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A Reasonable Question

By: Phil Scriver, LC200 Historian

I was asked the other day, "Why do so many of you people spend so much time and energy on Lewis and Clark? What makes them so special?" Seems like reasonable questions to me. Why do we? Why are we such a brazen bunch to think "our Lewis and Clark Expedition" is so special as to deserve a national foundation; hundreds of books written on the subject; untold thousands of dollars spent on travel and research; federal and state commissions; many pieces of art with Lewis and Clark as the subject; thousands of people spending hundreds of hours every year learning and then telling others about the Expedition?

In addition to the fact that 47 men left the St Louis area on 14 May 1804 and took with them 25 tons of supplies in two pirogues and a large keelboat fifty five feet long by twelve feet wide and drawing four feet of water against the mighty current of the Missouri River up to Mandan, North Dakota. After wintering there, they struggled on using any means possible to reach the Pacific Ocean against all forces of nature and only one of the exploring party died. They did not know where they were going, how long they would be gone, or what obstacles were in their path and they were obliged to live of the land to survive in their quest to find a northwest passage for our newly independent United States. Their trip took two years, four months and nine days.

In an address to the annual meeting of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation in 1975, Michael Gleason called Lewis and Clark "the John Glenn and Alan Shepherd of their day." The Expedition was once described as the "foremost among this nation's scientific explorative expeditions--in time, in visionary scope, in scientific and geographic findings, and in national importance."

Bernard DeVoto had this to say in his book, The Journals of Lewis and Clark. "When Mr. Jefferson closed the deal to buy Louisiana he succeeded in a brilliant flanking movement that cut off the European competitors. The territory now claimed by the United States more than doubled, but more importantly if we could control this new land we had access to badly needed resources to bring much needed cash into the treasury. Additionally, it denied these same resources to our European competitors. As Napoleon remarked upon signing the purchase agreement, the acquisition of territory forever consolidated the power of the United States and gave England a maritime rival who would sooner or later humble her pride." DeVoto concluded his thesis on the Expedition with, "there is no aspect of our national life, no part of our social and political structure, an no subsequent event in the main course of our history that is not affected by the Louisiana Purchase and its exploration by Lewis and Clark."

That is some powerful stuff, especially when another distinguished historian flatly states the Expedition was a failure. Let's put that in context. Remember that Jefferson's first charge to Lewis was to find the most direct and practical water communication across the continent for the purpose of commerce. The great falls of the Missouri and subsequent Rocky Mountains caused the Expedition to fail in carrying out the directed mission. What they returned with instead was "a virtual encyclopedia of the West." There was such a depth and breadth of knowledge there that it was impossible to truly understand it all until there was a great deal of study done. These treasures led to the study that has gone on for 200 years.
In short, what Jefferson was telling them to do was find the "northwest passage" that had been searched for ever since Columbus had discovered America some 300 years earlier. That new land mass now was blocking European maritime commerce with the Orient. How can the Expedition really be called a failure for not being able to find something that did not exist?

The Expedition did so much more than simply chart a course across the continent. They were given a mission by President Jefferson that included many areas never before considered by exploring parties. If the minds of some construe the facts of the Expedition to say it was a failure because they could not find that which did not exist, the important scientific data gathered greatly outweighs that weak argument. Consider the following:

Ethnology
Lewis and Clark initiated the first official relations between the United States government and Indians of the Missouri Valley, Rocky Mountains and Columbia Watershed. They were actual discoverers of such important tribes as Shoshoni, Flathead, Nez Perce, Yakima, Walula and Wishram. They defined, in effect, the three great cultural areas of the west; namely Plains, Plateau and Northwest Coast. They instituted the first language studies of at least six different trans-Mississippi linguistic families: Siouan, Caddoan, Shoshonean, Salishan, Sahaptian, and Chinookan. In spite of difficulties interposed by language barriers, they obtained and recorded abundant valuable ethnological data on a wide spectrum of topics ranging from pathology, population and physical characteristics to weapons, apparel, habitations and seasonal round of activities.

Of some one hundred "abstract queries" submitted by Jefferson, Dr Rush and others, Lewis and Clark acquired answers to practically all at one point or another in their twenty eight month journey. Lewis' descriptions of the Shoshoni and Lower Columbian Chinookan tribes rate as classics among early accounts of American Indians. Lewis and Clark's comprehensive data on aspects of material culture serve time and again as departures for comparative studies. All modern studies of prehistoric and historic trade among the Indians of the Upper Missouri perforce draw initially from Lewis and Clark's "Estimate of the Eastern Indians", perennially important as the first survey of these tribes. Much of the data obtained by Lewis and Clark on the several Chinookan tribes have particular value today because with the virtual extinction of these Indians in the 1830's; comparable data have since been unobtainable.

