Ocian in View! O! the Joy

In 1803 no American had crossed the continent, and the map west of the Mississippi was mostly blank. That year the United States bought 828,000 square miles of it from France. President Jefferson gave the job of seeing it to his secretary, Army Capt. Meriwether Lewis, and Lewis chose his old comrade William Clark. Their orders: follow the Missouri to its source and find the way to the Pacific.

1. 20 June 1803 · Washington

   Orders from the President

   Jefferson hands Lewis his written orders. Map the Missouri. Fix latitude and longitude at every river mouth, rapid and island. Record the soil, plants, animals and weather. Treat every nation met in the most friendly way their own conduct allows. On 3 July word reaches Washington from Paris: the United States has bought Louisiana from France for $15 million. The country Lewis will cross is now American.

   Jefferson’s instructions to LewisThe object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it as … may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent for the purposes of commerce.
2. 14 May 1804 · 4 p.m.

   Under way

   After a winter of drill at Camp Dubois on the Illinois shore, Clark pushes off in the rain. A 55-foot keelboat and two pirogues carry about 40 men up the Missouri, and every mile is against the current. Three months upriver, on 20 August, Sgt. Charles Floyd dies, most likely of appendicitis. He tells Clark, “I am going away.” He will be the only man the Corps loses. Days later the men vote Pvt. Patrick Gass into his place.

3. Winter 1804–05 · Fort Mandan

   Winter with the Mandan

   The Corps builds Fort Mandan beside the Mandan and Hidatsa villages in present North Dakota and waits out the cold. The captains hire a French-Canadian trader, Toussaint Charbonneau, as interpreter. His wife Sacagawea, a Shoshone teenager taken from her people years before, comes too. On 11 February she gives birth to a son, Jean Baptiste. On 7 April the keelboat heads home with specimens for Jefferson, and 33 people head west.

4. 13 June 1805 · Great Falls

   The grandest sight

   Scouting ahead, Lewis hears a roar and sees spray rising over the plain like smoke. It is the Great Falls of the Missouri, “the grandest sight I ever beheld.” Above it are four more falls. The Corps hauls its canoes and all its gear 18 miles overland on carts with wheels sawn from a cottonwood trunk, through prickly pear, hail and heat. It takes nearly a month.

5. 17 August 1805 · Camp Fortunate

   Her brother’s people

   Five days earlier Lewis crossed the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass. To get over the mountains ahead, the Corps must have horses. The Shoshone chief Cameahwait sits down in council, and Sacagawea, translating, knows him. He is her brother. Clark writes that the chief proved to be “the brother of the Woman with us.” The Shoshone trade horses, and a guide the men call Old Toby leads them north. By 30 August they have 29 horses.

6. September 1805 · Lolo Trail

   The most terrible mountains

   The trail over the Bitterroots is steep and choked with fallen timber. Snow falls on 16 September. The hunters find almost nothing, and the men kill and eat their colts. Lewis lists what is left: portable soup, a little bear oil and 20 pounds of candles. Clark has never been so cold. Sgt. Gass calls them “the most terrible mountains I ever beheld.” On 20 September his advance party walks out onto Weippe Prairie and into the camps of the Nez Perce.

7. 7 November 1805 · Columbia River

   Ocian in view

   The Nez Perce feed the starving men salmon and camas root. Twisted Hair draws the rivers ahead on a white elkskin and keeps the Corps’ 38 horses for the winter. In five new dugouts the Corps runs the Clearwater, the Snake and the Columbia. On 7 November, in fog and rain, the river opens wide ahead of them. Clark writes in his field notebook.

   

   Clark’s field notesOcian in view! O! the joy.
8. 24 November 1805 · Station Camp

   Everyone votes

   The Corps has reached the Pacific. Now it must choose where to winter, and the captains poll the whole party. York, Clark’s enslaved man, casts a vote. So does Sacagawea, whom Clark records as “Janey.” She asks for “a place where there is plenty of Potas,” the wapato roots she knows they can live on. They cross to the south shore, and by Christmas they are under the roof of Fort Clatsop.

9. 23 September 1806 · St. Louis

   Home

   The Corps leaves Fort Clatsop on 23 March 1806. Back over the Bitterroots, the captains split up to explore more country. On 25 July Clark carves his name and the date into a sandstone pillar on the Yellowstone. They reunite on the Missouri on 12 August and ride the current down. About noon on 23 September they land at St. Louis and fire a salute. The whole town turns out and gives three cheers.