August 20, 1803

Coarse Maple Sugar, Tea, and Coffee

The sugar-maple is very common in every part of Pennsylvania which the Monongahela and Alleghany water. This tree thrives most in cold, wet, and mountainous countries, and its seed is always more abundant when the winter is most severe. The sugar extracted from it is generally very coarse, and is sold, after having been prepared in loaves of six, eight, and ten pounds each, at the rate of seven-pence per pound. The inhabitants manufacture none but for their own use; the greater part of them drink tea and coffee daily, but they use it just as it has passed the first evaporation, and never take the trouble to refine it, on account of the great waste occasioned by the operation.
—François André Michaux^[1]François André Michaux, Travels to the West of the Alleghany Mountains (1805 reprint from London edition), p. 67 in Reuben G. Thwaites, Travels West of the Alleghanies (Cleveland: The Arthur H. … Continue reading

At Camp River Dubois (winter 1803–04), four enlisted men were assigned the task of making maple sugar. (See Sugaring at River Dubois.) The expedition also had tea and coffee. On 28 May 1803, Lewis purchased 28 pounds of hyson tea in Philadelphia, but none of the journalists mention its use. On the back of one of his maps circa May 1804, Clark lists 50 pounds of coffee and 112 pounds of sugar packed in bags. He recorded enjoying coffee near Nebraska City on July 18, 1804 and below the Falls of the Missouri on June 25, 1805.