Sidney Thompson
Patricia LaFonte
US History
December 7, 2017
The Lewis and Clark Expedition
Chapter One: A Modern Day Expedition
At the beginning break, at the end of each semester, I make the journey back home. I start out at my dorm room at the UC, head over to to the LaSalle CTA Blue Blue Line stop and take the train ride to O’Hare. It takes an half hour to get up stairs, get through TSA and get a bagel and a cup of Starbucks in my hand (God bless). I mosey on down to my gate, wait what feels like an eternity to board the plane, fly the forty five minutes-hour flight to if we’re being accurate to kartography is really Carter Lake, Iowa, but is so damn close to Omaha, Nebraska, Eppley Airfield, everybody agreed to move the state line, and so instead of being welcomed to Carter Lake, Iowa we’re welcomed to Omaha.
From there I drive the hour back home.
I look out the window, at the sky endless and grey, the fields barren and the Losse Hills off in the distance. Old cornhusks are bent down into the ground. Home, Modale, Iowa, is a tiny little farm town what many people would consider nowhere. It’s one of the smallest town in all of Iowa with something like three hundred people populating it. Mind you, we don’t even live in town, we live on a forty acre lot two or three miles outside of it. It’s only claim to fame is that Buster Keaton's mom, Myra, was born there, but even she was just passing through. I’ve heard that a long time ago, before any American settlers, there were people who lived along the Missouri River in caves. But I’m not sure how true that is. If you live near or know anything about the Missouri River, or the land which surrounds it, you know it to be flat and sandy. To crumble under the slightest pressure. Even the Loess Hills, the most solid looking thing on the land aside from the houses, is made of tightly packed dust. And no matter how many people I’ve heard this from, I cannot imagine caves on the Missouri. And of course, there are was Lewis and Clark, the explorers who once walked on or damn near close to the land our house now sits, on their way out west. And it’s every time I am just about to end my expedition home, that I think about how they were just beginning there's.
The New Territory
The Lewis and Clark Expedition began long before the names Lewis and Clark were ever attached, with the election of President Thomas Jefferson in 1801. His dream, to expand the United States and fulfill Manifest Destiny, the 19th-century doctrine or belief that the expansion of the US throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable. In order to do this, Thomas Jefferson’s first priority was to take the Port of New Orleans, a prime location at the mouth of the Mississippi ideal for transportation of goods. He sent over James Monroe and Robert Livingston to France to see if they would consider negotiate the purchase of the city of New Orleans to them for $7,000,000. Considering Napoleon Bonaparte was fighting a war with Great Britain and trying to control the slave revolt in the French colony Haiti, led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, and Napoleon would be in desperate need of the money.
Also in desperate need of money, James Monroe. Monroe was planning to retire from politics try and make money opening a law practice and developing his landholdings. But according to History Channel article, 8 Things You May Not Know About the Louisiana Purchase by Jesse Greenspan, “Barely a month went by, however, before Jefferson nominated him as a special envoy to help Livingston with the Louisiana Purchase negotiations. In order to raise money for the passage to France, a cash-strapped Monroe sold off his silver flatware, porcelain plates and a white-and-gold china tea set. The future president, who served from 1817 to 1825, remained in debt for the rest of his life, even after receiving a $30,000 congressional appropriation for “public losses and sacrifices.”
Monroe and Livingston had a bit of an IMM, as by the time they got to France to negotiate they started to hear that Napoleon is interested in selling not just the city of New Orleans, but the entire Louisiana Territory. Too good a deal to refuse they agreed to pay $15,000,000, the using the $7,000,000 they were going to use to purchase New Orleans as a down payment. The two told Jefferson about the deal, who in turn went to get the approval of Senate, who agreed to pay the money even though, according the same History Channel article, not only were the “Members of the Federalist Party, already a significant minority in both houses of Congress, were worried that the Louisiana Purchase would further reduce their clout” and that despite buying the Louisiana Territory for less than three cents an acre “the price was more than the United States could afford. As a result, it was forced to borrow from two European banks at 6 percent interest. It did not finish repaying the loan until 1823, by which time the total cost for the Louisiana Purchase had risen to over $23 million.” Regardless, the deal went through and America doubled in size, acquiring 800,000 square miles from the French, stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains.
