On September 23, 1806, members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition stepped out of their boats on the Saint Louis riverbank. Their long voyage of discovery was over and the comforts of home and prepared meals awaited them.
The date of their arrival is confirmed by a letter that the wealthy Saint Louis resident John Mullanphy wrote that day. His short, excited note was rushed across the Mississippi River to catch the mail rider, going east:
Concerning the safe arrival of Messrs. Lewis and Clark, who went 2 years and 4 months ago to explore the Missouri, to be anxiously wished for by every one, I have the pleasure to mention, that they arrived here about one hour ago, in good health, with the loss of one man who died. They visited the Pacific Ocean, which they left on the 27th of March last. They would have been here about the 1st of August, but for the detention they met with from the snow and frost in crossing mountains on which are eternal snows. Their journal will no doubt be not only importantly interesting to us all, but a fortune for the worthy and laudable adventurers. When they arrive, 3 cheers were fired. They really have the appearance of Robinson Crusoes, dressed entirely in buckskins. We shall know all very soon, I have no particulars yet.1
Mullanphy's hearty letter, with its air of praise, congratulation, and wonderment, was published in The Palladium, a Frankfort, Kentucky, newspaper, on October 4, 1806.
The small, muddy Saint Louis village the Corps of Discovery had passed twenty-eight months earlier had changed greatly during their absence, as new Anglo-American residents arrived, intent on making fortunes for themselves. By 1806, the prime topic of conversation involved property rights. When Lewis and Clark had first arrived in Saint Louis, almost three years earlier, the inhabitants were fearful that their property would be lost in the changeover of governments as English land law replaced that of the French and Spanish. And their fears proved partially correct—President Jefferson and his treasury secretary appointed a board of commissioners to hear land claims and to decide upon them. The territory was split in two between those who could afford to live without land and those who survived off their land. Rufus Easton, a territorial judge, believed that the land record books kept under the Spanish regime were in disarray and asked Captains Lewis and Clark to evaluate them. They agreed with Easton that the old books contained “innumerable erasures and forgeries.”2
Territorial property rights did not prevent the explorers from relaxation or attending celebrations, and for the three weeks that they were in Saint Louis they discharged expedition members, sold surplus equipment, and hired several persons to accompany delegations from the Mandan Nation and the Osage Nation to Washington. President Thomas Jefferson anticipated major changes in the fur trade, which would result in jobs and opportunities for industrious young men. At the Cantonment Bellefontaine factory, located eighteen miles north of Saint Louis, the assistant factor George Sibley wrote an enthusiastic letter regarding his expectations.3
Perhaps nothing of so great importance has ever happened (as respects the Commercial interests of the United States, & particularly the Western Country) as these discoveries. It would be useless for me now to enter minutely into the subject, the limits of a letter would not allow it. Suffice it to say that in a few years the most Rich & Luxurious field for Young men of spirit and enterprise will be opened. Then we shall see floating down the Missouri, valuable cargoes of merchandise: I need Say no more, this bare hint will be sufficient for you to build on for weeks & months. I cannot predict what effect these things will have on my fortunes, tho’ certain it is they will have a material one. It has been hinted by Captain Lewis, who it is supposed will have the management of our Indian Affairs…that several trading houses will be established by Govt pretty high up this river & the Mississippi, next Spring.4
Lewis and Clark departed Saint Louis on October 21, 1806, and proceeded east with Clark's slave York, Sgt. John Ordway, interpreter François Labiche, Osage Indian Agent Pierre Chouteau, and the Mandan and Osage delegations.5 Prominent among them was the Mandan chief, Sheheke-shote (or Big White) who invited Lewis and Clark to build a fort in the Mandan country during the winter of 1804–1805. This part of the trip must have been exhilarating for the persons traveling with the explorers. The pinnacle of western exploration lay with just two men amid a select group headed to Washington, and for the next three weeks, what kinds of incredible stories did they tell? Did anyone have the sense to write and capture those experiences on paper? Part of the entourage was going home, the others were traveling to the seat of the American government to share in the festivities. Pierre Chouteau thought the trip to Washington, DC, would take about forty days, based on his previous escort of an Indian delegation to the capitol.6
