The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition
{1804-1806|
Journey Leg 1
Journey's Start--1804
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Journey Leg 2
Journey's Endurance--1805
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Journey Leg 3
Journey's Triumph--1805
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Introduction
The Lewis and Clark Expedition, which went by the title “The Corps of Discovery,” was perhaps one of the most significant and incredible feats of discovery and naturalist recording in history. The Expedition was a constant battle for survival, drawing on natural resources and Native support to sustain the lives of the small band of explorers. The party set out with about 38 enlisted military men, not including Captains Lewis and Clark and several French boatmen. After the first winter with the Mandan Tribe, a “Return Party” of soldiers was sent back to the United States to carry with them copies of the journals as well as specimens of plants and animals they had collected. The “Permanent Party” consisted of 31 men total, plus one woman (Sacagawea) and her infant son, Jean Baptiste. Charbonneau, Sacagawea and their son left the party on the return trip. It seems amazing that the Expedition only had one casualty on the entire journey: Charles Floyd who died not from one of the many perils the party so frequently faced, but from an appendix disease that even the most refined 19th Century medicine would not have been able to cure.
However, the journals themselves are perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Expedition. Even despite the harsh conditions, Lewis and Clark both kept a faithful account of their journey, writing every day and sometimes more than once a day. Through sunshine and snow, through frontier bounty and through starvation, the Captains of the Expedition never failed to record their unique experiences as the first explorers to plunge so deep into the American West. They recorded the journey’s progress as well as detailed information about their location and descriptions of new geography and plants and animals of the American West that were previously unknown to the white man. The journey was meant to be as much of a naturalist expedition as it was mean to be a journey of discovery, and Thomas Jefferson personally saw to the training of Lewis as an educated naturalist and gave him detailed instructions on all he was to observe and record.
This journey across the treacherous American West would forge a path for future explorers and eventually settlers who would keep pushing the growing United States of America further into the frontier until not only two brave Captains, but a whole nation would come knocking on the door of the Pacific Ocean.
However, the journals themselves are perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Expedition. Even despite the harsh conditions, Lewis and Clark both kept a faithful account of their journey, writing every day and sometimes more than once a day. Through sunshine and snow, through frontier bounty and through starvation, the Captains of the Expedition never failed to record their unique experiences as the first explorers to plunge so deep into the American West. They recorded the journey’s progress as well as detailed information about their location and descriptions of new geography and plants and animals of the American West that were previously unknown to the white man. The journey was meant to be as much of a naturalist expedition as it was mean to be a journey of discovery, and Thomas Jefferson personally saw to the training of Lewis as an educated naturalist and gave him detailed instructions on all he was to observe and record.
This journey across the treacherous American West would forge a path for future explorers and eventually settlers who would keep pushing the growing United States of America further into the frontier until not only two brave Captains, but a whole nation would come knocking on the door of the Pacific Ocean.