lewis and clark

[missyfan45]

their adventure has many meeting points for travelers and mysteries to solve like bigfoot for example.

[Catsmate]

Ah yes, vast possibilities for adventures.
Rather like the Louisiana Purchase itself which added over two million square milometres to the still new-ish United States. More than doubling it's size, for fifteen million dollars.
For those not familiar with the purchase, and it was not by any means just the bit that is now the state of Louisiana, I recommend a little reading. The wiki article isn't a bad start and the one for the Lewis and Clark expedition too, it gives a good overview.

Some ideas and notes from my rather disorganised notes on the subject.

1. Jefferson.
It was all the idea of Thomas Jefferson, that "contradictory, brooding spirit of the Revolution". He wanted the land, especially New Orleans (and not just for the food). Acquiring New Orleans meant gaining control of the Mississippi river's outlet to the ocean.
He was also responsible for the Lewis & Clarke expedition; he wanted to know what was in this vast new swath of land and gave the job to his private secretary (Meriwether Lewis) and Lewis' old commanding officer, a frontiersman named William Clark. The exploring party was drawn from the specially formed Corps of Discovery


2. Stopping the Purchase.
Louisiana has been a counter used in the game of European politics for most of the eighteenth century. It was (nominally) controlled by the French, but then had only a few small settlements along the Mississippi and other main rivers.
It has been ceded by France to Spain in the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau in 1762 and controlled by Spain until 1800 (another secret treaty, the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso).
At the time the main American concern had been the use of the Mississippi and the port of New Orleans.

Jefferson had expected the USA to acquire the territory, especially the vital port of New Oreleans, gradually from a weak and decaying Spain. The prospect of French expansion was a very different matter. His letters to James Monroe (Secretary of State) and Robert Livingston (Ambassador to France) are vehement on this, implying that a French presence would end the ties of friendship (without French aid the Revolution would have failed) and pushed the United States towards Britain.
The decision bin 1801 by Napoleon to send a military force to secure New Orleans sent shockwaves through the United Sates, especially in the south where Southerners feared that Napoleon would the slaves in Louisiana, which could trigger slave uprisings in the USA.
This led to American "neutrality" with regard to the French attempts the colony Saint-Domingue (an immensely profitable asset for France that had become essentially independent after Toussaint Louverture's rebellion)

With the aid of a French nobleman, Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, with ties to Jefferson and Napoleon an agreement was eventually reached to purchase the entire territory.

But what if the purchase had failed? Either by French intransigence, American political opposition (the Federalist party opposed the treaty). The expansion of the United States would be slowed and wars with France would probably have been inevitable. A very different world. Perhaps one a French nationalist wished to try and create?


3. The Expedition.

The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri River, & such principle stream of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent for the purpose of commerce.

There is a timeline of the expedition on Wikipedia. This summarises the expedition reasonably well.

Jefferson sent Lewis to a variety of experts to prepare for the expedition, including studies in medicine, astronomy, navigation, cartography and science.
The maps available to the expedition were poor, ranging from reasonably accurate (near the rivers) to the completely useless. Entire rivers, mountain ranges and lakes appeared or not depending on the whim of the map-maker.
At the time there was still belief in the 'Great American Desert' and an immense inland sea, not to mention 'lost cities' like  Cibola and Quivira.

• At least one map used by Jefferson in his planning showed a huge mountain in the centre of North America with four rivers (the Rio Grande to the South, the Missouri to the East, the Columbia to the West, and the Saskatchewan to the North) flowing from it.

The expedition carried, in three boats, about two tonnes of gear selected by Lewis and Jefferson. This included 10lbs of fishhooks, a sextant, a chronometer, four compasses, moulds and wick to make tallow candles, specially minuted silver Peace Medals, a range of tools and metalworking supplies, medical equipment, surveying and mapmaking gear, gifts for local Native tribes and a range of firearms (including the novel and temperamental Steyr-Girandoni 'Windbüchse' military air-rifle).


4. The Opposition.

Nothing would be more useful than the apprehension of [Lewis], and even though I realize it is not an easy undertaking, chance might proportion things in such a way that it might be successful . . .

The Spanish government were unhappy with the Lewis & Clarke expedition, considering their holdings on the American West Coast threatened. They dispatched a total of four expeditions to stop Lewis and Clark, potentially by force
This was a threat Jefferson had anticipated; he'd actually sent three other expeditions of into the Louisiana Territory as cover and also sent Zebulon Pike on an expedition into the Southwest, to the fringes of the Spanish settlements of New Mexico and Texas. Pike ended up being captured.

