Term Paper on "Lewis and Clark"

Term Paper 6 pages (1921 words) Sources: 5

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Lewis and Clark

One of the major achievements of the Jefferson administration was the Louisiana Purchase, taking over the vast and at the time unknown Louisiana territory as a protection for the right of deposit and to assure the right of access to the mouth of the Mississippi and New Orleans. Another major achievement occurred when Jefferson sent out the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore Louisiana and the region beyond, and the expedition located several passes across the Rockies and established friendly relations with many Indian tribes. This Oregon territorial region was an enormous wilderness north of California up to the line of 54o 40', or the present tip of the Alaska panhandle. Four nations had claimed part of this territory at one time or another -- Spain, Russia, Britain, and the United States. Captain Robert Gray had found the Columbia River in 1792, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition had explored through to the Pacific in 1804-1806. In 1845 a small part of the territory was in dispute and would be an issue in the presidential election of 1844.

The two accomplishments of the Jefferson Administration were related in that each was an element in the concept of Manifest Destiny. Peter S. Onuf notes the difficulty we may have in understanding the mood that prevailed at the time of the purchase and the visionary nature of that purchase:

Though President Thomas Jefferson and the American negotiators who secured the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 had not even dreamed of acquiring such a vast territory, stretching from the Mississippi to the Rockies, the expansion of the United States has the retrospective feel of inevitability, however much some modern Americans may bemoan the patriotic passions and imperialistic excesses of "Manifest Destiny" and its "legacies of conquest." (Onuf 23)

Manifest Destiny was the idea that the United States was simply destined to spread West and cover the entire continent. The Louisiana Purchase added a huge swath of territory to the nation, and the move further to the West and to the Pacific Ocean was started with the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition became well-known after publication of the journals kept on the route, but the original journals ere not published until the twentieth century. The expedition would fulfill Thomas Jefferson's long-standing curiosity about the West, and his interest had been sustained by his broad scientific interests and his hopes and dreams for the future of the United States. Jefferson had planned for a transcontinental expedition for at least twenty years before it was undertaken. While he was serving in Congress in 1793, he asked the frontier Revolutionary War hero George Rogers Clark, the older brother of William Clark, to consider leading a privately sponsored expedition to explore the West. Later, when he feared that Britain might secure a foothold west of the Mississippi, at the time the western boundary of the United States, he believed that might prevent American expansion. However, George Rogers Clark declined the offer (History of the Expedition" para. 1).

When he was minister to France, Jefferson encouraged John Ledyard, an American veteran of Captain James Cook's third voyage to the Pacific, and a man who planned to travel eastward across Siberia, secure passage on a ship to the western coast of North America, and then strike out alone across the continent. The idea was frustrated by the Russians, who expelled Ledyard from their country (DeVoto 596-98).

After Jefferson entered the White House, he knew that there was greater knowledge of the country beyond the Mississippi. In 1792, the American trader Captain Robert Gray had discovered and named the Columbia River, and Captain George Vancouver of the British Navy had made a thorough survey of the northwest coast. A few yeas later, fur traders from St. Louis, on the authority of the Spanish government, went up the Missouri as far as the villages of the Mandans in what is now North Dakota. John Thomas Evans reached the Mandans in 1796 and was given instructions by his employer that seem to anticipate Jefferson's instructions to Lewis and Clark, for he was asked to go up the Missouri to its headwaters, ask the Indians about a river flowing "toward the setting sun," and come down this stream to the Pacific. Hew was also to collect specimens of animals and plants and to take notes on what he observed. He actually made it no farther than the Mandans, where he found British traders extending their commercial network from Canada. He made detailed maps of the Missouri from present northeast Nebraska to the Mandan villages, and these would be of great help to Lewis and Clark later (DeVoto 323-30, 359-79).

What spurred Jefferson to launch the expedition was the publication of Alexander Mackenzie's Voyages from Montreal... through the Continent of North America, to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans (London, 1801) in which Mackenzie described his 1789 trip to the Arctic Ocean and his 1792-93 trip across the Rockies to the coast of what is now British Columbia. In his book, he urged Britain to develop the transcontinental route as a way of securing the fur trade and open commerce with Asia, wich is exactly what Jefferson feared might happen. Here again was the danger that Jefferson had long feared, British control of the far West (Jackson 94-96).

The Louisiana Purchase was not the reason for the expedition but only another manifestation of the same impetus that motivated Jefferson. In fact, Lewis was already on his way across the Appalachians in the summer of 1803 when Jefferson sent word of the diplomatic windfall in Paris the previous April:

Jefferson's hopes had always pointed toward eventual American penetration of the lands beyond the Mississippi, but the French decision to sell this vast territory presented the United States with an opportunity of which the president could only have dreamed for the distant future. Now an expedition became all the more important as an inspection and an assertion of sovereignty over the new empire. ("History of the Expedition" para. 10)

The Lewis and Clark Expedition achieved a number of notable and important results, including mapping the route, meeting and detailing many of the Indian tribes along the way and forming a bond with some, and scientific investigation of plants, geology, animal species, and similar information. The expedition started from St. Lois with 48 men, some of whom were civilian hunters, army soldiers, and French boatmen. On the expedition was Clark's slave York, also known as "Big Medicine," and s number of important people, such as John Coter and George Drouillard. They left on May 21, 1804 and by October reached a fort in present day North Dakota. They stayed there for the winter with the Mandan and Hidatsa peoples. They set out once more in April 1805 and continued until December 1805, and this was a much harder trek into unkown country. The expedition by now consisted of 33 people, including the Native American woman named Sacajawea, her husband (a French-Canadian interpreter Toussaint Charbonneau), and their baby. Sacajawea worked as an interpreter and peacemaker and negotiated for horses and supplies along the way. The expedition reached the Pacific Ocean in November 1805 and built another fort, and they started back to St. Louis in March 1806 and arrived in September 1806. On the return trip, Lewis and Clark separated, with Clark leading one group up the Yellowstone River while Lewis took another group into what is today North Central Montana in search of furs in what is today the Province of Alberta. They met again in August on the Missouri River and arrived in St. Louis on September 23, 1806.

When the journals were published, they revealed a mass of biological, ethnological, and scientific information, adding to the reputation of Lewis and Clark as naturalists. More attention has also been given to the many people Lewis and Clark met along their route, including some three dozen Native American tribes unknown at the time but able to provide sustenance and assistance along the way: "Without this assistance, the Lewis an Clark Expedition would not have succeeded" (Fritz xii). James P. Ronda notes that the Indian relations of the expedition started long before the start of the expedition itself. Jefferson knew what sort of terrain would be covered and knew that there would be many Indian tribes along the way. Jefferson fashioned the expedition so it could gather valuable information about the western Indians while also living at peace with them. Jefferson gave Lewis instructions to answer a number of questions covering such subjects as mineralogy and medicine, and under ethnographic questions were issues covering every aspect of Indian life, such as languages, customs, occupations, diseases, and morals. It has long been believed that these questions reflected Jefferson's lifelong interest in Native American cultures, but in truth, Jefferson had solicited questions from a number of experts before the expedition began, adding a number of questions of his own. One of the influences on Jefferson at… READ MORE

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