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In the spring of 1804, at the behest of President oThomas Jefferson, a party of explorers called the Corps of oDiscovery crossed the Mississippi River and started up the Missouri, heading west into the newly acquired Louisiana Territory.
The expedition, led by two remarkable and utterly different commanders--the brilliant but troubled Meriwether Lewis and his trustworthy, gregarious friend William Clark--was to be the United States' first exploration into unknown spaces. The unlikely crew came from every corner of the young nation: soldiers from New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and Kentucky, French Canadian boatmen, several sons of white fathers and Indian mothers, a slave named York, and eventually a Shoshone Indian woman, Sacagawea, who brought along her infant son.
Together they would cross the continent, searching for the fabled Northwest Passage that had been the great dream of explorers since the time of Columbus. Along the way they would face incredible hardship, disappointment, and danger; record in their journals hundreds of animals and plants previously unknown to science; encounter a dizzying diversity of Indian cultures; and, most of all, share in one of America's most enduring adventures. Their story may have passed into national mythology, but never before has their experience been rendered as vividly, in words and pictures, as in this marvelous homage by Dayton Duncan.
Plentiful excerpts from the journals kept by the two captains and four enlisted men convey the raw emotions, turbulent spirits, and constant surprises of the explorers, who each day confronted the unknown with fresh eyes. An elegant preface by Ken Burns, as well as contributions from Stephen E. Ambrose, William Least Heat-Moon, and Erica Funkhouser, enlarge upon important threads in Duncan's narrative, demonstrating the continued potency of events that took place almost two centuries ago. And a wealth of paintings, photographs, journal sketches, maps, and film images from the PBS documentary lends this historic, nation-redefining milestone a vibrancy and immediacy to which no American will be immune.
From the Hardcover edition.
Ken Burns, director and producer of Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, has been making award-winning documentary films for more than twenty years, including the landmark PBS series The Civil War and Baseball, The West, and Thomas Jefferson. The subject of his next biographical film will be Frank Lloyd Wright, and he is currently producing a series on the history of jazz.
Excerpt from Chapter 2
Floyd's Bluff
With the nearly four dozen men they had recruited on their way, Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1803-4 at Camp Dubois, a collection of huts they built on the Illinois side of the Mississippi, upstream from St. Louis. They bided their time drilling the men, gathering information from fur traders about the route ahead, and purchasing final supplies, including nearly two tons each of flour and salt pork, fifty pounds of coffee, and one hundred gallons of whiskey.
Because of the Louisiana Purchase, their duties were now diplomatic as well as exploratory. On March 10 the two captains attended formal ceremonies in St. Louis officially transferring upper Louisiana from France to the United States, and in April they delayed their departure to arrange for a delegation of Osage chiefs to travel to Washington and meet with President Jefferson.
Finally, on May 14, 1804, at four o'clock in the afternoon, the Corps of Discovery set off from Camp Dubois--"under a jentle brease," Clark wrote--and sailed across the Mississippi and four and a half miles up the Missouri. They stopped for several days at the town of St. Charles, whose citizens staged a ball in their honor, and stopped again at Femme Osage, not far from where the legendary frontiersman Daniel Boone had built his final home. On May 25 they reached La Charette, a cluster of seven dwellings less than sixty miles up the Missouri but, as Sergeant Charles Floyd noted in his journal that night, "the last settlement of whites on this river."
May 28th, 1804. Rained hard all last night. Some thunder and lightening . . . found Several articles Wet, Some Tobacco Spoiled.
May 29th. Rained last night. . . . The Musquetors are verry bad. Made 4 miles.
May 30th. Rained all last night. Set out at 6 o'clock after a heavy Shower and proceeded on. . . . A heavy wind accompanied with rain & hail. We Made 14 miles to day. The river Continue[d] to rise, the count[r]y on each Side appear[ed] full of Water.
May 31st. Rained the greater part of last night. The wind . . . blew with great force untile 5 oClock p.m. which obliged us to lay by, -William Clark
Bad weather greeted them nearly every morning. Mosquitoes--some as big as houseflies, according to Clark--swarmed around their faces; they were "so numerous," Lewis said, "that we frequently get them in our throats as we breathe." (They covered their bodies with bear grease during the day, and at night were thankful for Lewis's foresight in purchasing mosquito netting.)
But their biggest obstacle was the Missouri itself--big, broad, choked with snags, and pushing relentlessly at more than five miles an hour in the opposite direction of their destination. The keelboat was fifty-five feet long and eight feet wide, capable of carrying ten tons of supplies. Maneuvering it against the insistent current was a constant challenge. Occasionally, when the wind was right, they could sail it up the river. More often, they had to use oars or setting poles, avoiding the main channel by moving slowly from eddy to eddy. Sometimes, the only way to proceed was cordelling--the men wading along the muddy banks and pulling the heavy boat forward with a rope. (The two smaller boats, called pirogues, also required sails, oars, and brute strength to be maneuvered upstream.)
Drifting logs rammed the boats. Cordelling ropes broke. The mast caught in an overhanging tree and snapped off, causing a day's delay to make a new one. The keelboat got stuck on sandbars and...
Overview
The companion volume to Ken Burns's PBS documentary film, with more than 150 illustrations, most in full color.In the spring of 1804, at the behest of President oThomas Jefferson, a party of explorers called the Corps of oDiscovery crossed the Mississippi River and started up the Missouri, heading west into the newly acquired Louisiana Territory.
The expedition, led by two remarkable and utterly different commanders--the brilliant but troubled Meriwether Lewis and his trustworthy, gregarious friend William Clark--was to be the United States' first exploration into unknown spaces. The unlikely crew came from every corner of the young nation: soldiers ...