In 1806, there was only one land route that headed east, which was a post road. Most traveling was still accomplished by boat, but the Lewis and Clark entourage traveled by land, probably due to the cost but possibly so that Clark could be reunited with his family before proceeding on to Washington. The group arrived about November 10 at Louisville, Kentucky, and three days later at Frankfort.7 The entourage split at this point: Lewis and the Mandans headed south, Clark and York went to Fincastle, Virginia, to visit the Hancock family, and Chouteau, leading the Osage delegation, continued east.8
The Chouteau party stopped at Lexington, Kentucky, on November 16, and Chouteau wrote that he and the Osage would proceed by way of Pittsburgh.9 On December 7, when Chouteau arrived there, snow had already fallen, and he wrote that they “will have to proceed to Washington in sleighs.”10
Lewis took a detour that has escaped the history books until now. He added a trip that delayed his arrival at Charlottesville by traveling to the Cumberland Gap. President Jefferson was unaware of the trip. He had written to Reuben Lewis, Meriwether Lewis's brother, on November 2 “informing him he might hourly expect his brother” at Charlottesville.11 Instead, Lewis took the route from Frankfort to Harrodsburg, where he met with the Wilderness Road, then to Danville, which took him south through Barbourville, Kentucky, and then to the Cumberland Gap.12 Lewis arrived there about November 20, 1806, but it is not known if it was to complete a duty, an errand, or to enjoy a leisurely activity.13
It is known, however, that Capt. Lewis was to conduct an interesting business while in the vicinity: surveying the Cumberland Gap to settle a border dispute between Kentucky and Tennessee. In a letter written in 1810, local resident Arthur Campbell detailed Lewis's activities for the benefit of Governor Charles Scott of Kentucky:
[C]aptain M. Lewis returned from his travels to the Pacific Ocean, that he halted two days near this place (Cumberland Gap, Knox County), on one of which he was requested to make celestial observations, with his astronomical instruments, in order to find the true latitude of the Virginia, or as it is commonly called Walker's line, run in 1779. The captain with his usual complaisance acceded to the request, and made the usual observations and calculations, by which it appeared, that the line run in 1779 was several miles too far north.14
What led Lewis to perform such a task or how it evolved is a mystery, but perhaps he was just being agreeable: “The captain with his usual complaisance acceded to the request.” Or, since he was quite familiar with using a sextant to take astronomical readings, he believed that he could be of service.15 The story takes an interesting and detailed turn.16
The Cumberland Gap is situated at a point where the states of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee come together, and it was the only way then to traverse that portion of the Appalachian Mountains. In July 1749, the council of the province of Virginia authorized Dr. Thomas Walker to survey 800,000 acres along the southern border of Virginia, now southeastern Kentucky. During his survey he encountered an area that he called Cave Gap, a notch about 1,000 feet deep into Cumberland Mountain, which game animals, particularly bison and deer, used as a means of traveling through the Appalachian Mountains.17 Native Americans followed this game trail, too, as they moved from one hunting area to another.
In 1779, Dr. Walker accepted a commission on behalf of Virginia to run the state line between Virginia and North Carolina west through the Cumberland Gap and, ultimately, to the Mississippi River. Walker never physically surveyed that far, stopping at the Tennessee River at the 36° 40’ parallel of latitude instead of the agreed location for the dividing line at 36° 30’, which was more than twelve miles north of the true latitude line.
Kentucky became a state in 1792 when Virginia ceded its western lands to the federal government. In the intervening years between 1779 and 1792, several legislative acts passed by Virginia and North Carolina accepted Walker's survey line, but after Tennessee, which had been created from the western lands ceded by North Carolina in 1790, became a state in 1796, controversies arose. Kentucky and Tennessee passed legislation concerning the shared border in 1801 and 1803, but no real agreement was reached on the placement of the boundary line.
A week before Lewis arrived at the Cumberland Gap in 1806, he made sure that his instruments were working correctly:
Captain Lewis in a conversation further mentioned, that he had taken the latitude of the junction of the Ohio with the Mississippi, with the same instruments and on the same spot Mr. Ellicott took the latitude, with his much approved Zenith Sector, and on calculation he found their observations to agree.18
When Lewis arrived at the Cumberland Gap, he was invited by Col. Arthur Campbell to ascertain Walker's survey line, the dividing line between Kentucky and Tennessee, which was thought to be in an incorrect location. Over the course of a few days, Lewis assessed Walker's line and then issued a survey certificate and made a report.
