First Across the Continent

The Story of
The Exploring Expedition of Lewis
and Clark in 1804-5-6

By Noah Brooks

First Across the Continent

Chapter I

A Great Transaction in Land

The people of the young Republic of the United States were greatly
astonished, in the summer of 1803, to learn that Napoleon Bonaparte,
then First Consul of France, had sold to us the vast tract
of land known as the country of Louisiana.  The details of this
purchase were arranged in Paris (on the part of the United States)
by Robert R. Livingston and James Monroe.  The French government
was represented by Barbe-Marbois, Minister of the Public Treasury.

The price to be paid for this vast domain was fifteen million dollars.
The area of the country ceded was reckoned to be more than one million
square miles, greater than the total area of the United States,
as the Republic then existed.  Roughly described, the territory
comprised all that part of the continent west of the Mississippi River,
bounded on the north by the British possessions and on the west and south
by dominions of Spain.  This included the region in which now lie the States
of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, parts of Colorado, Minnesota,
the States of Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, a part
of Idaho, all of Montana and Territory of Oklahoma.  At that time,
the entire population of the region, exclusive of the Indian
tribes that roamed over its trackless spaces, was barely ninety
thousand persons, of whom forty thousand were negro slaves.
The civilized inhabitants were principally French, or descendants
of French, with a few Spanish, Germans, English, and Americans.

The purchase of this tremendous slice of territory could
not be complete without an approval of the bargain by
the United States Senate.  Great opposition to this was
immediately excited by people in various parts of the Union,
especially in New England, where there was a very bitter feeling
against the prime mover in this business,--Thomas Jefferson,
then President of the United States.  The scheme was
ridiculed by persons who insisted that the region was not
only wild and unexplored, but uninhabitable and worthless.
They derided "The Jefferson Purchase," as they called it,
as a useless piece of extravagance and folly; and, in addition
to its being a foolish bargain, it was urged that President Jefferson
had no right, under the constitution of the United States,
to add any territory to the area of the Republic.

Nevertheless, a majority of the people were in favor of the purchase,
and the bargain was duly approved by the United States Senate; that body,
July 31, 1803, just three months after the execution of the treaty of cession,
formally ratified the important agreement between the two governments.
The dominion of the United States was now extended across the entire continent
of North America, reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  The Territory
of Oregon was already ours.

This momentous transfer took place one hundred years ago, when almost
nothing was known of the region so summarily handed from the government
of France to the government of the American Republic.  Few white men
had ever traversed those trackless plains, or scaled the frowning
ranges of mountains that barred the way across the continent.
There were living in the fastnesses of the mysterious interior
of the Louisiana Purchase many tribes of Indians who had never looked
in the face of the white man.

Nor was the Pacific shore of the country any better known to civilized
man than was the region lying between that coast and the Big Muddy,
or Missouri River.  Spanish voyagers, in 1602, had sailed as far north
as the harbors of San Diego and Monterey, in what is now California;
and other explorers, of the same nationality, in 1775, extended their
discoveries as far north as the fifty-eighth degree of latitude.
Famous Captain Cook, the great navigator of the Pacific seas,
in 1778, reached and entered Nootka Sound, and, leaving numerous
harbors and bays unexplored, he pressed on and visited the shores
of Alaska, then called Unalaska, and traced the coast as far north
as Icy Cape.  Cold weather drove him westward across the Pacific,
and he spent the next winter at Owyhee, where, in February of
the following year, he was killed by the natives.

All these explorers were looking for chances for fur-trading,
which was at that time the chief industry of the Pacific coast.
Curiously enough, they all passed by the mouth of the Columbia
without observing that there was the entrance to one of the finest
rivers on the American continent.

Indeed, Captain Vancouver, a British explorer, who has left his name
on the most important island of the North Pacific coast, baffled by the
deceptive appearances of the two capes that guard the way to a noble stream
(Cape Disappointment and Cape Deception), passed them without a thought.
But Captain Gray, sailing the good ship "Columbia," of Boston, who coasted
those shores for more than two years, fully convinced that a strong current
which he observed off those capes came from a river, made a determined effort;
and on the 11th of May, 1792, he discovered and entered the great river
that now bears the name of his ship.  At last the key that was to open
the mountain fastnesses of the heart of the continent had been found.
The names of the capes christened by Vancouver and re-christened by
Captain Gray have disappeared from our maps, but in the words of one of
the numerous editors[1] of the narrative of the exploring expedition of Lewis
and Clark:  "The name of the good ship `Columbia,' it is not hard to believe,
will flow with the waters of the bold river as long as grass grows or water
runs in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains."

