Peter Roop - Off the Map: The Journals of Lewis and Clark

Off the Map

The Journals of Lewis and Clark

Peter and Connie Roop

Illustrated by Tim Tanner

For Rick, Nona, Chris, and Sara,

whose friendship has helped us

explore places off the map.

P ROLOGUE

In 1803 the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, or less than three cents an acre. This huge new addition, stretching north from the mouth of the Mississippi River to Canada and west from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, doubled the size of the United States. President Thomas Jefferson decided to send an expedition up the Missouri River to map this region, meet with the numerous Indian tribes living there, examine the animals and plants, and find a route to the Pacific Ocean. Thus the stage was set for one of the most famous expeditions in American history.

Jefferson had carefully groomed Meriwether Lewis to lead this Corps of Discovery. Lewis, knowing he needed a dependable cocaptain, asked his old friend William Clark to accompany him. Clark gladly agreed and helped choose the 29 men needed to man the boats, men capable of enduring months of intensive labor and hardship. Tons of supplies necessary for a lengthy expedition into the unknown were selected: canned food, medicine, presents for the Indians, guns, bullets, scientific equipment, and hundreds of other items impossible to get in the wilderness.

So it was on May 14, 1804, that the three boats, manned by the robust, healthy, hardy young men of the Corps of Discovery, proceeded on under a gentle breeze up the Missouri and into history.

To record this momentous journey, President Jefferson requested that Lewis and Clark keep journals. Both men kept separate journals in the event one might be lost or destroyed. Many times, however, they combined their journal entries in an effort to save time and energy. When first published, The Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition ran to eight volumes, including one containing only maps.

This book, compiled from those journals, tells the story of the incredible journey of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

To Meriwether Lewis:

The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri River, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, may offer the most direct and practicable water-communication across the continent for the purpose of commerce.

Beginning at the mouth of the Missouri, you will take observations of latitude and longitude, at all remarkable points on the river. Your observations are to be taken with great pains and accuracy. Several copies of these should be made at leisure times.

Objects worthy of notice will be: the soil and face of the country, the animals, the mineral productions of every kind, and the climate.

You will make yourself acquainted with the names of the [Indian] nations and their numbers; the extent of their possessions; their relations with other tribes or nations; their language and traditions.

In all your intercourse with natives, treat them in the most friendly and conciliatory manner which their own conduct will admit. If a superior force should be arrayed against your further passage, and inflexibly determined to arrest it, you must return. In the loss of yourselves we should also lose the information you will have acquired. To your own discretion, therefore, must be left the degree of danger you may risk, and the point at which you should decline; we wish you to err on the side of your safety, and to bring back your party safe.

To provide, on the accident of your death, and the consequent danger to your party, and total failure of the enterprise, you are authorized to name the person who shall succeed to the command on your decease.

Given under my hand at the City of Washington, this twentieth day of June, 1803.

Thomas Jefferson

President of the United States of America

May 13, 1804. All our provisions, goods, and equipage are on board a boat of 22 oars, a large pirogue of 71 oars, a second pirogue of 6 oars, complete with sails, etc. Men completed with powder cartridges and 100 balls each, all in health and readiness to set out.

May 14, 1804. Set out at 4:00 P.M. and proceeded under a gentle breeze up the Missouri to the upper point of the first island, four miles.

May 15, 1804. The water here is very rapid, and the banks are falling in. We found that our boat was too heavily laden in the stern and she ran into logs three times today.

May 23, 1804. Set out early, ran on a log, and were detained one hour, proceeded the course of last night two miles to a creek. Captain Lewis near falling from pinnacles of rocks, 300 feet. He caught at 20.

June 16, 1804. Passed a prairie, covered with timothy, made our way through bad sandbars and a swift current. Mosquitoes and ticks are exceedingly troublesome.

June 27, 1804. We remained two days at the mouth of the Kansas River, during which we made the necessary observations and repaired the boat. On the banks of the Kansas reside the Indians of the same name, consisting of two villages and amounting to about 300 men.

July 4, 1804. The morning was announced by the discharge of one shot from our bow piece. Joseph Fields got bitten by a snake, and was quickly doctored with bark and gunpowder by Captain Lewis. We passed a creek 12 yards wide and this being the Fourth of July, the day of independence of the United States, we called it Fourth of July 1804 Creek.

July 7, 1804. The rapidity of the water obliged us to draw the boat along with ropes. We made 14 miles and halted. Saw a number of young swans. Killed a wolf. Another of our men had a stroke of the sun. He was bled, and took a preparation of niter, which relieved him considerably.

July 12, 1804. Tried a man for sleeping on his post, and inspected the arms, ammunition, etc. of the party. Found all complete. Took some lunar observations. Three deer killed today.

July 2226, 1804. Our camp is by observation in latitude 41 3 11. We stayed here several days, during which we dried our provisions, made new oars, and prepared our dispatches and maps of the country we had passed, for the President of the United States. The present season is that in which the Indians go out on the prairies to hunt the buffalo. Five beaver caught near the camp, the flesh of which we made use of.

July 30, 1804. Walked a short distance. This prairie is covered with grass 10 or 12 inches in height. Soil is of good quality. The most beautiful prospect of the river, up and down, which we ever beheld.

August 12, 1804. We waited with much anxiety the return of our messenger to the Ottoes. Our apprehensions relieved by the arrival of a party of 14 Indians. We sent them some roasted meat, pork, flour, and meal. In return they made us a present of watermelons.