This day in compliance with the request of certain gentlemen, I undertook to settle the latitude of a line usually denominated Walker's line, formerly dividing the states of Virginia and North Carolina. The position selected for this observation was near the habitation of a Mr. E. Walling, two hundred yards south of said line, and about two miles distant from Cumberland Gap. The instruments used in this observation were a Sextant on the most approved plan, with a reversing Telescope for an eye piece [sic], and a good micrometer, and artificial horizon, in which water was used as the reflecting surface. With these instruments, I took the meridian altitude of the sun's lower limb, and calculated the latitude; from which it appeared that the place of observation was in North latitude 36° 38’ 12 1–10; if, therefore, the charters of the states of North Carolina and Virginia call for a parallel of latitude at 36° 30’ N. as a boundary between them, the line of Walker is nine miles and 1,077 yards North of its proper position…. This statement, I have given to Colonel Arthur Campbell, at his request, to be presented to the public view, in any manner he may think proper.19
Lewis's role when taking astronomical readings on the western expedition of 1804–1806 was complex, but he tackled the Cumberland Gap project in record time. Lewis departed the area and arrived home in Charlottesville, still accompanied by the Mandan delegation, on December 13. On December 22, after making the rounds with his family, he sent a bill to Secretary of War Henry Dearborn for $52, describing the expense as a “charge of certain Mandan Indians & for other public purposes.”20 His cousin James Gilmer kindly put up the money and Lewis gave him a receipt. After spending Christmas Day with his family, he set off for Washington and arrived late in the evening of December 28, where he found a warm welcome at the presidential mansion. Chouteau and his delegation had arrived at the capital on December 20.21
On December 30, Lewis met with an old friend, New York congressman Samuel Mitchill, who had invited Lewis to dine with him at his Washington lodgings. The physician, scientist, and professor of chemistry admired Lewis's astronomical and other scientific attainments and he admitted, years later, that he looked upon Lewis “as a man returned from another planet.” On that day also, President Jefferson welcomed the Mandan delegation to Washington, saying, “I take you by the hand of friendship,” and then reading a three-page speech that paid tribute to Lewis: “I therefore sent our beloved man, Captain Lewis, one of my own family, to go up the Missouri river, to get acquainted with all of the Indian nations in its neighborhood.” The following day, Jefferson gave an address to the Osage, welcoming them “to the seat of Government,” and praising them for taking the journey, which was “long and fatiguing…to become acquainted with your new brothers of this country.”22
On New Year's Day, the citizens of the capital traditionally came to pay their respects to the president, but this was a special occasion and they came to catch a glimpse of the colorfully dressed Indian delegations. Mitchill paid his compliments to Mr. Jefferson at the president's house on the Palatine Hills:
While I was looking round and meditating what to do with myself, the Miss Johnsons…expressed a desire to be escorted to the side of the room where the newly arrived Indians were. I at once became their pioneer and showed them the King and Queen of the Mandanes, who with a child of theirs, have come from a journey of about 1600 miles down the Missouri to see their great Father the President. His majests were gaily dressed in a regimental coat, &c, but his Consort was wrapped in a blanket, and had not the smallest ornament about her. She resembled exceedingly one of our Long Island squaws. There was also another Mandane woman there, who was wife to a Canadian White man, that acted as interpreter. She had two children with her. We also looked at the five Osages and the one Delaware warriors….23
A testimonial banquet in Washington, DC, had been delayed until William Clark's arrival, but finally was held in his absence on January 14, 1807, and attended by the citizens of Washington, several officers of the government, members of Congress, and strangers of distinction including Pierre Chouteau, the French translator Pierre Provenchere, the Mandan chief Sheheke-shote, and his personal interpreter Rene Jusseaume.24 The newspaper The Sun faithfully reported the event:
Capt. Lewis was received with the liveliest demonstrations of regard. Every one present seemed to be deeply impressed with a sentiment of gratitude, mingled with an elevation of mind, on setting down, at the festive board, with this favorite of fortune, who has thus successfully surmounted the numerous and imminent perils of a tour of nearly four years, through regions previously unexplored by civilized man. After partaking of the gratifications of a well spread table, the following toasts were drank, interspersed with appropriate songs and instrumental music.25
In the early part of the entertainment, poet Joel Barlow presented “elegant and glowing stanzas” on the discoveries of Capt. Lewis, which were recited by John Beckley. Throughout the evening, many toasts were offered up on a variety of topics: the people; the Constitution; the president of the United States; Congress; Washington; Franklin; Columbus; the United States; the red people of America; the council fire; science; union; peace; the militia; the army and navy; agriculture, commerce, and manufacture; and the District of Columbia. The descriptions on these topics were well-explained. Science “animated by the enterprize of the American mind, has made the desert to blossom and the wilderness to smile.” And regarding agriculture, commerce, and manufacture, “their interests, like those of the independent sovereignties they enrich and unite, are one and indivisible.”26
After seventeen toasts on national topics, one was given on “Lewis's retiring.”
