Lewis and Clark shared leadership responsibilities on the expedition and worked so close in harmony that history almost considers them one. They combined their skills, frontier experience, and resourcefulness to accomplish their large and dangerous task. Lewis was the more intellectual man, while Clark possessed greater wilderness and leadership skills. They encountered some thirty Native American tribes, many of whom had never seen a white person. They produced a journal of historic importance that recorded natural and cultural conditions in the West at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Their trek represented the beginning of the great westward expansion of the United States that peaked in the mid-nineteenth century.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, with Sacagawea. (© Corbis.)

Lewis and His Love of the Wilderness

Meriwether Lewis was born in rural Albemarle County, Virginia, in August 1774, on the eve of the American Revolution (1775–83). Lewis was...