(b. 1772 and d. between 1820 and 1831), Private
As if to confirm the captains’ poor evaluation of the new arrivals from Fort Southwest Point, a scant nine days after his arrival, Hall was among a group of six or seven men who got drunk on New Year’s Eve.
Clark recruited nine young men from while waiting for Lewis to arrive in Louisville, Kentucky. York could be considered the tenth.
The partnership begins
by James J. Holmberg
As the days grew shorter and cooler, William Clark must have worn a path to the Louisville landing. The barge (keelboat) could be expected to heave into site at any moment.
Shades of meaning
by Joseph A. MussulmanThe Dictionary of Bias-Free Usage remonstrated that “only by a strange twist of white ethnocentrism can one be considered to ‘discover’ a continent inhabited by millions of people.” Political correctitude might suggest that we simply drop the word discovery from our Lewis and Clark lexicon, and just speak of the captains as explorers.
Not a forgone conclusion in 1803
by Earle E. Spamer, Richard M. McCourtFor Meriwether Lewis, the theory of extinction was a philosophical argument, not a foregone conclusion. He might even have wondered how he would deal with a live mastodon if he came across one.
Accident in the white pirogue
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Charbonneau’s ultimate test of faith came as a boatman, on a day when he was at the helm of the white pirogue. After a sudden gust of wind, he panicked and turned the boat sideways to the wind, turning the boat over.
Rush's Thunderbolts
by Gregory J. Higby, Joseph A. Mussulman
Dr. Rush had expressly indicated to Lewis that when one of his men showed the “sign of an approaching disease . . . take one or two of the opening pills” nicknamed “Rush’s Thunderbolts.”
Long hunter role model
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Daniel Boone was sixty-nine years old in 1803, too old to go traipsing out to the Pacific Ocean. But Lewis’s “qualifycations” suggest that Boone would have been precisely the kind of hunter he hoped to find.
A French connection
by Kristopher K. Townsend
Whether they be boatmen, interpreters, traders, privates in the U.S. Army, diplomats, or cultural guides, the contribution of the French men already living in the Illinois and Louisiana region was “mission critical.”
Chapter 4
by William W. Bevis
Using interactive pictures of common river conditions, the reader is given an idea of how the boatmen read the river and chose their lines. These conditions—or a prediction of them—were also considered when the Corps designed and built their dugouts at Fort Mandan.
About 1784, a small group of Shawnee and Delaware migrated from Illinois to southeastern Missouri. Ten years later, the Spanish encouraged members in Illinois to migrate the Cape Girardeau area as a way to protect their own settlements from the Osage.
Peale’s Museum showcased the natural treasures of the new country such as mastodon fossils from Big Bone Lick and the first public display of artifacts from the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Quartermaster Lewis
by Frank Muhly, Joseph A. Mussulman
Considering all he had to do to prepare for the expedition, Lewis was fortunate in that he could rely on a small cadre of Army personnel to help him assemble, pack, and ship his supplies.
"Point of Embarkation"
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Lewis had contracted with a wagoner to haul a substantial part of his baggage from Pittsburgh to Wheeling. In 1803 there were only a few thousand miles of decent wagon roads in the seventeen states, and Wheeling was the western terminus of one of the newest of them.
Dearborn gave the departing Lewis an order limiting his permanent size to 15 men. These soldiers also were to be obtained at Kaskaskia and other Illinois Army posts, or newly recruited into the Army from “suitable Men” encountered by Lewis along the way.
A small and fast corps
by Arlen J. Large
Moving between Philadelphia and Washington City in 1803, Lewis devised a plan for recruiting personnel while traveling to St. Louis. Plan A was to go down the Cumberland River, Plan B, the Ohio.
As soon as the expedition boats arrived at the Mississippi River, the captains began counting Shawnee people. The Estimate of the Eastern Indians reports that 600 “Shawonies” were living on the “apple River near Cape Gerardeau.”
A shooting on Brunot's Island
by Joseph A. Mussulman
“accedentaly the ball passed through the hat of a woman about 40 yards distanc cutting her temple about the fourth of the diameter of the ball.”
A late start
by James J. Holmberg
Even though Lewis himself declared the mouth of the River Dubois to be the expedition’s official point of departure, the two and one-half months spent descending the Ohio River were in fact its real beginning.
Lay out of the nightly camps
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Spacing between tents, as well as lines of tents, was strictly measured. Privates’ tents, accommodating 6 men each, were between the sergeants’ tents; all were two feet apart. The “sink,” or latrine, was to be 60 paces (300 feet) in front of the first line of tents.
This page was funded in part by a grant from the National Park Service's Challenge Cost Share Program.
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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).