The Corps of Discovery: Mapping Exercise

Name______Period ____

The Corps of Discovery: Mapping Exercise

Directions: Read through this packet carefully and make all marks in pencil (especially on the maps)! That way, if you make any mistakes they can be erased and fixed. Be neat, and take pride in your work!

This is a brief description of the highlights of Lewis and Clark’s journey. Your goal is to find these important points on your maps and trace their journey. You may have to flip between maps or use our modern resources—classroom maps, atlases, and the internet—to help. Along the way you will read excerpts from both Lewis and Clark’s actual journals and a historical non-fiction book, Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose. Are any of these sources primary? Which one? Why?

***______

In his book, Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose writes about the Corps of Discovery and their journey. Early on, Ambrose describes the reasons for the expedition. President Jefferson (the third president of the United States) wrote to Lewis: “The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river & such principal streams of it, as, by it’s course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregan, Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent for the purposes of commerce” (Ambrose, 94). In addition to these direct orders, Jefferson instructed Lewis to make maps, learn about the Indian nations he would encounter, and make scientific examinations of the country through which he traveled.

MAP ONE: Up the Missouri

1. Lewis, Clark, and the men who were engaged to go on the journey trained at Camp Wood, just north of St. Louis. On your map, find the area for Camp Wood. It is directly north of St. Louis, on the Illinois side of the river. Make a dot here, write the words “Camp Wood,” and sketch a tent as a symbol.

2. Using other maps of the US, find the Kansas River. As the Corps of Discovery traveled up the Missouri River, they encountered the Kansas River. Write in the name of the Kansas River. Clark measured the mouth of the water here and noted that “the waters of the Kansas is verry disigreeably tasted to me” (Ambrose, 147).

3. As the men traveled farther up the Missouri River, they met no other white people. North of the Kansas River, they found the Platte River. The Platte River is 600 miles and sixty-eight days up river from the beginning of Lewis and Clark’s journey. Again, using US maps, find the Platte River and label it “Platte River.”

4. Approximately halfway between the Platte River junction and the Little Sioux River was Council Bluff, the Corps of Discovery’s first meeting with Indians (the Oto and Missouri tribes). Draw a sketch of a peace medal here and write “Council Bluff.” This is the spot where Lewis delivered his half-hour long speech to the Indians about President Jefferson. Stephen Ambrose described it this way (ANNOTATE THE FOLLOWING EXCERPT):

Lewis then stood to deliver his speech. It was some twenty-five hundred words, so it took him at least half an hour to deliver it, and the translator at least as long to put it into the Oto language. How accurately it was being translated, Lewis of course had no way to judge. Nor could he tell how much of what he was saying the Indians could understand, or how much of what they understood they accepted.

Lewis opened by advising the warriors to be wise and look to the true interests of their people. “Children,” he continued, as Clark recorded his speech, “we have been sent by the great Chief of the Seventeen great nations of America to inform you… that a great council was lately held between this great chief and your old fathers the French and the Spaniards.” There it was decided that the Missouri River country now belonged to the United States, so that all those who lived in that country, whether white or red, “are bound to obey the commands of their great Chief the President who is now your only great father.”

“Children,” Lewis went on, the president was now “your only father, he is the only friend to whom you can now look for protection, or from whom you can ask favours, or receive good counciles, and he will take care to serve you, & not deceive you.”

After giving out the good news about this wonderful new father the Otos had suddenly acquired, Lewis tried to explain the purposes of the expedition. No easy task, since the only white men the Plains Indians had ever seen were traders, whose purpose was obviously to do business. The expedition had more goods than any trader any Indian of the Plains had ever seen—yet the captains did not wish to trade. What on earth were they going to do with all those goods? The Indians had to wonder.

“Children,” Lewis explained, the great chief “has sent us out to clear the road, remove every obstruction, and to make it the road of peace between himself and his red children residing there, to enquire into the Nature of their wants.” When the expedition returned home, Lewis would tell the president what the Otos wanted, and the president would see those wants were satisfied.

“Lewis and Clark were advance men and traveling salesman, in short, representing American business and the American people, whose numbers and skills were all but unlimited. In the seventeen great nations of America, Lewis declared, “cities are as numerous as the stars of the heavens.”

What the Americans were doing, Lewis went on, was untainted by any base or self-serving motive. The great chief “has commanded us his war chiefs to undertake this long journey, which we have so far accomplished with great labour and much expence, in order to council with yourselves and his other red-children on the troubled waters, to five you his good advice; to point out to you the road in which you must walk to obtain happiness.”

