Lewis and Clark Expedition
Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–06).In 1803, Thomas Jefferson commissioned Capt. Meriwether Lewis and Lt. William Clark to explore what is now the northwest United States. The Louisiana Purchase later the same year altered the character of the planned expedition from an exploration of French territory to a first glimpse of lands that, in the view of many contemporaries, were essential to maintaining the agrarian, republican character of the nation.
The party of nearly thirty men—including Lewis and Clark, three sergeants, twenty‐two enlisted men, volunteers, interpreters, and Clark's slave—departed St. Louis in May 1804 heading up the Missouri River. They wintered at the present site of Bismarck, North Dakota, where they acquired a guide and translator, the Shoshone woman Sacagawea. In spring 1805, they continued to the headwaters of the Missouri River, struggled across the Continental Divide,...
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