by Carol Mowdy Bond
Images are Public Domain
In August 1803, Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark led a U.S. exploration party westward across the northern areas of the Louisiana Purchase. They reached the navigable limits of the Missouri River in the Rocky Mountains. Their expedition crossed the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass in present-day Idaho, hoping it was the link between the waterways of the Missouri and Columbia rivers. Instead, they looked out and saw a series of Rocky Mountain ranges hundreds of miles wide and realized that a water passage across the northern United States probably did not exist.
On Horseback
The group maintained friendly relationships with the Shoshone tribe, who gave them horses and guides for their trek through the Rocky Mountains. On horseback, the party reached Lolo Pass and crossed the Bitterroot Range until they reached Nez Perce country in Idaho. They left their horses with the Nez Perce, resuming their travels in dugout canoes. Navigating three rivers, the expedition finally reached the Pacific Ocean by November 1805.
In March 1806, they retrieved their horses from the Nez Perce tribe and headed east on horseback as well as by water routes. After traveling 8,000-plus miles, their two-and-a-half-year journey ended in September 1806 in St. Louis, Missouri.
Results of the Big Road Trip
For the most part, Lewis and Clark maintained peaceful cooperation with Indigenous tribes they encountered, providing the first general survey of cultural life among them. In addition to adding important zoological and botanical findings and expanding geographic knowledge of the continent, they collected classified information about foreign powers in the region.
The Backdrop
With a May 1804 start date, the Lewis and Clark expedition was a result of President Thomas Jefferson’s April 1803 acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase — aka Louisiana — which gave the United States ownership of the Mississippi River basin and the port at New Orleans. The purchase doubled the size of the United States, which paid $15 million to France for 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River.
But the origins of Lewis and Clark’s expedition traced back two decades earlier, when Jefferson began planning transcontinental explorations. In his younger years, Jefferson engaged in multiple efforts to organize ventures into the West. Spurred by his scientific interests and curiosity about the West, Jefferson’s actions surrounded his plans for the young nation’s future and expansion to the Pacific. So partial mapping and information about Louisiana were already available to Lewis and Clark.
Another goal of Jefferson was to find the elusive Northwest Passage to shorten routes to Asia. For centuries, explorers sought the waterway across the North American continent that linked the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Jefferson also sought to broaden the American fur trade and open up commerce and settlement.
Spies and National Security
With international intrigue ablaze, ownership and maintenance of Louisiana had ping-ponged multiple times between Spain and France. The discombobulated situation was impacting American trade through the port at New Orleans. The situation intensified because England had designs on seizing Louisiana.
Jefferson was keenly aware of the ongoing Spanish and British attempts at securing the continent’s inner heartlands and passages. So spies and U.S. national security were big issues, especially since Louisiana’s ill-defined boundaries were bordered by Spain on the southwest. The British were pushing into Louisiana from the borders to the north, and their commercial interests were already reaching into Louisiana from Canada. But Indigenous nations were Louisiana’s primary inhabitants, and some posed their own challenges.
However, as part of his exploration efforts, Jefferson dispatched other explorers into Louisiana, besides Lewis and Clark, and they traveled through southern parts of the region. Among those were Zebulon Pike and James Wilkinson, sent in June 1806. A controversial figure who had sworn allegiance to Spain, Wilkinson had a history of treason.
At one point, the Pike-Wilkinson party split, and both groups traveled by water and horse. Wilkinson’s party traveled into present-day Oklahoma, as did other Louisiana explorers, while Pike’s group went another direction.
Was Pike a Spy?
Possibly acting as a U.S. spy, Pike may have been assessing Spanish strength along Louisiana’s southwestern border. Believing American explorers were scouting routes for future traders and settlers, Spanish officials launched expeditions from New Mexico in 1804, 1805 and 1806 to block their advance. But they did not intercept Lewis and Clark. However, in 1806, they caught and imprisoned Pike and his men and took them all the way into Mexico. As a result, Pike drew a map of New Spain and brought it back to the United States.
The Louisiana Purchase eventually gave rise to all or part of at least 13 states. Of those, Oklahoma was the last to reach statehood in 1907. Explorers such as Wilkinson and Pike traveled through lands that would become Oklahoma, laying early groundwork for settlement. Horses were essential to these journeys, just as they would later shape Oklahoma’s ranching and frontier heritage. The many expeditions provided a colorful backdrop of exploration intertwined with international intrigue, helping to shape the story of the American West and the formation of new states.
