Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

For many years, President Thomas Jefferson had dreamed of sending an expedition to explore the vast area of North America between the Mississippi and the Pacific. With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Jefferson's dream became a practical reality. The president sent Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on a mission to assert America's authority in the newly acquired Northwest Territories. Their mission also included establishing friendly relations with the Native American tribes and finding a trade route to the Pacific coast. The Lewis and Clark Expedition departed from St. Louis on May 14, 1804, with forty-five men in two canoes and a large keelboat. The first stage of the journey, lasting 166 days and sixteen hundred miles, was through familiar territory to the Mandan Indian village in North Dakota. Here they built a fort to spend the winter. In...