As a good father, the president told his children how to behave. They should not block or obstruct in any way the passage of any boat carrying white men, ever. They should make peace with all their neighbors.

Now came the threats. Lewis told the Otos that they must avoid the council of bad men “lest by one false step you should bring upon your nation the displeasure of your great father, who could consume you as the fire consumes the grass of the plains.” The Great Father, “if you displease him,” would stop all traders from coming up the river.

Do as we say, in other words, or no white man will come to you again, ever. That was an extreme threat, strange as it sounds to modern ears. Without contact with European trade goods, the Otos would suffer a severe setback in their living conditions and would be seriously vulnerable to their neighbors who had access to guns and powder.

That was a flat ending. How Lewis’ first oratorical experience went over with his audience cannot be said, although Private Gass recorded in his journal that the announcement about a new father was “well received.” Clark claimed “Those people express great Satisfaction at the Speech Delivered,” but he also noted that Lewis’s speech consisted primarily of “Some advice to them and Directions how They were to Conduct themselves” words that would have served well as the title for the speech.

When Lewis concluded, the captains distributed presents. They weren’t much. Each chief received a breech clout, a bit of paint, and a small medal with the new father’s likeness on it or a comb (Ambrose, 156-7).

5. Just the North of the Little Sioux River junction, Sergeant Floyd died of appendicitis. Find the proper spot on your map by measuring 1 cm from the Platte River junction. Floyd was buried here, alongside the river. Draw a symbol for the death of Sergeant Floyd. In his journal, Lewis said of Floyd: “…Died with a great deal of Composure, but before his death, he Said to me, ‘I am going away’… We buried him on top of a bluff” (Lewis, 32).

6. Fort Mandan is at the Knife River junction on the east side of the Missouri. The Corps of Discovery spent the winter from 1804-1805 here. Draw a dot at the fort and a snowflake to represent the winter.

7. The Hidatsas Indians told Lewis about the Yellowstone River. Using other US maps, write in the “Yellowstone River.” Draw either furs or a trading post at the junction of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers as a symbol of the Yellowstone’s importance. The Hidatsas said that the Yellowstone “waters one of the fairest portions of Louisiana, a country not yet hunted, and abounding in animals of the fur kind” (Ambrose, 208). Since the Hidatsas had also told Lewis that the Yellowstone was navigable, Lewis recommended that the government build a trading post here. He wrote that it would “afford to our citizens the benefit of a most lucrative fur trade [and] might be made to hold in check the views of the British N. West Company” (Ambrose, 208).

***YOU SHOULD NOW SWITCH TO MAP TWO: Headwaters of the Missouri-Columbia River and Pacific Ocean

8. Ambrose speculates that during the journey from the Mandan Villages to the Great Falls, Lewis was “entering a heart of darkness. Deserts, mountains, great cataracts, warlike Indian tribes—he could not imagine them, because no American had ever seen them. But far from causing apprehension or depression, the prospect brought out his fullest talents. He knew that from now on, until he reached the Pacific and returned, he would be making history” (216). Lewis also understood that the lack of trees on the Plains did not mean, as many other men of his time believed, that the Plains were unsuitable for agriculture. “No trees could get started because the Indians burned the prairie each spring. The soil was fertile as evidenced by the grass. This was really paradise for creatures such as deer, elk, buffalo, sheep, pronghorns, and other grass-eating animals and for the beaver who lived off the bark of the cottonwood trees, and of the coyote, fox, wolves, and bears who lived off the hoofed animals, and for the human hunters who declared war on the predators and lived off their prey” (Ambrose, 216). In the space between the Yellowstone River and the Missouri River (north of the Yellowstone, south of the Missouri), shade the area with light green, to represent the grass. Sketch in a western animal or two, as well.

9. Lewis calculated from the Hidatsas description that the Great Falls of the Missouri would be about 270 miles from the mouth of the Yellowstone River. Before arriving at the falls, Lewis and Clark met other rivers and determined not to follow them. Just below (about 15 miles) the Medicine River, they found the Great Falls. Here is how Lewis described it: “I had proceeded on this course about two miles… whin my ears were saluted with the agreeable sound of a fall of water and advancing a little further I saw the spray arrise about the plain like a collumn of smoke… it soon began to make a roaring too tremendious to be mistaken for any cause short of the great falls if the Missouri.” As Ambrose reports, he arrived there at noon and hurried down some bluffs to gaze at the falls. “To gaze on this sublimely grade spectacle… the grandest sight I ever beheld” (Ambrose, 236-7). Lewis soon discovered that the Great Falls contained five separate falls, covering a total of 12 miles. Write in Great Falls just to the east of the Medicine River junction with the Missouri (look for two small parallel lines). The men portaged around the falls here. During the portage, the men faced numerous hardships. Finally, after over a month of portaging, the Corps was ready to get on the water again. In the space below the falls, sketch a symbol of your choice to represent the Corps’ hardships.