Geography
Lewis and Clark succeeded in accomplishing Jefferson's basic goal which was to explore the Missouri River and such principal streams of it as it's course of communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, may offer the most direct and practicable water communication across the continent . . .

They were the first to recognize and describe the broad general physiographic areas through which they traveled between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean. They ended the long, long, search for an overland Northwest Passage. They established the fact that the North American continent was wider than had been supposed. They determined that the Columbia, until then regarded as a relatively small coastal stream, was a mighty continental river with a vast interior drainage. They confirmed the true greatness of the Missouri and at the same time disproved the prevailing notion that it headed in the southwest. They discovered that two mountain systems (Rockies and Cascade ranges), instead of one, separated the headwaters of the Missouri from the Pacific Ocean.

Lewis and Clark surveyed their entire route from the Mississippi to the Pacific and made astronomical observations at "all remarkable points." They discovered and named hundreds of topographical features, each of which Clark laid down on a series of maps that established him as a cartographer of rare talents. Today more towns, rivers, creeks, counties, animals and plants bear the names of Lewis and Clark than any other figures in American history with the possible exception of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. Clark's final map delineating the entire route from Camp Dubois to Cape Disappointment is recognized by modern mapmakers as a "major contribution to the geographic knowledge of Western North America." This map was used for over fifty years by settlers of the Northwest.

Zoology
Meriwether Lewis contributed importantly to the development of American zoology by making the first faunal studies in the newly acquired Louisiana Territory and by heeding Jefferson's directive to observe "the animals of the country generally and especially those not known in the United States." He discovered and made known to the world numerous fish, reptiles, birds and mammals unheard of previously. He was the first to collect bird skins, horns, bones, hides, and other zoological material and to ship these -- and new species of live animals -- from western habitats to eastern communities.

The Expedition greatly extended the ranges of animals previously not known to exist west of the Mississippi. For example, he widened the range of the passenger pigeon to include the region between the mouth of the Missouri and its source in the Rocky Mountains. He was the first to describe many western animals and in language sufficiently detailed and technical to make determinations of these animals an easy matter for later naturalists who read his descriptions. By making numerous observations on the relations of western animals to their environment Lewis initially introduced ecological methods of study to regions beyond the Mississippi. His discovery that prairie dogs never drink water is a case in point.

The Lewis and Clark journals and collections soon made available to learned men had the immediate effect of stimulating zoology, activity in such diverse fields as taxonomy, animal portraiture, publication, and museum development. Excited by Lewis and Clark's zoological discoveries, other naturalists soon joined succeeding government sponsored expeditions dispatched to the west. American zoology as a science distinct from natural history took firm root, in part at least, from the discoveries of Lewis and Clark.

Botany
As naturalist to the Expedition, Meriwether Lewis greatly enriched American botany by making the first studies of plants indigenous to western plains, mountains, deserts and river valleys. He was the first to collect and preserve specimen of herbs, shrubs and trees in these then remote areas of our country. He extended the range of many plants heretofore known only east of the Mississippi. Lewis initiated phenological studies in the west by assembling information which correlated weather data with periodic biological phenomena. Many of the plants discovered and described proved to be new species, and a few were soon recognized as constituting new genera (for example Lewisia and Clarkia). By describing numerous plants used by the Indians medicinally, nutritionally, and in other ways, Lewis proved himself to be a capable ethnobotanist.

Lewis and Clark were the first to introduce valuable trans-Mississippi herbs and shrubs to the Atlantic seaboard. From seeds, roots and cuttings, eastern gardeners were soon successfully growing western plants. The most important tangible botanical result of the Expedition was a collection of more than two hundred dried, preserved specimen constituting today the Lewis and Clark Herbarium in the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

General
Lewis and Clark introduced new approaches to exploration and set a pattern for future similar expeditions by systematically recording abundant data on a wide range of subjects such as weather, fauna, flora, geography and Indians. Lewis and Clark's topographic discoveries and resulting maps became prime foundation stones on which Americans constructed their claim to "Oregon." Their reports on the abundance of beaver and other important fur bearing animals on Missouri and Columbian waters resulted in developing the American fur trade in the west.

A most important consequence of the Expedition was the eventual publication of the Lewis and Clark journals which are, of course, among the glories of American history. (Other expedition members published journals also.) They have long since established themselves as classics in the vast literature of discovery and exploration. Paraphrasing Elliot Cous, "The more closely they are scanned, in light of present knowledge, the more luminous they appear." The journey stands, incomparably, as the transcendent achievement of its kind in this hemisphere, if not the entire world. Where Louisiana Territory had been "an area of rumor, guess and fantasy" now that Lewis and Clark had revealed it, it was a focus of reality.

History is a strange and fascinating beast; the more it is studied and the more information gleaned, the more there is to study and learn. As DeVoto said, the Expedition touched and influenced every part of American life. If we do not understand the Expedition, what it did and why, how can we possibly understand what influences it still has on our lives as a nation today?

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