Lewis and Clark Expedition, Part 6: The Wonders of the Upper Missouri River

The New Nation
Written By Tom Hand

On May 26, 1804, Captain Meriwether Lewis noted in his journal that he “beheld the Rocky Mountains for the first time…covered with snow and the sun shone on it to give me the most satisfactory view.” Soon thereafter, the Corps came upon the Missouri River Breaks, what Captain Clark called the “Deserts of America,” a stretch of 160 miles running from today’s Fort Benton to Fort Peck Lake, where the Missouri courses between 300 foot tall canyon walls; it remains one of the most remote parts of America. But perhaps the most wondrous site they experienced on their entire journey was the Great Falls of the Missouri, which Lewis called “the grandest site I ever beheld.”

Tom Hand, creator and publisher of Americana Corner, discusses the wonders of the Upper Missouri River as seen by Lewis and Clark, and why it still matters today.  

 

Images courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Wikimedia, Yale University Art Gallery, Indiana Historical Society, SMU Libraries, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Wikiart, Gilcrease Museum.

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As Lewis and Clark continued their journey up the Missouri River in 1805, the Corps was moving further and further from civilization with every stroke of their paddles. Although the Corps had been made aware of the countless wonders to the west through conversations with the Mandans and Hidatsas, it was quite another thing to observe the wonders for themselves, and at seemingly every bend in the river there were new discoveries.

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The Corps of Discovery arrived at the Mandan villages near present day Bismarck, North Dakota, in late October 1804 and prepared to settle in for the long winter. For the past five months, the Lewis and Clark expedition had spent most days rowing or pushing their keelboat against the Missouri River’s powerful current, and the men were ready for a break. They were now 1,300 river miles upstream from the nearest civilized settlement and, although they did not know it, they had over 2,000 miles to go to reach the Pacific Ocean.

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In 1801, Meriwether Lewis was a Captain serving as the paymaster for the First Infantry Regiment of the United States Army. In March, he received a letter from Thomas Jefferson, the newly inaugurated President, asking Lewis to become his private secretary. Lewis, whose family was friends with the Jefferson clan, accepted at once, and thus began a close working relationship, one in which Jefferson became a father figure to Lewis and mentored his young subordinate on policy matters, including his dreams of western exploration and expansion.

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By the time they began to assemble the Corps of Discovery in the summer of 1803, Thomas Jefferson and Meriwether Lewis knew more than anyone else about the Louisiana Territory, that immense wilderness the country had recently purchased from France. Although Jefferson had never ventured more than fifty miles west from Monticello, he had dreamed of the trans-Mississippi and studied the region extensively over the previous two decades, even trying unsuccessfully to send exploratory expeditions on several occasions.

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Tom Hand
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Lewis and Clark Expedition, Part 5: The Corps of Discovery Winters with the Mandans