Capt. Meriwether Lewis—Patriotic, enlightened, and brave; who had the spirit to undertake, and the valour to execute an expedition, which reflects honor on his country. Capt. Clark, and the other brave companions of Capt. Lewis—Their patriotic and manly perseverance entitles them to the approbation of their countrymen. The memories of captains Cook, Bourganville, and other cicumnavigators, whose perilous enterprises and indefatigable labours have so much enriched the world in the science of geography.27
The evening “proceeded on,” and toasts were expressed by Capt. Lewis, Joel Barlow, Gen. Jonathan Mason, Robert Fulton, Thomas Mann Randolph Jr., George Clinton, and an anonymous person.28
The next morning, Capt. Lewis addressed Congress regarding the compensation due to the members of the expedition. At the opening of Congress, Jefferson briefly detailed the journey of the Corps of Discovery. He recommended additional compensation to show “that Messrs. Lewis and Clarke, and their brave companions, have, by this arduous service, deserved well of their country.”29
Lewis promptly delivered a roster of the men, which included their ranks and his remarks on their respective merits and services. Secretary of War Henry Dearborn transmitted the list of the officers, noncommissioned officers, and privates who formed the party to Congress. He believed that the expedition met “with a degree of boldness, perseverance, and judgment, and success, that has rarely, if ever, occurred, in this or any other country.” Dearborn recommended that each of the men receive double pay and a grant of 320 acres, which they could locate on any surveyed land now for sale in the United States. Lewis received 1,500 acres, and Clark 1,000 acres, which did not set well with Lewis, who felt strongly “that no distinction of rank so noticed as to make a difference in the quantity of land granted to each,” and that there should be “an equal division” of the quantity granted.30
Weeks passed as Congress deliberated on the various types of compensation. Finally, on February 20, 1807, the House resumed its discussion regarding double pay for all expedition members, but Rep. Matthew Lyon believed that double pay amounted to more than $60,000, and coupled with the land grant, compensation could exceed that sum three or four times. He believed that the companions of Lewis and Clark “might go over all the Western country and locate their warrants on the best land, in 160 acre lots.”31 On February 28 the House deliberated late into the evening before passing legislation bestowing double pay on members of the expedition and a grant of 320 acres each in the Territory of Louisiana at the rate of two dollars an acre.32 Lewis and Clark received 1,600 acres each. The Senate passed the bill on March 3.33
In addition to a worthy compensation package for the band of explorers, Jefferson had been grappling with the myriad complexities of a new territory and finding a suitable and trustworthy candidate to administer it.34 Jefferson and his cabinet saw a potential solution to their dilemma in the appointment of Lewis as governor of the Louisiana Territory. They believed Lewis's return to Saint Louis would restore confidence in the US government and its intentions in the new territory. On February 28, 1807, President Jefferson issued an order nominating Lewis as governor of the Louisiana Territory, which the US Senate confirmed two days later.
Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin recognized that Lewis would be busy for several months settling expedition accounts and submitting his final report in Washington, then traveling to Philadelphia to arrange for the publication of the journals. He urged Jefferson to appoint a secretary of the Louisiana Territory who would govern in the interim. Jefferson appointed Frederick Bates to the post, a man who already was familiar with territorial politics, land claims, post roads, and business affairs from his residence in the Northwest Territory at Detroit.35
Lewis remained in Washington completing his obligations. He had to commit all of his expedition expenditures to paper, and the treasury accountant at the War Department, William Simmons, had a reputation for being manic in the pursuit of details. The expenditures were complex, and it took time to locate and tabulate the innumerable ledger items. The total cost had risen to $38,000, a ten-fold increase from his original estimate of $2,500 in early 1803.36 A final accounting could not be made because receipts had still not arrived, some vouchers had not come in for payment, and others had not been credited. That time-consuming paperwork delayed other pressing matters, like his detailed treatise on Indian trade relations, which affirms that Lewis was in control of his faculties.37
Lewis finally departed for Philadelphia the first week of April. Historians have wondered why he took so long to leave the capital, but new information shows that Lewis was sick with malaria. President Jefferson had written to Charles Willson Peale on March 29 and informed him that he was leaving for Monticello within a week and that “Capt. