What kind of flag did they give out?
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Several vexillologists have speculated that Lewis and Clark might have carried some “Indian presentation flags” with seventeen stripes, plus the Great Seal in the canton with seventeen stars either surrounding the eagle or inside the Glory.
Lewis and Clark usually distributed flags at councils with the chiefs and headmen of the tribes they encountered—one flag for each tribe or independent band.
The expedition’s supplies included an unknown number of American flags. Those that the journals refer to only as being “of second size,” and “of third size,” were given to selected Indian leaders as tokens of peace.
Lewis’s long list of needs for the journey would have been a large supply of American flags, to be flown on their boats, over their camps, and at their council sites. Leading up to the Lewis and Clark expedition, what did the young country’s flags look like?
Surrounded by maple trees at Camp Dubois, tapping and boiling the sweet, watery sap until it crystallized into sugar could begin as soon as the days warmed enough to get the sap rising in the trees.
Lepus species
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Lewis got his first close look at that “large hare of America,” when one of the Corps’ ace hunters, Private John Shields, bagged the first specimen more than 1,100 miles (by Clark’s estimate) up the Missouri River.
The expedition set up camp near a town named after the Cahokia, one the Illinois tribes. The captains reported that Missourias, the Illinois, Cahokias, Kaskaskias, and Piorias were nearly destroyed by the Sauks and Foxes.
Always on the move
by Kristopher K. Townsend
Perhaps more than any North American people, the Kickapoo exemplify the transitory nature of the native nations encountered during the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In 1803, there was at least one village near Ste. Genevieve on the Mississippi River.
Mapping the way
by Joseph A. Mussulman, Kristopher K. Townsend
John Evans provided maps of the Missouri River and Rocky Mountains, the most significant outcome of the Mackay-Evans Expedition.
The Corps of Discovery had been, as James Ronda phrased it, “only the latest in a long series of traders and travelers” to visit the tribes living along the Missouri. The Mandans had been visited in 1738 by la Vérendrye from his base on the Assiniboine River.
"a delightfull prospect"
by Joseph A. Mussulman
On 1 June 1804, the expedition arrived at the mouth of the Osage River, one of the major Indian trail intersections on the lower Missouri. From the height on the point, Clark wrote: “I had a delightfull prospect of the Missouries up & down, also the Osage R. up.”
Three special days
by Joseph A. Mussulman
In a compromise with its multicultural makeup, the Corps of Discovery celebrated just three special days—Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, and Independence Day—and each must have been observed with a jovial mixture of traditions.
Charles Gratiot was a fur trader in Illinois before moving to St. Louis in 1781. There, he married into the Chouteau family and became one of the town’s most prominent citizens. During the winter of 1803–04, he was especially helpful to the expedition and a key actor in the transfer of Upper Louisiana.
Finding soldiers that could hunt
by Joseph A. Mussulman
While traveling down the Ohio and wintering at Camp River Dubois, the captains searched for army recruits accustomed to the ways of the woods. If they were to survive, the expedition needed hunters.
Bonasa umbellus
by Joseph A. Mussulman
At Fort Clatsop on 5 February 1806, Reubin Field returned from a hunt with “a phesant which differed but little from those common to the Atlantic states.”
(ca. 1785–1838), Private
A Pennsylvanian, he had transferred from Fort Massac into the expedition in the fall of 1803, and was a good member of the expedition until October 1804 when he was convicted of “having uttered repeated expressions of a highly criminal and mutinous nature.”
The Missouri River still contributes its tint a few miles north of St. Louis. It is difficult to determine exactly how much, and how often, the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers changed during the nine decades after the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
12 December 1803–13 May 1804
During the winter of 1803–04, everything had to come together: the enlisted men, the boat men, the provisions, and the transfer of Louisiana to the United States.
Carlos Dehault Delassus served as the Spanish lieutenant governor of Upper Louisiana and resided in St. Louis at the time the Lewis and Clark Expedition wintered there in 1803–04. He played a critical role in transferring Upper Lousiana to the American states.
(ca. 1774–unknown), Private
by Barbara Fifer
The laborer from Boston was to take the boats to the Mandan Villages and then return to Fort Kaskaskia. He may have never gotten that far.
This page was funded in part by a grant from the National Park Service's Challenge Cost Share Program.
This site is provided as a public service by the
Lewis and Clark Trail Alliance
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Unless otherwise noted, journal excerpts are from The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by Gary E. Moulton, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001).