Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West

by Stephen E. Ambrose

Geographer-historian John Logan Allen, in his seminal work Passage Through the Garden: Lewis and Clark and the Image of the American Northwest, notes that Mackenzie said in effect that “The way to the Pacific lay open and

Gallatin had a special map made up for Lewis showing North America from the Pacific Coast to the Mississippi, with details on what was known of the Missouri River up to the Mandan villages in the Great Bend of the river (today’s Bismarck, North Dakota), and a few wild guesses as to what the Rockies might look like and the course of the Columbia.

Lewis thought of the mosquitoes as a pest, not a threat. Nor did he ever learn how to spell his enemies’ name. His usual spelling, repeated at least twenty-five times, was “musquetoe.” Clark was more inventive: he had at least twenty variations, ranging from “mesquetors” through “misqutr” to “musquetors.”

There are many editions of the journals. By far the best is Gary Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, published in eight volumes by the University of Nebraska Press between 1987 and 1993.

On June 1, the party reached the Osage River and made camp on the point on the left side. The captains ordered all the trees in the area cut down, so that they could make observations, and stayed there through the next two days.

The sight also brought dismay: “when I reflected on the difficulties which this snowey barrier would most probably throw in my way to the Pacific, and the sufferings and hardships of myself and party in them, it in some measure counterballanced the joy I had felt in the first moments in which I gazed on them.” The sight brought forth his characteristic resolution and optimism: “As I have always held it a crime to anticipate evils I will believe it a good comfortable road untill I am conpelled to beleive differently.”

It is today as Lewis saw it. The White Cliffs can be seen only from small boat or canoe. Put in at Fort Benton and take out three or four days later at Judith Landing. Missouri River Outfitters at Fort Benton, Montana, rents canoes or provides a guided tour by pontoon boat. Of all the historic and/or scenic sights we have visited in the world, this is number one. We have made the trip ten times.

He was at Lemhi Pass, on today’s Montana-Idaho border. Except for a wooden fence along the border, a cattle guard at the crossing, and a logging road, the site is pristine. Along with the Missouri River from Fort Benton to Fort Peck Lake, and the Lolo Trail in Idaho, it is the closest we can come today to seeing a site as Lewis saw it in 1805. The U.S. Forest Service has done an excellent job of signposting the route Lewis traveled.

But a young warrior put to Lewis a question that Lewis could not answer: “[He] asked me if they were in a state of peace with all their neighbours what the nation would do for Cheifs?” The warrior went on to make a fundamental point: “The chiefs were now oald and must shortly die and the nation could not exist without chiefs.” In two sentences, the Hidatsa brave had exposed the hopelessness of the American policy of inducing the Missouri River and Rocky Mountain Indians to become trappers and traders. They would have to be conquered and cowed before they could be made to abandon war.

The site is accessible by foot or four-wheel-drive vehicle from Forest Road 500, which generally follows the Lolo Trail from near Lolo Pass to Weippe Prairie. The U.S. Forest Service has done an excellent job of locating and marking campsites.

(Cutright, Lewis and Clark: Pioneering Naturalists, pp. 423, 447).

Moulton’s edition is the definitive work for our time. But he himself points out (as did Jackson before him) that nothing is ever truly definitive in history. There are always new documents coming to light.