Mike Morris
1/29/10

Lewis and Clark expedition

The Lewis and Clark expedition was one of the most important events to ever take part in the United States. These two very intelligent and brave men were taking a journey into the vast unknown to seek out what they have never seen before. Before this whole thing happened, Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase which nearly doubled the amount of land the United States had. The only bad thing about this was he didn’t know anything about the land that he just bought. This is Lewis and Clark come in. The two men started their journey in St. Louis, Missouri. They had about 40 men with them by their sides. They called them selves The Corps of Discovery. They were about the set out on one of the hardest, coldest and most important parts of their lives. Before they started the expedition however, Thomas Jefferson made Lewis go to school to learn about nature. What kinds of animals are out there. The plants, Native Americans, etc. SO when they started they wanted to find an all water route to the west coast. So they deiced to take the Missouri river and see where it took them. During the expedition the men mostly complained about the bugs. While on the journey, Lewis suffered from manic depression. The evidence we have is that, he would always write in his journal, so when he didn’t write on it, we know that he wasn’t doing to good. The crew had some very harsh rules. For example, if you were to fall asleep during your watch of the boat, you would most likely be killed for risking the lives of the entire team. About three months in the expedition Sgt. Floyd died. Lewis wrote that anything he ate just came right back up and he was having horrible pains in his stomach. People believe that his appendix burst. During the expedition they came to a place were there were absolutely no trees at all. All you saw were grassy, rolling hills for miles. They had entered the Great Plains. The men had never seen anything like this before because they were so used to seeing tall tress due to the fact that they lived on the east coast. This is they met some Native American tribes. They were told to make peace with the tribes so they tried their best. The thing that seemed to work the best for them is, they would take out their cannons and their guns and show them how they worked. The Natives have never seen anything like this so they really liked it. The Natives promised them peace and their best protection. The expedition promised them back their peace as well and lots of money for helping them out. The worst tribe that they cam across was the Lakota tribe. They were the most known tribe for the wrong reasons. They would steal other people’s horses and money. They stole two horses from the expedition. The Natives have never seen a black man, so when they did, they thought that he was lucky. Sacagawea was a very important part to this trip because she was the one who helped them clime over the Rocky Mountains. As they were traveling down the river, they came to a fork. They deiced that they would take one way and hope that they would get lucky. Well the way that they deiced to go was the wrong way so they had to turn around and come back. Another big problem was the Missouri falls, which took months to get over. When they got to the Rocky Mountains they had to try and get horses from the local tribe. They got them and it took about 4 months to final get over the Rocky Mountains. When they finally reached the ocean they were as happy as they could be. Their next problem was to decide were to spend their next winter. They stayed on the south side of the Columbia River. When the crew got back they were treated like heroes. Everyone asked them questions and they were like gods.

Personal Thoughts

In my opinion this trip was probably the most important thing to ever happen to this country. Just think, if this expedition would have failed, we probably wouldn’t have known what was out there for a long time after that. These men were the first people to ever set foot in the west coast. I think that these men were the bravest men to ever live in America. They are also one of our countries heroes. The only thing that I was questioning was why they didn’t take the shortcut the natives had told them about. It would have mad a few months into a few days. This would have mad the whole expedition a lot quicker and probably would have raised they spirits of the men because they would have felt great to know that they just saved a few months time going around the whole place. I also think that Jefferson should have given them a few more men because they got very lucky that only one person died on the way and that they didn’t fail because of it. The Natives were also a lot friendlier then I thought they would be. I thought that they would have thought they were hostel people trying to kill them and would have fought back. Instead they listened to them and gave them many gifts and helped them a lot on their journey. I also thought that maybe they should have dealt with the Lakota tribe more because they stole two very important horses from them that they could have really used over the time. All in all I think that these men are the bravest men to come into America and I think that they also did one of the most important jobs anyone has ever done.