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Historical Background

Antecedents of exploration

Like many momentous events in history, the Lewis and Clark Expedition was the culmination of the thoughts and desires of many men over a long period of time and the outgrowth of previous abortive attempts to accomplish the same thing. In the case of the Lewis and Clark exploration, the antecedents are traceable principally to one man, Jefferson.

Jefferson was born in 1743 on the Virginia frontier, and his eyes naturally turned westward. His father, Peter, was a civil engineer and surveyor who was attracted to cartography and western exploration. One of the executors of his will, who must have considerably influenced young Jefferson, was Dr. Thomas Walker, surveyor, land speculator, and explorer. He was the first white man known to have entered Kentucky from Virginia and he discovered Cumberland Gap. The year after Peter's death, Walker undoubtedly persuaded Thomas to attend the school of Rev. James Maury, an ardent proponent of westward expansion.

BUILDING on this foundation, quite early in his political career Jefferson became an advocate of western exploration. In December 1783, the year the War for Independence ended by treaty and while he was serving in the Continental Congress, he wrote from Annapolis to his old friend retired Gen. George Rogers Clark, who had been instrumental in winning the old Northwest for the Colonies. Jefferson knew of his interest in the frontier, and they shared a love of natural history and archaeology.

Jefferson had learned that a large amount of money had been subscribed in Britain to send an expedition into the trans-Mississippi West. He feared that the subscribers were using the pretext of promoting knowledge—one he would later employ to justify the Lewis and Clark Expedition—as a guise for intentions to colonize.

Although Jefferson doubted that funds could be raised and was vague about whether the auspices would be private or governmental, he suggested to Clark that he lead an expedition into the trans-Mississippi West. The next February, replying from Richmond, the general stated that the poor condition of his finances would prevent him from doing so. He offered his support of the enterprise, however, and suggested that it be limited to three or four men so as not to alarm the Indians.

Nothing further came of this proposal, but it is significant because the concern expressed by Jefferson over British penetration of the West indicates that he was thinking continentally and geopolitically as early as 1783.

JEFFERSON'S second involvement with planned western exploration—albeit more indirectly—occurred 2 years later while he was serving in Paris as the Confederation's Minister to France. There he first met and encouraged John Ledyard, part genius and part star gazer, in his astounding plan to proceed to the northwestern coast of North America and cross and explore the continent on foot. [13] This plan had become merged in Ledyard's mind with his other major obsession, U.S. participation in the northwest trade.

Ledyard, a Connecticut-born sailor, had seen the trade's potentialities while serving as a corporal of marines in the Royal Navy on Capt. James Cook's third and highly significant round-the-world expedition (1776-80). It was commanded by various subordinate officers after the natives killed Cook in 1779 while he was visiting the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands, which he had discovered the previous year. A major unplanned consequence of the voyage was discovery of the fabulous market for sea otter skins, which the sailors had acquired along the North American coast, when the boats reached Canton, China, near the end of 1779.

This discovery was in time to lead to the founding of the triangular northwest trade. It would revolutionize British and American trading patterns, bring a new era to the Pacific, and complicate British, American, Russian, and Spanish diplomatic relations for decades. British, American, and other seamen bartered their trinkets and other goods to coastal Indians for sea otter furs, which they carried to China and traded for Chinese products, transported to home ports and sold at high profits.

Americans did not begin to take part in the trade until 1788, or 3 years later than the English. The belated U.S. participation was no fault of Ledyard, though his widely read book, published at Hartford in 1783, pointing out the immense possibilities of the trade, was the basic stimulus. [14] He was the first American to see clearly the tremendous advantages of the trade and to propose it.

Ledyard had arrived back in the United States in 1782, at what should have been a propitious time to interest shippers in the project. At the end of the War for Independence, they lost their commerce with the British West Indies. Nearly ruined, they were forced to seek new markets, especially in the Pacific. Yet Ledyard was unable to obtain financial backers for his visionary scheme. Disappointed but undeterred, in 1784 he continued his search for capital in Paris and London, where he mingled with the social and scientific elite and lived on their largesse. But all his proposed exploration and trade ventures came to naught.

In 1785, at Paris, Ledyard made the acquaintance of Jefferson, discussed with him the significance of the northwest trade, and broached to him his plan to cross and explore North America from west to east—conceived years before Lewis and Clark were to accomplish the feat in the opposite direction. Jefferson, enthused about Ledyard's plan but recognizing his failure to obtain passage by ship to the northwest coast, suggested that he proceed overland to the Siberian coast and cross the Pacific in a Russian fur boat. Ledyard subsequently returned to London. After at least one more failure to arrange for travel by ship, Ledyard finally acted on Jefferson s suggestion.

Late in 1786—with scant funds, without a passport, and accompanied only by two dogs—Ledyard set out from London. Traveling by boat and land, usually relying for a ride on the generosity of travelers and shippers, he proceeded via Hamburg, Copenhagen, Sweden, and present Finland to St. Petersburg (later Leningrad). There, where he stayed between March and June 1787, the German scientist Peter Simon Pallas, a member of the faculty of the Russian Academy of Sciences, provided him with a passport. Often riding on a three-horse kibitka, in September he reached Yakutsk, in eastern Siberia, where difficulty in making travel arrangements under winter conditions to Okhotsk delayed him for months.

