Lewis and Clark Expedition

BY JAY H. BUCKLEY N ext to grizzly bears and Mother Nature, the most feared enemy of American fur trappers traveling along the upper Missouri River were the Niitsitapi or Blackfeet, the "Original People" or "Prairie People."' The Blackfeet Confederacy comprised the dominant military power on the northwestern plains. Blackfeet sought to maintain their hegemony by preventing American traders and trappers from trading with and strengthening the Shoshones, Crows, Flatheads (Salish), and Nez Perces. They accomplished this by harassing and attacking American trappers and stealing their horses and furs.
Buckley, Jay H. “Short Tempers and Long Knives: Hostilities between the Blackfeet Confederacy and American Fur Trappers from 1806 to 1840.” We Proceeded On 39, no. 2 (May 2013): 8-18.

In 1804, the Louisiana Purchase led to interest in expansion to the west coast. A few weeks after the purchase, President Thomas Jefferson, an advocate of western expansion, had the Congress appropriate funds for an expedition.

Jefferson wished to open a trade route to the Pacific as well as evaluate the potential interference of Hudson’s Bay Company and Metis hunters and trappers who were already well established in the area. William Clark began by recruiting some good hunters and guides, accustomed to the woods and with good physical endurance. Thus, many of the men hired were Metis. The most skilled of these was George Drouillard, an excellent hunter with many linguistic skills.

A map drawn in 1805 by an Arikara diplomat sent by the Lewis and Clark Expedition to meet with President Jefferson provides a window into indigenous North American cartographic traditions and the use of Native American maps by the Corps of Discovery during their westward journey in 1804-1805.

doubled the size of America. Clark was instrumental in exploring this new territory, negotiating with its original inhabitants, encouraging American settlement, and establishing his home in St. Louis where he lived the remainder of his life.' As Territorial Governor of Missouri, Clark played a vital role helping to create the State of Missouri, which joined the union on August 10, 1821, as the twentyfourth state. By Clark's death in 1838, thirteen new states had joined the original thirteen, doubling the number of states in the Union. Clark's encounters and interactions with family and friends, Indian Nations, and the lands and rivers of the trans-Appalachian and trans-Mississippi West represent the driving factors that influenced and sustained him. He often looked for examples in the East to solve problems he encountered in the West.

Buckley, Jay H. “William Clark: Reflections on His Interactions with Family, Native Nations, and Landscapes.” We Proceeded On 39, no. 2 (May 2013): 25-34.

Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark’s expedition is perhaps the best documented adventure of early American History. Named the Corps of Discovery, the goals of the mission were twofold: 1) to find a waterborne Northwest Passage leading to the Pacific Ocean and 2) to scientifically evaluate the land west of the Mississippi for economic interests and expansion of the fledgling United States. The Lewis and Clark journals were written during their travels west, and despite not finding the Pacific route they had hoped for, the scientific and economic information gained from the expedition remains a testament to its success. The following essay highlights a few observations on the social organization of the Mandan people made by Lewis and Clark during their October 1804-April 1805 stay near the Mandan villages of the Missouri River.  Although social organization (gender roles, age groups, marriage, kinship, etc.)  is not the focus of the journals, this essay argues that a better understanding of Mandan social organization during this time period can be gained from a closer reading of them.

Approaching the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail as a cultural landscape puts the 1805-1806 Expedition into a broader political, economic, ecological, and cultural context. By including indigenous histories, place names, routes, and land-use patterns, a richer and more meaningful picture of life on the northwestern plains in the late 18th and early 19th century emerges.