What does lewis and clark look like

They allowed his pregnant Shoshone Indian wife, Sacagawea , to join him on the expedition. Sacagawea had been kidnapped by Hidatsa Indians at age 12 and then sold to Charbonneau. On February 11, , Sacagawea gave birth to a son and named him Jean Baptiste. She became an invaluable and respected asset for Lewis and Clark. On April 7, , Lewis and Clark sent some of their crew and their keelboat loaded with zoological and botanical samplings, maps, reports and letters back to St.

Louis while they and the rest of the Corps headed for the Pacific. The group next headed out of Lemhi Pass and crossed the Bitterroot Mountain Range using the harrowing Lolo Trail and the help of many horses and a handful of Shoshone guides. This leg of the journey proved to be the most difficult. Many of the party suffered from frostbite, hunger, dehydration, bad weather, freezing temperatures and exhaustion.

Still, despite the merciless terrain and conditions, not a single soul was lost. The Indians took in the weary travelers, fed them and helped them regain their health. As the Corps recovered, they built dugout canoes, then left their horses with the Nez Perce and braved the Clearwater River rapids to Snake River and then to the Columbia River. They reportedly ate dog meat along the way instead of wild game. A bedraggled and harried Corps finally reached the stormy Pacific Ocean in November of They decided to make camp near present-day Astoria, Oregon , and started building Fort Clatsop on December 10 and moved in by Christmas.

It was not an easy winter at Fort Clatsop. Everyone struggled to keep themselves and their supplies dry and fought an ongoing battle with tormenting fleas and other insects.

Almost everyone was weak and sick with stomach problems likely caused by bacterial infections , hunger or influenza-like symptoms. On March 23, , the Corps left Fort Clatsop for home. They retrieved their horses from the Nez Perce and waited until June for the snow to melt to cross the mountains into the Missouri River Basin. The two groups planned to rendezvous where the Yellowstone and Missouri met in North Dakota. Department of the Interior.

Two days later, at Marias River near present-day Cut Bank, Montana, Lewis and his group encountered eight Blackfeet warriors and were forced to kill two of them when they tried to steal weapons and horses.

The location of the clash became known as Two Medicine Fight Site. It was the only violent episode of the expedition, although soon after the Blackfeet fight, Lewis was accidentally shot in his buttocks during a hunting trip; the injury was painful and inconvenient but not fatal.

On August 12, Lewis and Clark and their crews reunited and dropped off Sacagawea and her family at the Mandan villages. They then headed down the Missouri River—with the currents moving in their favor this time—and arrived in St. Lewis and Clark returned to Washington , D. While they had failed to identify a coveted Northwest Passage water route across the continent, they had completed their mission of surveying the Louisiana Territory from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, and did so against tremendous odds with just one death and little violence.

The Corps had traveled more than 8, miles, produced invaluable maps and geographical information, identified at least animal specimens and botanical samples and initiated peaceful relations with dozens of Native American tribes. Both Lewis and Clark received double pay and 1, acres of land for their efforts. Clark remained well-respected and lived a successful life. Lewis, however, was not an effective governor and drank too much. He never married or had children and died in of two gunshot wounds, possibly self-inflicted.

Building Fort Clatsop. Corps of Discovery. National Park Service: Gateway Arch. Expedition Timeline. In extraordinary settings, a remarkable cast of characters encountered adversity of epic proportions and struggled through one adventure after another. American novelist Willa Cather once noted that there are only two or three great human stories—and that we are destined to keep repeating them over and over again. One of these is the journey. Some of the oldest Indian stories are about journeys.

There are the journeys of Africans and Europeans coming to North America, settlers pushing west by way of the Oregon Trail and the transcontinental railroad, and Chinese women and men traveling from places such as Shanghai and Guangdong Province to California, Idaho and Wyoming. Journeys took—and continue to take—Spanish-speaking men and women to El Norte.

In the 20th century, the journeys of African-Americans from the rural South to the urban, industrial North re-made the racial, cultural and political map of the United States. From Jack Kerouac to Willie Nelson, the lure of the road and the promise of the journey still hold us. And it was Lewis and Clark who gave us our first great national road story. There was German-born Pvt. John Potts, a miller by trade and a soldier most likely by necessity. This is the crazy quilt that was and is America.

Not entirely. A close reading of the expedition records reveals that women were a part of the journey every step of the way.

Philadelphia seamstress Matilda Chapman sewed 93 shirts for the expedition; women did laundry and sold provisions to the expedition as it overwintered outside St. One of the most legendary members of the Lewis and Clark expedition was Sacagawea, a teenaged Shoshone Indian who had been kidnapped from her tribe as an adolescent. Sacagawea, her husband and her newborn son first joined up with the explorers as they wintered at a Hidatsa-Mandan settlement in , and she later served as an interpreter and occasional guide on their journey to the Pacific.

The tearful reunion helped facilitate peaceful relations between the explorers and the Shoshone, allowing Lewis to procure much-needed horses for his trek over the Rockies. Over the next two years, the expedition endured everything from dysentery and snakebites to dislocated shoulders and even venereal disease, but amazingly, no one else perished before the explorers returned to St.

Louis in September One of the worst injuries came during the trip home, when an enlisted man accidentally shot Lewis in the buttocks after mistaking him for an elk.

Though not seriously wounded, the explorer was forced to spend a few miserable weeks lying on his belly in a canoe while the expedition floated down the Missouri River.

Meriwether Lewis. Lewis battled depression and mood swings for most of his life, and his condition only worsened after he returned from the transcontinental expedition in The great explorer reportedly suffered from money troubles, drinking too much and struggling as the governor of Louisiana.

He was twice prevented from committing suicide during an journey to Washington, but only a few days later, he was found dead in a cabin along the Natchez Trace with gunshot wounds to the head and chest. Some have since speculated he was murdered, but most historians believe he took his own life. Little is known about what became of Lisette, but Jean-Baptiste later traveled to Europe before returning to the American frontier to work as a trapper and wilderness guide. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!

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