective to find the North West passage but they must have thought they were facing death, lost in the Rockies with insufficient food and shelter.

It was during this awful phase of the journey, having just crossed the Bitterroot Mountains, the Expedition encountered the Nez Perce. L&C were full of praise for the Nez Perce and so they have been traditionally portrayed as the quintessential ‘good Indians’.  (This makes their later treatment at the hands of the US doubly sad.)

They were the largest tribe on the Columbia River Plateau, with a population of about 6,000. (Their name is from the French for ‘Pierced Nose’ but this was due to a misunderstanding with a French fur trader.  Their original name means “The Walking Out People” due to their coming down from the Mountains onto the Plains to hunt buffalo.)  They had acquired horses in the 18^th C and built up huge herds, gaining a reputation as skilled horse breeders.  One modern Nez Perce elder giving his people’s oral history tradition said of L&C:  “…when they came through they said they “discovered” my people. In actuality… we discovered Lewis and Clark. Those were the ones that were lost.” 

There was some initial hesitation, mainly due to their suspicion of the two Shoshones who were their enemies and the African American man, York, whose dark skin they mistook for warrior war paint.  But then they took pity on the half starved Corps of Discovery and formed a strong bond of friendship with them.  They guided them along the routes across the mountains and helped them build canoes by burning out the inside of a log.  According to Nez Perce oral tradition they also gave them a nickname that means ‘something that smells’ – it was long since L&C’s party had washed!

Down the Columbia River to Fort Clatsop

In Oct 1805 the Expedition’s canoes finally started descending the Columbia River.  They built Fort Clatsop in present day Oregon to spend the extremely rainy winter.

Here they met some very different people: the Clatsop Indians.  Their societies were hierarchical and their status was denoted by a sloping forehead, caused during infancy by holding babies in cradle boards which flattened their heads. In complete contrast to their attitude to the Nez Perce, Lewis and Clark found these people very unattractive and the feeling seems to have been mutual as the Clatsops treated them with contempt. To try and improve relations Lewis made his men cut off their brass buttons to give these Indians as gifts but they’ve been trading with European and Boston merchants for a generation, had seen a lot of brass buttons and were unimpressed. Far from a timeless, untouched people, the Clatsops are already part of a global trading network by hunting sea otter pelts to trade with first Russians and increasingly traders from Britain and Boston.  These were then traded with China for silks, spices and tea – a triangular trade and one that was so lucrative that one 2 or 3 year voyage could make your fortune.  L and C hoped they might get a lift home on an American trading ship but had left it too late in the year. 

Back up the Columbia River

Impatient to be heading home, the Expedition left Fort Clatsop in March 1806 fighting the torrent of meltwater up the Columbia River and back to the Nez Perce, where they had left their Shoshone horses.  They crossed the Bitterroot Mountains more easily this time, with Nez Perce guides and warmed themselves in the Lolo Hot Springs.  Then the group split up as was planned: Clark headed South down the Yellowstone River with a party including York, Toussaint Charbonneau, and Sacagawea and her baby. 

Lewis and the Blackfoot Indians

Lewis and his group proceeded on a more northerly route through Hellgate Canyon, up the Big Blackfoot River, and across the Continental Divide into the vicinity of the much fear Blackfoot Indians, the dominant power on the N Plains.  Lewis was exceptionally wary as they moved into Blackfoot country and his group’s encounter with the Blackfoot was the only incident on the Expedition where Indians were killed. 

The Blackfoot had acquired horses and guns before their neighbours and in alliance with the Sarsi they had formed a huge military power in the N Plains, trading with the British and gaining a reputation as ferocious warriors and horse thieves. (It was said that you could only be sure of your horse in Blackfoot country if you were sitting on it.)

We only have Lewis’s account of the incident which led to the death of 2 Blackfoot Indians – and it is not very reliable because he was having to account to Jefferson for something which was absolutely not part of the aims of the expedition – in fact they had made a hash of their relations with the Blackfoot.  He reports that a band of Blackfeet approached their camp and Lewis gave them the standard message, through an interpreter, about the Great Father wishing all Indians to live in peace.  He also conveyed that they had got this message accepted by all the tribes across the mountains.  This was the last thing the Blackfeet wanted to hear and amounted to: all your enemies are united and American trade (and guns) will be moving up the Missouri River.  It was the Blackfoot Indians’ control of the supply of guns which was the basis for their power.  Lewis was totally unaware of these implication and a fight quickly broke out. Lewis’s account  - the violence was initiated by the Blackfoot Indians but his party came away with Blackfoot horses – possibly doesn’t completely hang together.  The men rode very quickly then to get out of Blackfoot country and meet up with Lewis on the Missouri.

Back at Fort Mandan

There was a happy reunion with the Mandan and invitations from Lewis and Clark for their leaders to visit Washington.  These were declined because of fear of encountering the Lakota/Sioux. This meant that Charbonneau’s services as an interpreter were no longer needed, so having been paid, he and Sacagawea stayed with the Hidatsas.  Later they accepted Clark’s invitation to come to St Louis, Missouri and Clark paid for the education of the boy born on the expedition.

Impact of Lewis / Clark Expedition

Despite Jefferson’s joy at their safe return, the reception Lewis and Clark and their party received was an anti-climax after everything they had endured. There were some banquets in their honour, speeches and toasts.  They proved less skilled at public relations than at endurance and logistics.  The official account of their expedition was not published until 1814 and only 2000 sets were printed.  The mass of sketches, maps, specimens of plants and rocks and information about the Indian tribes along the Missouri and Columbia River Valleys which they had collected were not give the attention they deserved at the time.  Nobody exactly followed in their footsteps in the sense that subsequent explorers, traders and later emigrants found easier routes to the Northwest, principally the Oregon Trail.  (But perhaps L&C’s experience showed them what to avoid.)  Travel to the west soon began a lot easier with the advent of canals, better roads and especially railroads.

In a general sense their expedition proved what everyone suspected – that there were enormous amounts of land and resources out there ‘for the taking’. This inspired further exploration, settlement and trade, especially the fur trade.  There is absolutely no doubt that without the help of many Indian peoples but especially the Mandans, Hidatsa, Shoshone, Nez Perce, the Chinook, and the Clatsop the expedition could not possibly have succeeded.  Even the journals and records which the expedition brought back were rescued from a capsized boat by Sacagawea!  This is only recently being recognised.