Would Lewis recognize living animals, examples of which he had seen only as bones in Philadelphia? Would the hunting parties of the corps unexpectedly find herds of mastodons, and packs of stealthy predators, or a lumbering solitary grazer previously never seen by humans?
Expedition souvenirs and specimens
by Elizabeth Chew
Bostonian George Ticknor catalogued the “strange furniture” of the four walls of the room after his visit in 1815, listing heads and horns, “curiosities which Lewis and Clark found on their wild and perilous expedition,” mastodon bones, and the two Native American painted hides.
Lewis's "Mahometant yoke"
by Joseph A. Mussulman
The story of what was known by his detractors as “Jefferson’s War,” opens for us a narrow window on a little known but intriguing episode in Meriwether Lewis’s brief position as the President’s secretary.
“The Pumies Stone which is found as low as the Illinois Country is formed by the banks or Stratums of Coal taking fire and burning the earth imedeately above it into either pumies Stone or Lavia. This Coal Country is principly above the Mandans.”
Tools of diplomacy and trade
by Joseph A. Mussulman, Kristopher K. Townsend
One of the tasks assigned to the expedition was to replace the French, Spanish, and English peace medals previously gifted to North American Indians with those from the United States. The gifts symbolized mutual loyalty in trade and, at least to the Indians, military protection.
A Western expedition
In Washington City, Meriwether Lewis delivers President Thomas Jefferson’s confidential message to the U.S. Congress proposing that they fund an expedition to the Western ocean.
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