Lewis and Clark

The Lewis and Clark Expedition

Excerpt from
KANSAS: A Land of Contrasts
by Robert W. Richmond

Early in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson asked Congress for funds to send an exploring expedition from the Missouri River to the Pacific Northwest. When Congress approved, the president chose Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to lead the party. Four months later, on April 30, representatives of the United States and France completed arrangements for the sale of Louisiana to the U.S., but the American flag was not raised officially over New Orleans until December 20. Included in Jefferson's great real estate bargain was most of Kansas, leaving only that portion south of the Arkansas River and west of the 10th meridian in Spanish hands.

The Louisiana Territory was mostly unknown to Americans at the time of the purchase. The headwaters of the Mississippi had not been thoroughly explored and most of the Far West was a mystery. Furtraders had traveled up the Missouri into present North Dakota but most Americans were ignorant of what they had found. The fact that the United States had doubled its size for approximately fifteen million dollars did not impress some people. One Boston newspaper said that the territory was "a great waste, a wilderness unpeopled with any beings except wolves and wandering Indians."

Lewis and Clark, with forty-three men, left their camp near St. Louis on May 14, 1804, and on June 26 reached the junction of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. There they stayed for three days while they gathered information on the area, including facts about the Kansa Indians. They camped on the north bank of the Missouri on June 29 and the next night stopped on the Kansas side. By July 1 they were opposite the site of Leavenworth and on July 3 they stayed in present Atchison County.

To greet the Fourth of July the explorers fired a shot from the "swivel gun" (a small cannon) on their keelboat. During the day they named two creeks -- Fourth of July and Independence -- and had one member of the party bitten by a snake. Their camp that night was on the Missouri bank, opposite Doniphan, and they closed the day with another cannon shot and "an extra Gill [measure] of whiskey." On July 5, 7, and 9, their camps were on the Kansas side but shortly after that they moved beyond the borders of the state. Although the Kansas portion of the famous journey was brief, Lewis and Clark did gather considerable information about eastern Kansas and its inhabitants and they provided a map which, despite its inaccuracies, gave the federal government more data than it previously had.

Lewis and Clark in Kansas Commission web site