In the expedition reached the headwaters of the Missouri River, crossed the Continental Divide, and then traveled on foot and by canoe to the Pacific Ocean. On March 23, , the expedition began the long trek home.
In two years and three months, the Corps of Discovery traveled 7, miles on foot, by boat, and by horse. All but one of the original members of the expedition arrived in St. Louis on September 23, , to an enthusiastic welcome.
Sergeant Charles Floyd had died early in of a ruptured appendix near present-day Council Bluffs, Iowa. Lewis and Clark, along with five of their comrades, documented their interactions with numerous Native American tribes; collected scientific specimens; and recorded valuable observations about plants, animals, astronomy, Native American culture, and the climate.
Indian agent west of the Mississippi River. Clark spent much of his time tending to Indian affairs and countering British influence in the region. During his time as Indian agent, Clark negotiated numerous treaties between Native Americans and the federal government. He persuaded the Osage to sign a treaty that ceded tribal land in Missouri and Arkansas to the government, making way for an eventual new wave of settlers.
Clark became one of the founding members of the St. Louis Fur Trading Company along with prominent St. Clark married Judith Hancock on January 5, Together the couple had five children.
Louis was not as fruitful. While he was a capable military leader, Lewis was not a gifted politician. He had a stormy relationship with his territorial secretary, Frederick Bates, and found himself confronted with feuding political factions that complicated his job as governor. Despite these setbacks, Lewis accomplished several important achievements while in office. He oversaw the creation of the territory of Arkansas, established the first post office in St. Louis, and ordered the construction of a road linking St.
Louis and New Madrid, Missouri. As a private citizen, Lewis helped finance the St. Louis Missouri Gazette , the first newspaper published west of the Missouri. In the fall of , Meriwether Lewis left St. Louis and headed to Washington, DC, to settle financial issues stemming from his time as governor. Although it is unknown exactly what happened, Lewis was found near death the next morning, having been shot twice.
He lingered for a few hours before dying the morning of October 11, He is buried a short distance from where he died along the Natchez Trace Parkway. Historians continue to debate whether Lewis committed suicide or was murdered. When Missouri became a state, Clark ran for governor against Alexander McNair, but lost the election. Confident of their survival, Lewis went north while Clark went south.
When they reunited in North Dakota, at the mouth of the Yellowstone River. They left Charbonneau, Sacagawea and the baby at the Mandan villages, continued down the Missouri River and arrived in St. Louis on September 23, The accomplishments of the Lewis and Clark Expedition were extensive. It altered the imperial struggle for the control of North America, particularity in the Pacific Northwest. It strengthened the U.
Lewis and Clark achieved an impressive record of peaceful cooperation with the natives and generated American interest in the fur trade. This had a far-reaching effect, leading to further exploration and commercial exploitation of the West. Lewis and Clark added to geographic knowledge by determining the true course of the Upper Missouri and its major tributaries.
They might have destroyed the dream of a Northwest Passage but proved the success of the westward travel to the Pacific. They compiled the first general survey of life and material culture of the Native American tribes of North America. Lewis and Clark's expedition added significant knowledge of the zoological and botanical of the continent, providing the first descriptions of many new species of animals, including the grizzly bear, prairie dog, pronghorn antelope, and mountain goat.
They made the first attempt to successfully attempted to determine the latitude and longitude of significant geographical points. The Lewis and Clark Expedition was phenomenally successful in terms of accomplishing its stated goals, expanding America's knowledge, and tantalizing curiosity and wonder about the vast American West. The most important trails of The Lewis and Clark Expedition are represented on the map below. The series culminated in with the publication of The Course of Empire , an account of Westward exploration which culminates in Lewis and Clark's expedition, and which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
But, like Thwaites before him, DeVoto's timing was off: with much of the country still reeling from World War II, public interest in the series was limited. It wasn't until the s that the public and scholarly spheres connected to make Lewis and Clark the American icons they are today.
In the academic world, the work of Donald Jackson changed the way the Lewis and Clark narrative was told. In the edition of the Lewis and Clark letters, Jackson wrote in his introduction that the Lewis and Clark expedition was more than the story of two men—it was the story of many people and cultures.
Two events helped pique public interest in the Lewis and Clark story: the marking of the Western Trails by the federal government, which brought new attention to the country's history of Western exploration, and the founding of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation in , whose stated mission is to honor and preserve the legacy of Lewis and Clark through education, research and preservation.
It was also a time of intense introspection about who we are as a people. One of those moments of introspection is wondering what is our history like? In , American historian Stephen Ambrose released Undaunted Cour age, a nearly page-long history of the expedition. Taking advantage of the wealth of new research uncovered by Lewis and Clark historians especially Donald Jackson since the s, Ambrose's book was called a " a swiftly moving, full-dress treatment of the expedition" in its New York Times review ironically, the same review touts Lewis and Clark as explorers who "for almost years In terms of public interest in the Lewis and Clark expedition, Ronda feels that the bicentennial was the high-water mark—Americans celebrated all over the country with a three-year, state pageant announced by President Bush.
The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History ran a massive exhibit in , featuring more than artifacts from the expedition, the first time many had been in the same place since Editors' Note, October 2, This story has been edited to clarify and correct the explanation of Bernard deVoto's work.
There was German-born Pvt. John Potts, a miller by trade and a soldier most likely by necessity. This is the crazy quilt that was and is America. Not entirely. A close reading of the expedition records reveals that women were a part of the journey every step of the way. Philadelphia seamstress Matilda Chapman sewed 93 shirts for the expedition; women did laundry and sold provisions to the expedition as it overwintered outside St. Louis; Arikara, Mandan and Hidatsa women were a constant part of expedition life up the Missouri, providing food and friendship; Lemhi Shoshone women carried expedition baggage over the Continental Divide; a Nez Perce woman named Watkuweis brokered friendly relations between the Americans and her tribe; Chinook women, camped outside Fort Clatsop, offered themselves in return for valued trade goods, including metal tools, cloth and even uniform buttons.
Indeed, native people of both sexes lie at the heart of the Lewis and Clark journey; it is they who make it such a compelling story. Finally, this is a story of the kind novelist Henry James once called "the visitable past. We can hike parts of the Lolo Trail and visit FortClatsop. Historian Donald Jackson once observed that Lewis and Clark were the "writingest" explorers in American history.
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