U.S. Military Captain Meriwether Lewis, 2nd Lt. William Clark and their Corps of Discovery returned to St. Louis to a hero’s welcome after their epic journey to the Pacific Ocean on today in historical past, Sept. 23, 1806.
“We had been met by all of the village and acquired a hearty welcome from its inhabitants,” wrote Clark as their expedition returned to the Gateway to the West.
“We Suffered the occasion to fireside off their items as a salute to the city.”
Their epic continental sojourn, simply coated by air journey at present in mere hours, lasted 28 months and coated 8,000 miles of an undulating route largely following the Missouri and Columbia rivers.
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“What occurred to the Corps is a superb story, brimming with power and filled with ahead movement,” enthused historian James P. Ronda in a 2003 retrospective in Smithsonian Journal.
“In extraordinary settings, a outstanding forged of characters encountered adversity of epic proportions and struggled via one journey after one other.”

Sacagawea is proven guiding the Lewis and Clark expedition. The Lewis and Clark expedition was aided by the Indian slave spouse of a French pioneer who was engaged to information the occasion. Drawing by Alfred Russell. (Getty Photos)
The expedition included about three dozen members.
Among the many multicultural band of explorers: Clark’s slave, York, whose pores and skin shade shocked natives who had by no means seen a black individual earlier than; celebrated Shoshone native Sacagawea; and her French Canadian-Native American son Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, born on the journey in present-day North Dakota in 1805.
Clark cared for the boy after Sacagawea died in 1812.
Seaman, Clark’s Newfoundland canine, additionally made the journey.
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The expedition took the Corps via what was then the forbidden North American wilderness, unexplored by Europeans, largely unmapped for posterity by people and inhabited by flora, fauna and native tribes unknown to the skin world.
“What occurred to the Corps is a superb story, brimming with power and filled with ahead movement.” — Smithsonian Journal
Among the many curiosities they encountered and recorded to the amazement of European Individuals had been 178 crops, 122 animals — together with grizzly bears — and the indigenous Clatsop individuals in what’s now Oregon, considered one of many “Flathead” tribes of the Pacific Northwest.

This map of the Northwestern U.S. depicts the route taken by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their first expedition from the Missouri River (close to St. Louis, Missouri) to the mouth of the Columbia River (on the Pacific Ocean in Oregon) — and their return journey — 1804-1806. (Inventory Montage/Getty Photos)
“Probably the most outstanding trait of their physiognomy,” wrote Lewis, “is the peculiar flatness and width of brow, which they artificially acquire by compressing the top between two boards whereas in a state of infancy and from which it by no means afterward completely recovers … From the highest of the top to the extremity of the nostril is one straight line.”
The Corps was commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson whereas he was working to amass the sprawling Louisiana Territory from France in 1803.
Each Lewis and Clark stored detailed accounts of the journey.
“Even earlier than negotiations with France had been completed, Jefferson requested Congress to finance an expedition to survey the lands of the so-called Louisiana Buy and appointed Lewis as expedition commander,” in accordance with Historical past.com.
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The Corps of Discovery departed on Could 14, 1804, reached the Pacific on Nov. 7, 1805, wintered on the Columbia River close to present-day Astoria, Oregon, and started the return journey to St. Louis on March 23, 1806.
Each Lewis and Clark stored detailed accounts of the journey.
They left for posterity a wealthy repository of perception into the pure panorama, the continent’s native inhabitants and their very own each day battles for survival.
Remarkably, all however one member of the expedition, Sgt. Charles Floyd, lived to finish the journey. He died on Aug. 20, 1804, maybe of a ruptured appendix, upon what’s now often called Floyd’s Bluff on the Missouri River in Sioux Metropolis, Iowa.

Flathead Indians, 1861. Hoogst-áh-a (chief in blanket) and Lée-le (his spouse flattening head of toddler little one). Artist George Catlin. Lewis and Clark had been shocked to find tribes of natives who flattened the heads of their kids. (Heritage Artwork/Heritage Photos by way of Getty Photos)
“Lewis and Clark’s journals file for us not solely a narrative of astonishing private braveness but additionally a robust parable of belief throughout the human group,” writes editor Landon Y. Jones in his 2000 account of their diaries, “The Important Lewis and Clark.”
“On one degree, Lewis is the extra refined storyteller,” he wrote.
“Clark then again is blunter, earthier and extra to the purpose.”
“It’s with pleasure that I announce to you the protected arrival of myself and occasion.” — Meriwether Lewis to President Jefferson
Amongst lots of of different human insights of their data, the Corps of Discovery celebrated the younger nation’s independence on July 4, 1805, with their remaining inventory of spirits, music and dancing in what’s now Nice Falls, Montana.
“The fiddle was performed they usually danced very merrily,” wrote Lewis of his crew.
“They continued their mirth with songs and festive jokes and had been extraordinarily merry till late at night time.”
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“That night the primary Individuals ever to enter Montana, the primary to ever see the Yellowstone, the Milk, the Marias and the Nice Falls, the primary Individuals ever to kill a grizzly, celebrated their nation’s twenty ninth birthday,” wrote Stephen Ambrose in his 1996 historical past, “Undaunted Braveness: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West.”
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“It’s with pleasure that I announce to you the protected arrival of myself and occasion,” Lewis wrote to President Jefferson on the day of their return to St. Louis.
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“In obedience to your orders now we have penetrated the continent of North America to the Pacific Ocean, and sufficiently explored the inside of the nation to affirm with confidence that now we have found essentially the most practicable rout which [does] exist throughout the continent by way of the navigable branches of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers.”