In February 1788 Russian officials, possibly because they distrusted Ledyard's interest in their Alaskan colony and its fur trade, arrested him. The next month, after a rapid return trip, he was deported across the Polish border. A year later, he died in Cairo while on another exotic expedition, to interior Africa. At the time of his death, Ledyard was still expressing interest in exploring the North American Continent, this time in an east-to-west direction from Kentucky—a plan he explained to Jefferson, who approved.

Jefferson's relations with Ledyard undoubtedly whetted his interest in the West. Equally as important, he learned of the economic significance of the northwest trade—the furtherance of which was to be a major factor in his sponsorship of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

SOME years elapsed after Jefferson encouraged Ledyard before he became associated for a third time with proposed western exploration. In this case, however, it was a more tangible and practical enterprise, but like the Ledyard project it ultimately came to naught because of the involvement of a foreign nation.

In 1793, while Secretary of State, Jefferson worked through Philadelphia's American Philosophical Society, in which he was a prominent member. Acting on his proposal, the society raised funds by subscription to send French botanist André Michaux on a scientific exploration from the Mississippi to the Pacific. He had been in North America since 1785 and had traveled extensively in the Eastern United States. Interestingly enough, young Meriwether Lewis, only about 18 years old at the time, requested but failed to obtain Jefferson's permission to accompany the explorer.

Michaux's instructions, written by Jefferson, were very similar to those he was to provide Lewis a decade later. They also reveal how early he had precisely formulated his goals in western exploration. He urged Michaux to explore and give "unquestioned preference" to the Missouri River, which he said probably interlocked with the Columbia, while finding "the shortest & most convenient route of communication between the U.S. & the Pacific ocean, within the temperate latitudes, & to learn such particulars as can be obtained of the country through which it passes, it's productions, inhabitants & other interesting circumstances." Michaux was also directed to learn what he could about the mammoth and "whether the Lama, or Paca of Peru is found in those parts of this continent, or how far North they come."

The instructions contain no references to the means of travel, the size of the party, or the type of equipment to be employed, all of which were presumably left to the discretion of the leader. He was, however, directed to proceed to Kaskaskia in Illinois country, cross the Mississippi, and en route overland to the Missouri to skirt the "Spanish settlements" to "avoid the risk of being stopped."

IN this regard, it is probable that Jefferson was influenced by knowledge that fear of Spanish reaction had apparently deterred a proposed exploration in 1790 by Lt. John Armstrong of the Missouri and its southern tributaries in relationship to the Rio Grande. [15] In any event, the very existence of this plan is significant as a precursor of that of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. And, coming as it did in 1790, only 2 years after ratification of the Constitution, it demonstrates early national interest in exploration.

In proposing the ambitious project to Gen. Josiah Harmar, headquartered at Cincinnati, Secretary of War Henry Knox, aware that penetration of Spanish territory was anticipated, stressed the need for secrecy with everyone except for Arthur St. Clair, Governor of Northwest Territory. Knox felt that two separate parties should accomplish the exploration so that at least one might succeed if the other failed. He suggested that each consist of an "enterprizing" officer and a noncommissioned officer, disguised as Indians, and four or five "hardy" and loyal Indians. The major equipment necessary would be a pocket compass and pencils and paper for taking notes. Canoes would be a good mode of transportation.

The man Harmar chose for the task was Lt. John Armstrong. In February 1790 he proceeded from Cincinnati to Fort Kaskaskia, the post nearest to the Missouri, in present Illinois some distance below St. Louis; and then traveled to Cahokia , opposite St. Louis. Seeking information and possibly traveling incognito, he crossed the Mississippi, visited the Spanish cities of Ste. Genevieve and St. Louis, and obtained a map of the Missouri area as well as other information. Nevertheless, in May St. Clair decided that the expedition was impractical. Adverse factors were its difficulty and the nonavailability of Indian participants because of intertribal warfare. Another problem, implied by St. Clair, was Spanish opposition. He and Armstrong advocated that the mission later be assigned to someone traveling in the guise of a trader.

MICHAUX did not even get as far as Armstrong. If the interest of the American Philosophical Society in his expedition was scientific, it soon became apparent that Michaux entertained strong political motives. As a secret French agent, working under Citizen Edmond C. Gênet, France's Minister to the United States, he merged intelligence operations with scientific exploration—if, indeed, he intended to accomplish any of the latter at all.

Gênet arrived in the United States in April 1793. Flagrantly ignoring Washington's Proclamation of Neutrality and straining even Jefferson's Francophilism, he unleashed a series of wild anti-British and anti-Spanish schemes, including the recruitment of Americans to take part in them. According to one plan, a force of newly recruited westerners, who had a long list of grievances against the Spaniards, would strike down the Mississippi Valley, win the aid of French settlers there, and seize Spanish Louisiana. William Clark's brother, George Rogers, embittered over the financial disaster he had suffered during the War for Independence and the failure of Virginia to compensate him for his personal expenditures, became involved in this plan. Gênet commissioned him as a major general in the French Army to help carry it out. [16]

Supposedly to pursue the American Philosophical Society's project, Michaux set out from Philadelphia and traveled to the Louisville area. He consulted there with Clark, probably more about the proposed anti-Spanish expedition than the flora and fauna of the West. But, by this time, President Washington had grown weary of Gênet's machinations and demanded that the French Government recall him. This also brought about termination of the journey of Michaux, whose association with Gênet was clear by this time.

Many years were to pass before Jefferson enjoyed another opportunity to realize his old dream of western exploration.