All These,
Except The Negro Servant, Were Regularly Enlisted As Privates
In The Military Service Of The United States During
The expedition;
and three of them were by the captains appointed sergeants.
In addition to this force, nine voyageurs and
A corporal and six
private soldiers were detailed to act as guides and assistants
until the explorers should reach the country of the Mandan Indians,
a region lying around the spot where is now situated the flourishing
city of Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota. It was expected
that if hostile Indians should attack the explorers anywhere within
the limits of the little-known parts through which they were to make
their way, such attacks were more likely to be made below the Mandan
country than elsewhere.
The duties of the explorers were numerous and important. They were to explore
as thoroughly as possible the country through which they were to pass;
making such observations of latitude and longitude as would be needed
when maps of the region should be prepared by the War Department;
observing the trade, commerce, tribal relations, manners and customs,
language, traditions, and monuments, habits and industrial pursuits,
diseases and laws of the Indian nations with whom they might come in contact;
note the floral, mineral, and animal characteristics of the country, and,
above all, to report whatever might be of interest to citizens who might
thereafter be desirous of opening trade relations with those wild tribes
of which almost nothing was then distinctly known.
The list of articles with which the explorers were provided,
to aid them in establishing peaceful relations with the Indians,
might amuse traders of the present day. But in those primitive times,
and among peoples entirely ignorant of the white man's
riches and resources, coats richly laced with gilt braid,
red trousers, medals, flags, knives, colored handkerchiefs,
paints, small looking-glasses, beads and tomahawks were believed
to be so attractive to the simple-minded red man that he would
gladly do much and give much of his own to win such prizes.
Of these fine things there were fourteen large bales and one box.
The stores of the expedition were clothing, working tools,
fire-arms, food supplies, powder, ball, lead for bullets,
and flints for the guns then in use, the old-fashioned
flint-lock rifle and musket being still in vogue in our country;
for all of this was at the beginning of the present century.
As the party was to begin their long journey by ascending the
Missouri River, their means of travel were provided in three boats.
The largest, a keel-boat, fifty-five feet long and drawing
three feet of water, carried a big square sail and twenty-two
seats for oarsmen. On board this craft was a small swivel gun.
The other two boats were of that variety of open craft known
as pirogue, a craft shaped like a flat-iron, square-sterned,
flat-bottomed, roomy, of light draft, and usually provided with four
oars and a square sail which could be used when the wind was aft,
and which also served as a tent, or night shelter, on shore.
Two horses, for hunting or other occasional service, were led
along the banks of the river.
As we have seen, President Jefferson, whose master mind organized and
devised this expedition, had dwelt longingly on the prospect of crossing
the continent from the headwaters of the Missouri to the headwaters
of the then newly-discovered Columbia. The route thus explored was more
difficult than that which was later travelled by the first emigrants
across the continent to California. That route lies up the Platte River,
through what is known as the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains,
by Great Salt Lake and down the valley of the Humboldt into California,
crossing the Sierra Nevada at any one of several points leading
into the valley of the Sacramento. The route, which was opened
by the gold-seekers, was followed by the first railroads built across
the continent. The route that lay so firmly in Jefferson's mind,
and which was followed up with incredible hardships by the Lewis
and Clark expedition, has since been traversed by two railroads,
built after the first transcontinental rails were laid.
If Jefferson had desired to find the shortest and most feasible
route across the continent, he would have pointed to the South Pass
and Utah basin trails. But these would have led the explorers
into California, then and long afterwards a Spanish possession.
The entire line finally traced over the Great Divide lay within
the territory of the United States.
But it must be remembered that while the expedition was being organized,
the vast Territory of Louisiana was as yet a French possession. Before the
party were brought together and their supplies collected, the territory passed
under the jurisdiction of the United States. Nevertheless, that jurisdiction
was not immediately acknowledged by the officials who, up to that time,
had been the representatives of the French and Spanish governments.
Part of the territory was transferred from Spain to France and then
from France to the United States. It was intended that the exploring
party should pass the winter of 1803-4 in St. Louis, then a mere village
which had been commonly known as Pain Court. But the Spanish governor
of the province had not been officially told that the country had been
transferred to the United States, and, after the Spanish manner,
he forbade the passage of the Americans through his jurisdiction.
In those days communication between frontier posts and points lying far
to the eastward of the Mississippi was very difficult; it required six
weeks to carry the mails between New York, Philadelphia, and Washington
to St. Louis; and this was the reason why a treaty, ratified in July,
was not officially heard of in St. Louis as late as December of that year.
The explorers, shut out of Spanish territory, recrossed the Mississippi
and wintered at the mouth of Wood River, just above St. Louis,
on the eastern side of the great river, in United States territory.
As a matter of record, it may be said here that the actual transfer
of the lower part of the territory - commonly known as Orleans - took place
at New Orleans, December 20, 1803, and the transfer of the upper part
was effected at St. Louis, March 10, 1804, before the Lewis and Clark
expedition had started on its long journey to the northwestward.
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