I've been working on a 5 pg paper for my history class, and I'm currently 4.5 pgs done. Although I love the subject, writing it is hard work, and I'm tired. So, I thought I'd put it up here for all my fans. Tell me what you think!


it is finished now, as of 9:33 pm on wed. and it's not due until thurs morn, how's that for early! I might revise it a little yet.





A Short Study of the Lives and Characters of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.

I have always been fascinated with the story of adventure that Lewis and Clark embarked on…to travel into an unknown land has always been a dream of mine. When I was able to finally explore the USA for myself, I saw the numerous parks and places named for Lewis and Clark, and these rekindled in me a kind of awe of what they had done. I wanted to learn more about these men, and what they had done, how they had done it, and why. Thinking back on the hours I spent driving across mountains and plains, loving the scenery, and yet always calculating where I would sleep that night, and how long it would take to get there, I wondered what it was like for them…I could travel 500 miles in a day but they could hardly make 15. I went around the country in a month, and they took 2 years and 4 months to get from St Louis to the pacific and back. What kind of men were these adventurers? How did they get started, and what did they discover?
Our story begins with the election of President Tomas Jefferson, who won the Presidency by a very narrow margin in 1801 and, in need of someone he could trust, wrote a letter to a fellow Republican and old neighbor of his, the young Meriwether Lewis. Lewis was just 27 years old, and a captain in the army at the time. Lewis is described as fair haired and blue eyed, a “moody, serious fellow, with a passionate love for endless rambles, the woods and fields, or wild country of any kind. His manners, though good were stiff, his bearing awkward. His letters were far from having a secretarial finish…Most people would have said that a worse private secretary for the President of the United States could hardly be imagined.” [1] But Jefferson had his reasons. He had been trying for twenty years or more to explore the lands beyond the Mississippi River, and his last failed attempt had been nine years earlier, in 1792. Meriwether Lewis had begged to go on that expedition, and Jefferson had refused to let him then, as he was just barely 18 yrs old. Jefferson had as early as 1783 suggested in a letter to George Rogers Clark that an “attempt to search that country”[2] (the land between the Mississippi and California) be made. Now however, Jefferson was President, and had the power to make his dream come true. When in 1802, Jefferson sent ministers to France with and offer to buy New Orleans, Bonaparte replied with a counter offer to sell the entire Louisiana Territory. Jefferson jumped at the chance and for a debt of 15 million dollars, at a price of 3 cents per acre, he doubled the size of his country. Napoleon predicted that this would strengthen the young country, saying: “I have just given to England a rival that will sooner or later humble her pride.”[3]
The time had come to find out what exactly we had. Captain Lewis was already working on getting a group together to explore the Missouri, regardless of whose land it was. As soon as the treaty was ratified that affirmed the Louisiana Purchase, he asked his friend and former captain William Clark to be his fellow commander of the expedition. A more capable man could not be found. Clark was brave, skillful, a proven soldier, and a congenial man. He was an experience woodsman, and well known to Jefferson. Most importantly, Lewis and Clark had worked together before, and well. Though two and a half years together in the wilderness, Bakeless says that “On two trifling questions only were Captains Lewis and Clark ever at odds. One was the palatability of dog meat; the other was the necessity of salt.”[4] It was Clark who chose the rest of the group. He said in a letter to Lewis 24th July 1803 “I have temporarily engaged some men for the enterprise of a description calculated to work and go thro’ those labors and fatigues which will be necessary.”[5] Clark didn’t actually tell the men what they were getting into however, as the expedition was supposed to be a secret. There was some fear that the Spanish, who contested the ownership of the northwest would try to forcibly stop the expedition. So Clark told the men that they were going on a much shorter trip. Lewis suggested to Clark that he could preserve secrecy “by holding out the idea that the direction of this expedition is up the Mississippi to its source, and thence to the lake of the Woods, stating the probable period of absence at about 18 months…”[6] but the news was already out, and men happily signed up. Meanwhile, Lewis was in Pittsburgh studying botany, zoology, medicine and celestial navigation—all things he would find necessary to make the trip safely and his discoveries relevant. In fact, Lewis and Clarks’ scientific discoveries are some of the most important things they witnessed and wrote about in their journals. Cutright gives us a summary of their discoveries including new animals such as the Yellow bellied Marmot (Marmota flaviventris nosophora), the Richardson’s blue Grouse (Dendragapus obscurus richardsonii) and many others, along with many new plants such as the Rocky Mountain Maple, the Western Paper Burch, and many others.[7] The expedition discovered and named many of the places along the way, some of these names we still use today. They also discovered many unknown tribes of Indians, which they were able to make peace with. This is remarkable considering the general lack of appreciation that whites and Indians had for each other at the time. Captain Lewis, in his Essay on Indian Policy, quoted the Indian nations on the Missouri as having said in effect: “The white men are like dogs; the more you beat them and plunder them, the more goods they will bring you, and the cheaper they will sell them.”[8]
Through the course of their journey Lewis and Clark met with many tribes and, although they often felt on their guard, for the most part they were able to trade with the Indians quite happily. Captain Lewis described the Clatsop Indians as: “generally cheerful but never gay. With us their conversation generally turns upon the subjects of trade, smoking, eating, or their women; about the later they speak without reserve in their presence, of their every part, and of the most familiar connection.”[9] Lewis and Clark took great pains to write down as much about the people and their customs as they could find out, from the way their houses looked, to the trades that had developed between villages, and from the way they played games to the way the Clatsop Indians flattened their foreheads.
The expedition left St. Louis Sunday, May 13th 1804, and returned September 23rd 1806. They were gone for two years and four months, and when they did return, there had been some fear that the expedition was lost, it had been so long since anyone had heard from them. The news of their return spread stirred the nation. At last, a measure of the wealth of Jefferson’s purchase was to be told and its magnitude revealed. A grateful nation repaid the expedition with ample grants of land and double pay for the Captains. No one was yet governor of Louisiana, the Indians were restless and causing trouble, and the territory was a wide open back door should war break out with Britain or Spain. Lewis resigned his commission in the Army in March of 1807, and was made governor, for who else better knew the land or it’s people? Clark was made Brigadier-General of the Louisiana militia.
When they finally got home, after a long time in the wilderness, Clark soon found a young woman from Virginia named Judy Hancock to marry him. Lewis, who had named the Maria river after a girl he fancied came home to find that Maria was engaged to marry another man. He was not long disappointed however, and soon wrote to Clark of a mysterious unnamed woman who had quite caught his attention. In the end however, he was not a ladies’ man, and though he often had girlfriends, he never married. It is probably a good thing, for he was so melancholy and moody that he probably would have made any woman unhappy.
Lewis and Clark were both very busy at this time working with Jefferson, who had just discovered the treachery of Aaron Burr. Clark was sent back to St. Louis to find and deal with the “Burrists”, and Lewis was representing Jefferson in the Burr trials back east. But Burr was acquitted and Lewis moved to St. Louis in March 1808 to begin his duties as governor. Although this position was an honor, it was to be the greatest source of trouble and difficulty in his life. Problems between the original French population and the American newcomers, with white squatters and hunters on Indian and government lands, with disputed land titles, and with the British who stirred up the traders and Indians, and lastly, political problems and constant differences with the Lieutenant-Governor Fredrick Bates caused a great amount of stress, and a loss of appreciation among the people he was governing. Lewis’s debts had piled up, and the banks took almost everything he had. At last, on his last trip back east, Lewis died in Tennesee, of mysterious gun and knife wounds. It is thought that he killed himself, but the stories are conflicting and their isn’t enough evidence to prove it. Lewis died in the end of September, 1809.
Clark took care of his friends affairs as best he could, including trying to get his journals published. He continued to work in Indian affairs for the Army until 1813 when he was appointed Governor of the Missouri Territory which office he held until Missouri became a state in 1820. Clark was a success as a Governor, and lived a long and happy life afterwards. He was married twice, as his first wife died in 1820, and raised 7 children. William Clark died a happy man at the age of 68 on September 1st 1838.


