Trails of the Western Expansion
Lewis And Clark Trail
On February 28, 1803, our president Thomas Jefferson won approval by Congress for a $2500 fund for an expedition to explore the uncharted West. The team was thus referred to as the Corps Group of Discovery. The group would be led by Jefferson's secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and Lewis' friend, William Clark.
Over the next four years, the group of thirty-three men traveled thousands of miles, trekking rivers, lakes, and people that no Americans had seen before!
Lewis also spent time preparing for the expedition, and collected these supplies.
- surveyor's compass
- hand compass
- quadrants
- telescope
- thermometers
- 2 sextants
- set of plotting instruments
- chronometer (needed to calculate longitude)
- 150 yards of cloth to be oiled and sewn into tents and sheets
- pliers
- chisels
- 30 steels for striking to make fire
- handsaws
- hatchets
- whetstones
- iron corn mill
- two dozen tablespoons
- mosquito curtains
- 10 1/2 pounds of fishing hooks and fishing lines
- 12 pounds of soap
- 193 pounds of "portable soup" (a thick paste concocted by boiling down beef, eggs and vegetables)
- three bushels of salt
- writing paper, ink and crayons
- 45 flannel shirts
- coats
- frocks
- shoes
- woolen pants
- blankets
- knapsacks
- stockings
- 15 prototype Model 1803 muzzle-loading .54 caliber rifles
- knives
- 500 rifle flints
- 420 pounds of sheet lead for bullets
- 176 pounds of gunpowder packed in 52 lead canisters
- 1 long-barreled rifle that fired its bullet with compressed air, rather than by flint, spark and powder
- 50 dozen Dr. Rush's patented "Rush's pills"
- lancets
- forceps
- syringes
- tourniquets
- 1,300 doses of physic
- 1,100 hundred doses of emetic
- 3,500 doses of diaphoretic (sweat inducer)
- other drugs for blistering, salivation and increased kidney output
- Barton's Elements of Botany
- Antoine Simon Le Page du Pratz's History of Louisiana
- Richard Kirwan's Elements of Mineralogy
- A Practical Introduction to Spherics and Nautical Astronomy
- The Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris
- a four-volume dictionary
- a two-volume edition of Linnaeus (the founder of the Latin classification of plants)
- tables for finding longitude and latitude
- map of the Great Bend of the Missouri River
They also brought presents for Indians, such as
- 12 dozen pocket mirrors
- 4,600 sewing needles
- 144 small scissors
- 10 pounds of sewing thread
- silk ribbons
- ivory combs
- handkerchiefs
- yards of bright-colored cloth
- 130 rolls of tobacco
- tomahawks that doubled as pipes
- 288 knives
- 8 brass kettles
- vermilion face paint
- 33 pounds of tiny beads of assorted colors
(This is not a complete list, just a sample of some materials brought)
All of these items were obtained from the grant from Congress.
http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/inside/index.html