10. Then the Corps miraculously discovered Cameahwait, Sacagawea’s brother and his Shoshone village. Write “Shoshone Village” on the dot your map just beyond the Lemhi Pass (just west of Camp Fortunate).

11. Ambrose writes that the Bitterroot Mountains part of the journey was more complicated and dangerous than most of what had come before. “The country is so remote and so rugged that nearly two full centuries later it remains basically uninhabited. The confusion of creeks and ravines cutting through the steep mountainsides has made the route the expedition used one of the most disputed of the entire journey. One expert, Harry Majors, calls the route, ‘the single most obscure and enigmatic of the entire Lewis and Clark expedition’” (Ambrose, 284). Sketch mountains in the area labeled Bitterroot Mountains.

12. The river that begins at the square on the map near Weippe Prairie and flows from south of Camp Chopunnish is the Clearwater River. Write in its name. The Nez Perce Indians here were friendly because, as Clark noted, “the wife of Shabono our interpretr [Sacagawea] we find reconciles all the Indians, as to our friendly intentions, a woman with a part of men is a token of peace” (Ambrose, 298). Draw a peace symbol here.

13. The box at the mouth of the Clearwater River represents Camp Canoe. Twisted Hair, a Nez Perce chief, showed the men how to make canoes, and here the men cut down Ponderosa pines to make them. Write “Camp Canoe” next to the box and draw a canoe here to symbolize the camp.

14. On October 16, the Corps reached the junction with the Columbia River (already labeled on your map). Ambrose notes that, “the men were astonished at the numbers of salmon in the river, mostly dying after spawn and therefore inedible. The water was so clear that, no matter how deep the river, the bottom was plainly visible” (Ambrose, 299). Sketch a fish just below the river.

15. The Corps made good time on the Columbia River and soon reached the rapids and falls that Lewis had predicated they would see as the river descended from the Rockies to the Pacific. On October 23rd, the reached Celilo Falls. The river dropped 38 feet through several narrow channels and ran between high cliffs. The captains hired Indians to help with the portage around the falls. Along the banks, they traded successfully with another group of Indians. Clark discovered that the Indians had helpful ideas. He traded the small canoe for one that Chinook Indians had made. He wrote, “these canoes are neeter made than any I have ever seen and Calculated to the waves, and carry emence burthens” (Ambrose, 300). The Celilo Falls are just past where the Deschutes River intersects the Columbia. Write the name of the falls and sketch a small waterfall.

16. Sketch mountains in the Cascade Range and Blue Mountains areas. The captains did not like this area as much as the one they had come from. According to Ambrose, “the banks were covered with fir, spruce, ash, and alder, contrasting sharply with the treeless semi-desert country upstream. Fog was frequent and often thick; many days the party could not set out until afternoon” (Ambrose, 303).

17. “Ocian in view! O! The joy!” (Ambrose, 305). Actually, they were not quite at the ocean, but at Point Ellice, where they saw the Columbian estuary. Next to Point Ellice on the map, write JOY.

18. On the opposite side of the bay, the Corps of Discovery established Fort Clatsop, but not before taking a vote. Write in Fort Clatsop to the left of the box just above Salt Camp. They were currently staying elsewhere, but had to decide where to spend the winter. They needed to have access to water, game, and shelter. They could stay where they were, move across the bay, or move back up towards the falls. Everyone, including York and Sacagawea, voted. Ambrose notes that this was the first vote ever held in the Pacific Northwest, and more significantly, it was “the first time in American history that a black slave voted, the first time a woman had voted” (Ambrose, 311). Next to the label for Fort Clatsop, draw a ballot box.

Congratulations—you have made it through Lewis and Clark’s journey to the Pacific! Go back through his packet, check your maps, and make sure all your marks and words are clear and readable. Go over your drawings in dark ink and add color wherever necessary. Again, be neat, and take pride in your work!

1