Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/617925
F all of 1804. Meriwether Lewis was halfway up the Missouri, St. Louis to Great Falls, though he could not name the Great Falls until he had seen them, yet many months away. In the middle of what someday would be North Dakota, Lewis put quill to paper. "The country we passed today was the same as yesterday, beautiful in the extreme." The expedition wintered over in Ft. Mandan, a cottonwood log stockade named for hospitable Indians along that stretch of the Big Muddy. Besides Captain Lewis, there was second in command Lieutenant William Clark, 55 men, a Shoshone girl, her Métis common-law husband, their newborn baby and Seaman, a Newfoundland dog. All but the baby and the dog were under commission from the President of the United States. Can you even imagine? In those days, it was as daring as a mission to Mars. Thomas Jefferson knew the longitude of St. Louis and also the numbers published by Spanish and English seafarers on the Pacific coast, some 1,800 miles to the west. But nobody knew what lay between. Few white men had been even halfway, and those who had, never lived long enough to tell the tale. There was some vague but forlorn hope there might be a clear passage to the riches of the Orient. But the riches they found were more precious than anybody could have predicted. "The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri River," Jefferson's handwritten order read, "& such principle stream of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado, or any other It was the greatest North American hunting trip ever, though the mens' survival was always in doubt. S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 7 2 o r i z o n s H Roger Pinckney