Keywords

Lewis and Clark Expedition, William Clark, Meriwether Lewis, science in the American West

Abstract

WHEN MERIWETHER LEWIS and William Clark returned to St. Louis in 1806, they had just completed a difficult and dangerous two-and-a-half-year journey through the West. Citizens of St. Louis hailed them as heroes, celebrating the captains as courageous explorers, expert frontiersmen, and skilled military leaders. But when Lewis and Clark embarked on their journey in 1804 to explore the Missouri and Columbia rivers and find a viable waterway to the Pacific, plus examine the possibilities for a potentially lucrative fur trade, they carried another important commission from President Thomas Jefferson: to describe in detail the natural world through which they passed and the native people who inhabited it.

Original Publication Citation

Buckley, Jay H., and Julie A. Harris. “Scientific Explorers: A Review of Literature on Lewis and Clark’s Ethnography, Botany, and Zoology.” Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History 20, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 34-41.

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

2006

Publisher

Columbia The Magazine of Northwest History

Language

English

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

History

University Standing at Time of Publication

Assistant Professor

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