The Expedition Begins
In 1803, Thomas Jefferson appointed his personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis, a ex-army man and politician also possessed the skills of a frontiersman. Lewis enlisted the help of William Clark, whose “abilities as draftsman and frontiersman were even stronger. Lewis so respected Clark that he made him a co-commanding captain of the Expedition, even though Clark was never recognized as such by the government. Together they collected a diverse military Corps of Discovery” of 55 men. Among them Clark’s slave, York, an excellent hunter and accepted by natives more so than his his white men, the party later acquiring the help a young Shoshone woman named Sacagawea, whose husband, Toussaint Charbonneau was suppose to help navigate, but was arrested for public intoxication days before they were to leave. Sacagawea took his place, taking on the role of interpreter. Their mission: To explore the land west of Saint Louis, Missouri until they reached the Pacific, documenting weather, water travel, what the soil was like, animals, vegetation, and the native tribes of the area.
The Nebraska/Iowa Leg of the Expedition
The Corps came in contact with multiple Native American tribes during the their time in Nebraska and Iowa, the Iowa People (Ioway), Otoe, Ho-Chunk (Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska), and Omaha Indians. The Iowa Otoe and Missourians were all very People, related to the Otoe and the Missouri had migrated from the Great Lakes to the what is now the state of Iowa, before European settlement of the “New World.” The Oto (Otoe), related Missouri and Iowa tribes, were encountered by the Lewis and Clark Expedition, they were living near the mouth of the Platte River. The Ho-Chunk the tribe has a reservation in northeastern Nebraska and western Iowa. The Winnebago Indian Reservation lies primarily in the northern part of Thurston and a small part of Dixon counties in Nebraska, with an additional portion in Woodbury County, Iowa. Britannica Encyclopedia sites were “natives of the Dhegiha branch of the Siouan language,” who were thought to have“… migrated westward from the Atlantic coast at some point in prehistory and that their early settlements were in the present U.S. states of Virginia and the Carolinas.” The Omahas moved inland, relocating “to the Ozark Plateau and the prairies of what is now western Missouri. From there the five tribes separated, dispersing all over the midwest including Bow Creek in present-day Nebraska.” They would often meet with the Indian chiefs, as Clark wrote in his diary:
“At Sunset Mr. Fairfong and a pt. of Otteau & Missourie Nation Came to Camp, among those Indians 6 were Chiefs, the principal Chiefs Capt. Lewis & myself met those Indians & informed them we were glad to See them, and would Speak to them tomorrow, Sent them Som roasted meat Pork flour & meal, in return they Sent us Water millions. Every man on his guard & ready for anything.”
Even would even go to the gravesite of Omaha chief Blackbird which Clark recounted in his journal,“August 11th Saturday 1804 about day this morning a hard wind from the N. W. followed by rain, we landed at the foot of the hill on which Black Bird The late King of the Mahar (Omaha Indians) who died four years ago & four-hundred of his nation with the smallpox was buried and went up and fixed a white flag bound with blue white & red.”
They often told the natives to make peace with one another and with their new "great father," President Jefferson. Each of the tribes cast off their land within the next fifty years.
Works Cited:
Greenspan, Jesse. "8 Things You May Not Know About the Louisiana Purchase." , History Channel, 30 Apr. 2013, www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-louisiana-purchase. Accessed 10 Dec. 2017.
http://www.edgate.com/lewisandclark/expedition.html
https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/lewis-clark
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Omaha-people
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Iowa-people
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Oto
https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/item/lc.sup.johnsgard.01.05
(In-class notes referenced throughout essay).