by
KRISTEN LOKEMOEN
"I think
this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of
human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at
the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas
Jefferson dined alone." John Fitzgerald Kennedy spoke those
words as he toasted a gathering of Nobel Prize laureates on
April 29, 1962.
The genius of Thomas Jefferson was that he was always
curious, always expanding his knowledge, always ahead of
his time. However, he seldom dined alone. Sharing
Jefferson's table during his first years in the White House
was his private secretary, a 24-year-old fellow Virginian
named Meriwether Lewis.
A passion for the west and a vision of a United States that
stretched from one ocean to another had inspired Jefferson
to try to mount expeditions in the past. Those attempts had
failed, but now Jefferson was president. Lewis shared in
Jefferson's zeal for exploration. He had been west (which
then was still east of the Mississippi River), fighting in
the Indian wars. Lewis loved to ramble and was delighted
when in 1802 Jefferson chose him to lead an expedition to
the Pacific Ocean.
For a partner in this enterprise, Lewis looked west to a
man who had been his captain in the army. William Clark was
also Virginia-born and the brother of General George Rogers
Clark. While Lewis and Clark had not served together long,
they had come to respect each other, and Clark happily
accepted Lewis' invitation to join him on the trip.
Through the summer of 1803, Lewis gathered supplies-rifles,
provisions, medicines, gifts for the Indians they would
encounter, instruments to chart their progress, barrels of
whiskey to reward the men after a hard day's work. The
munificent sum of $2,500 had been appropriated by Congress
to fund the expedition. Lewis would later be given the
equivalent of a blank check for additional expenses.
The young captain also oversaw the building of the
keelboat, a 55-foot craft that would be sailed, towed,
pushed and pulled up the Missouri as far as Fort Mandan.
After many delays, the boat was finally completed on August
31, 1803. Within hours, Lewis and his initial crew were
headed down the Ohio River in the keelboat and a pirogue, a
large flat-bottomed rowboat.
The boats eventually landed on the eastern side of the
Mississippi, across from St. Louis, and Clark waited for
Lewis to join them. The Spanish, who still controlled St.
Louis and all of Louisiana, had refused the crew permission
to winter in Missouri, so Clark took the men upriver
another 18 miles. By Wood River, on a point of land across
from the mouth of the Missouri, Lewis and Clark established
what became known as Camp Wood or Camp Dubois. There the
men would spend the winter that would form them into the
Corps of Discovery.
Kristen
Lokemen is a staff writer and travel specialist for Show-Me
Missouri. She assisted in conducting several tours of the
Lewis and Clark Trail from Missouri to the Oregon
coast.