First Across the Continent | Page 3

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, both of the same military and actual
rank, without jar or quarrel, we cannot understand; but it is certain that
the two young men got on together harmoniously, and no hint or

suspicion of any serious disagreement between the two captains during
their long and arduous service has come down to us from those distant
days.
(1) It is a little singular that Captain Clark's name has been so
persistently misspelled by historians and biographers. Even in most of
the published versions of the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition,
the name of one of the captains is spelled Clarke. Clark's own signature,
of which many are in existence, is without the final and superfluous
vowel; and the family name, for generations past, does not show it.
As finally organized, the expedition was made up of the two captains
(Lewis and Clark) and twenty-six men. These were nine young men
from Kentucky, who were used to life on the frontier among Indians;
fourteen soldiers of the United States Army, selected from many who
eagerly volunteered their services; two French voyageurs, or watermen,
one of whom was an interpreter of Indian language, and the other a
hunter; and one black man, a servant of Captain Clark. All these, except
the negro servant, were regularly enlisted as privates in the military
service of the United States during the expedition; and three of them
were by the captains appointed sergeants. In addition to this force, nine
voyageurs and a corporal and six private soldiers were detailed to act as
guides and assistants until the explorers should reach the country of the
Mandan Indians, a region lying around the spot where is now situated
the flourishing city of Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota. It was
expected that if hostile Indians should attack the explorers anywhere
within the limits of the little-known parts through which they were to
make their way, such attacks were more likely to be made below the
Mandan country than elsewhere.
The duties of the explorers were numerous and important. They were to
explore as thoroughly as possible the country through which they were
to pass; making such observations of latitude and longitude as would be
needed when maps of the region should be prepared by the War
Department; observing the trade, commerce, tribal relations, manners
and customs, language, traditions, and monuments, habits and
industrial pursuits, diseases and laws of the Indian nations with whom

they might come in contact; note the floral, mineral, and animal
characteristics of the country, and, above all, to report whatever might
be of interest to citizens who might thereafter be desirous of opening
trade relations with those wild tribes of which almost nothing was then
distinctly known.
The list of articles with which