• There's an interesting, if dubious, hypothesis by Laurie Winn Carlson and others that Jefferson intended both the expeditions of Pike and Lewis as provocations to spark a war with Spain that would bring Texas and Florida into the Union.
  

Then there are James Wilkinson and Aaron Burr (also see The Burr Affair). Their machinations need an article of their own. Just what were they up to? Did Burr plan to establish an independent country in the southwestern United States? Conquer Mexico for the Union, or themselves? Certainly Wilkinson, formerly General-in-Chief of the US Army, was a Spanish agent, as well as the first Governor of Louisiana Territory.


5. What happened to the Notebooks.
The (supposedly) complete and reliable set of the journals kept by Lewis were published only in 2004. However, despite supposedly making daily entries, Lewis skips about 400 days of entries in his journals. Indeed the "red notebooks" that the formed the basis of both Nicholas Biddle 1814 History of the Expedition and Thwaites's compilation in 1904 are odd; they show none of the expected signs of having been dragged across a continent, dumped into rivers, rained on or other signs of use. Did someone (Jefferson?) arrange for extensive editing?
There is actually almost no contemporaneous documentation of the expedition at all....


6. Oddities
There is also the matter of the campsites. The expedition of (about) 33 members camped at around six hundred sites in 28 months. Yet only one of those sites has ever been found.

During their time in Oregon why did they never report seeing a single ship, during the height of the fur trading season?

Lewis and Clark weren't the only explorers, as I mentioned. A year after Lewis and Clarke return the British explorer David Thompson spent the summer surveying the Columbia rive and basin. There he reported being warned off by a group of  mysterious white men (who were also seen in the mountains by Native Americans at the time) by the authority of one 'Captain Jeremy Pinch' of 'Fort Lewis. The US government has records of neither.
Letters given to Thompson threatened the use of "more powerful means of persuasion in our hands than we have hitherto used".

Near Vermillion (in modern South Dakota) at the mouth of the Vermillion River, the expedition camped on 24AUG1804. There Lewis and Clark encountered a conical mound which the speculated owed "its orrigin to the hand of man" or "the residence of some unusial Sperits" including a "large assemblage of Birds". The Plains Indians of the region considered Spirit Mound the home of dangerous spirits or little people. Maybe they were right...
This is around the time of the desertion and punishment (by "running the gauntlet") of a private Reed and the death of Charles Floyd (the expedition's only fatality), probably from appendicitis.

Further upstream they encountered "white bears" quite different from the later grizzlies. Also seen are a number of  "tyger cat".

No account of the expedition can omit Sacagawea, whom the group meet on 04NOV1804. She was then a pregnant 16-year-old Shoshone one of the 'wives; of a French fur trader named Toussaint Charbonneau who lived with the Mandans. Both are hired as an interpreters.

On 04JUL1805 near what is now Great Falls in Montana, Lewis notes hearing the sound of "unaccountable artillery" which he is unable to explain. Specifically he noted that "I am at a loss to account for this phenomenon".

Curiously Great Falls is one of the most active locations for UFO sightings in North America.....
Specifically there is the Mariana incident in 1950, the nearby sighting by Robert Salas in 1967 with claims of a Minuteman missile wing being disabled and the intrusive 'lights in the sky' of NOV1975, also around Malmstrom AFB.

• The latter is part of a spate of "unidentified helicopter" intrusions over a number of USAF Strategic Air Command nuclear weapon bases across the US in OCT/NOV1975. The most effected site was Loring AFB in Maine, which saw several nights of incidents, believed at the time to be at least two helicopters operating with the base perimeter and hovering near the Special (i.e. nuclear) Weapons storage bunkers.
  
• The Loring incident went public ("It is our opinion that the unknown helicopter has demonstrated a clear intent in the weapons storage area, is smart and a most capable aviator") with warnings to aviators not to intrude into controlled airspace, discussions with US and Canadian police forces regarding pursuit and apprehension of the culprits, heightened alerts at SAC sites across the US and authorisation for the USAF air police to shoot down such intruders and the launch of F-4 and F-106 interceptors
  

Jefferson specifically asked Lewis to keep an eye out for 'Welsh Indians', these were believes to be descendants of Prince Madoc (actually Prince Madog ab Owain Gwynedd), who was believed to have sent an expedition to the Americas in the twelfth century. This was attested by none other than John Dee.

