DID YOU KNOW?
DuBois north of St. Louis, Missouri. He chose unmarried, healthy men who were good hunters and knew survival skills. The expedition party included 45 souls including Lewis, Clark, 27 unmarried soldiers, a French-Indian interpreter, a contracted boat crew, and an enslaved person owned by Clark named York.
On May 14, 1804, Clark and the Corps joined Lewis in St. Charles, Missouri, and headed upstream on the Missouri River in the keelboat and two smaller boats at a rate of about 15 miles per day. To maintain discipline, Lewis and Clark ruled the Corps with an iron hand and doled out harsh punishments for those who got out of line. And a few months later, on August 20 of that year, 22-year-old Corps member Sergeant Charles Floyd died of an abdominal infection, possibly appendicitis. He was the only member of the Corps to die on their journey. Most of the land Lewis and Clark surveyed was already occupied by Native Americans, such as the Shoshone, the Mandan, the Minitari, the Blackfeet, the Chinook, and the Sioux. They bartered goods and presented the tribe’s leader with a Jefferson Indian Peace Medal, a coin engraved with the image of Thomas Jefferson on one side and an image of two hands clasped beneath a tomahawk and a peace pipe with the inscription, “Peace and Friendship” on the other. Some Indians had met “white men” before and were friendly and open to trade. Others were wary of Lewis and Clark and were openly hostile, though seldom violent.
Now, in August, Lewis and Clark held peaceful Indian councils with the Odo, near present-day Council Bluffs, Iowa, and the Yankton Sioux at present-day Yankton, South Dakota. In late September, however, they encountered the Teton Sioux, who were not as accommodating
On July 5, 1803, Lewis visited the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry to obtain munitions. He then rode a custom-made, 55-foot keelboat down the Ohio River and joined Clark in Clarksville, Indiana. From there, Clark took the boat up the Mississippi River while Lewis continued along on horseback to collect additional supplies.
Anyway, Lewis entrusted Clark to recruit men for their Corps of Discovery. Throughout the winter of 1803-1804, Clark recruited and trained men at Camp
Napoleon Bonaparte took power in France in 1799 and wanted to regain France’s former territory in the United States. Then in 1802, King Charles IV of Spain returned the Louisiana Territory to France. Then in 1803, President Jefferson and James Monroe successfully negotiated a deal with France to purchase the Louisiana Territory, which included about 827,000 square miles for $15 million. Even before negotiations with France were finished, Jefferson asked Congress to finance an expedition to survey the lands of the so-called Louisiana Purchase and appointed Lewis as expedition commander. Now the preparation begins Immediately!