[1] Dr. Archibald McVickar.

It appears that the attention of President Jefferson had been early
attracted to the vast, unexplored domain which his wise foresight was
finally to add to the territory of the United States.  While he was living
in Paris, as the representative of the United States, in 1785-89, he made
the acquaintance of John Ledyard, of Connecticut, the well-known explorer,
who had then in mind a scheme for the establishment of a fur-trading post on
the western coast of America.  Mr. Jefferson proposed to Ledyard that the most
feasible route to the coveted fur-bearing lands would be through the Russian
possessions and downward somewhere near to the latitude of the then unknown
sources of the Missouri River, entering the United States by that route.
This scheme fell through on account of the obstacles thrown in Ledyard's
way by the Russian Government.  A few years later, in 1792, Jefferson,
whose mind was apparently fixed on carrying out his project, proposed to
the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia that a subscription should
be opened for the purpose of raising money "to engage some competent person
to explore that region in the opposite direction (from the Pacific coast),--
that is, by ascending the Missouri, crossing the Stony [Rocky] Mountains,
and descending the nearest river to the Pacific."  This was the hint from
which originated the famous expedition of Lewis and Clark.

But the story-teller should not forget to mention that hardy
and adventurous explorer, Jonathan Carver.  This man, the son
of a British officer, set out from Boston, in 1766, to explore
the wilderness north of Albany and lying along the southern shore
of the Great Lakes.  He was absent two years and seven months,
and in that time he collected a vast amount of useful and
strange information, besides learning the language of the Indians
among whom he lived.  He conceived the bold plan of travelling up
a branch of the Missouri (or "Messorie"), till, having discovered
the source of the traditional "Oregon, or River of the West,"
on the western side of the lands that divide the continent,
"he would have sailed down that river to the place where it
is said to empty itself, near the Straits of Anian."

By the Straits of Anian, we are to suppose, were meant some part
of Behring's Straits, separating Asia from the American continent.
Carver's fertile imagination, stimulated by what he knew
of the remote Northwest, pictured that wild region where,
according to a modern poet, "rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
save his own dashing."  But Carver died without the sight;
in his later years, he said of those who should follow his lead:
"While their spirits are elated by their success, perhaps they
may bestow some commendations and blessings on the person
who first pointed out to them the way."

Chapter II

Beginning a Long Journey

exploring expedition, President Jefferson asked Congress to appropriate
a small sum of money ($2,500) for the execution of his purpose.
At that time the cession of the Louisiana Territory had not been completed;
but matters were in train to that end, and before the expedition
was fairly started on its long journey across the continent,
the Territory was formally ceded to the United States.

Meriwether Lewis, a captain in the army, was selected by
Jefferson to lead the expedition.  Captain Lewis was a native
of Virginia, and at that time was only twenty-nine years old.
He had been Jefferson's private secretary for two years and was,
of course, familiar with the President's plans and expectations
as these regarded the wonder-land which Lewis was to enter.
It is pleasant to quote here Mr. Jefferson's words concerning
Captain Lewis.  In a memoir of that distinguished young officer,
written after his death, Jefferson said:  "Of courage undaunted;
possessing a firmness and perseverance of purpose which
nothing but impossibilities could divert from its direction;
careful as a father of those committed to his charge,
yet steady in the maintenance of order and discipline;
intimate with the Indian character, customs and principles;
habituated to the hunting life; guarded, by exact observation
of the vegetables and animals of his own country, against losing
time in the description of objects already possessed;
honest, disinterested, liberal, of sound understanding,
and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever he should
report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves--with all
these qualifications, as if selected and implanted by nature
in one body for this express purpose, I could have no hesitation
in confiding the enterprise to him."

Before we have finished the story of Meriwether Lewis and his companions,
we shall see that this high praise of the youthful commander
was well deserved.

For a coadjutor and comrade Captain Lewis chose William Clark,[1] also a
native of Virginia, and then about thirty-three years old.  Clark, like Lewis,
held a commission in the military service of the United States, and his
appointment as one of the leaders of the expedition with which his name
and that of Lewis will ever be associated, made the two men equal in rank.
Exactly how there could be two captains commanding the same expedition,