• The story is that the illegitimate Magog was uninterested in the internecine fighting after the death of Owain Gwynedd, king of Gwynedd, in 1169 so he and his brother Riryd sailed from Aber-Kerrik-Gwynan on the North Wales Coast in two ships (the Gorn Gwynant and the Pedr Sant) and landed in what is now Alabama. They founded a small settlment and Madog returned to Wales with great tales of his adventures and persuaded others to sail to America with him. They sailed in ten ships from Lundy Island in 1171. They were never heard of again.
• This is actually at least slightly plausible. The Welsh are believed to have landed at Mobile Bay and then to have travelled up the Alabama river. Along the river several stone forts, said by the local Cherokee tribes to have been constructed by 'White People' have been found, and dated to several centuries before the sixteenth century. There is
  also some evidence of possible Welsh influence among the native tribes of America along the Tennessee and Missouri Rivers.
  

7. The Death of Lewis (and some others).
The most famous of these is Meriweather Lewis himself. Instead of the high-profile position he's been led to expect upon his return, Jefferson appointed Lewis as Governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory, in distant St. Louis far from Washington.
On 01SEP1809, Lewis set out for Washington, in what has been described as a "state of derangement". He planned to resolve the matter of non-payment of monies owed to him while serving as governor; this had left him in potentially ruinous debt. He also carried his original journals with him for delivery to his publisher.
Originally Lewis planned to travel to Washington by ship from New Orleans; oddly while on the Mississippi River he changes his plans at Fort Pickering decided instead to make an overland journey via the Natchez Trace and then east to Washington. This was a decidedly strange decision; the Natchez Trace was the old pioneer road and quite notorious for armed robbers who preyed on travellers. Lewis had written his will before beginning his journey and also (allegedly) attempted suicide on this journey.

He stopped at an inn called Grinder's Stand on 10OCT. According to innkeeper's wife, a Priscilla Grinder, Lewis had been behaving oddly; during dinner his face became flushed and he stood and paced several times, talking to himself in a manner describes as 'the way one would speak to a lawyer'.
After dinner Lewis retired to a single room cabin. Mrs. Grinder reported hearing Lewis continue talking to himself that night. She also reported multiple voices and a scuffle and Lewis challenging someone to a duel.
That night gunshots were heard about an hour before dawn on 11OCT and the inn's servants found Lewis badly injured from multiple gunshot wounds, one each to the head and stomach. He was still alive but very badly wounded and bled to death shortly after sunrise.
However there are discrepancies in the reported circumstances; Lewis was found inside his room, on the bed or on the floor, or outside and carried in by the servants. His two pistols (both single-shot flintlocks) were fired and there may have been a substantial quantity of gunpowder on the floor (an attempt at arson?). Lewis's throat may have been cut as may his arms and legs, with a straight razor.
Money (about US$120) that Lewis had borrowed from Major Gilbert Russell at Fort Pickering to complete the journey was missing.
Allegedly three men had followed Lewis on the Natchez Trace and he'd drawn his pistols to warn them off.

The next morning the Chickasaw Indian Agent James Neelly (who'd sent Lewis to Grinder's Stand) arrived and look charge. He declared the matter a case of suicide, appropriated Lewis' dagger, horse, and pistols for himself.
Neelly sent all of Lewis' trunks, other possessions and papers to Jefferson at Monticello.

Lewis's servant John Pernier (who'd accompanied him on the trip but left alone that night) also 'committed suicide' in Washington in 1810. Shortly after writing to Jefferson looking for money, having had "but little remuniration [sic]; my case is truly hard".
James Neelly disappeared in 1812. Also that year,  Sacagawea died "of a putrid fever."

An inquest was held and a verdict passed. However all records of the inquest are lost, including a diary kept by the foreman. We do not know what verdict was reached, though no-one was indicted for murder or any other crime. The body was not examined at the time; in 1848 Lewis's grave was exhumed (as part of an attempt to locate the grave and erect a monument) and the commission noted that "it seems to be more probable that he died by the hands of an assassin".
Despite subsequent attempt to solve the mystery, the National Park Service has refused to allow an exhumation.

Jefferson (rather eagerly) accepted the suicide theory, and certainly Lewis seemed to be suffering some mental issues at the time. Or perhaps Lewis had cause to be worried?

William Clark however lived to ripe old, and prosperous, age as Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Interestingly after the expedition he did one final task for Jefferson; he supervised the excavation of a massive mammoth-bone find near Big Bone Lick in Kentucky in OCT1807. On 11OCT1807 he arranged for the dispatch of three boxes of "bones and other artifacts" to Jefferson. These were accompanied by a rather casual letter stating that he had retained a few items in a safe place "for fear of an accident".
William Clark died in St. Louis on 01SEP1838 and was buried with Masonic honours (both be and Lewis were Freemasons). His funeral procession stretched for more than a mile and cannons fired a military salute. The entire city of St. Louis mourned his passing.




Ideas? Comments? Suggestions? Requests?