Bibliograpy

Bakeless, John. Partners in Discovery New York; William Morrow and Co. 1947
Origional Journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition volume 7. Ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D. New York: Arno Press 1969
Rohnda, James P. Lewis and Clark among the Indians. University of Nebraska Press, 1984
Slaughter, Thomas P. Exploring Lewis and Clark. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2003
Cutright, Paul Russell. Lewis and Clark: Pioneering Naturalists. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1969
Duncan, Dayton Lewis and Clark. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1997
[1] Bakeless, Lewis and Clark Partners in Discovery, Morrow and Co. 1947 Pg. 2
[2] Jefferson, Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition vol. 7, Arno Press 1905, Pg. 193
[3] Duncan, Lewis and Clark, Alfred a Knopf, INC. 1997, Pg.16
[4] Bakeless, Lewis and Clark Partners in Discovery, Morrow and Co. 1947 Pg. 97
[5] Clark, Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Vol. 7, Arno Press 1905, Pg. 263
[6] Bakeless, Lewis and Clark Partners in Discovery, Morrow and Co. 1947 Pg. 98-99
[7] Cutright, Lewis and Clark: Pioneering Naturalists, University of Illinois Press 1969, Appendices A and B
[8] Coues, History of the expedition under the command of Lewis and Clark, Vol. III, Dover 1965, Pg. 1219
[9] Ronda, Lewis and Clark among the Indians, University of Nebraska Press, 1984 Pg. 181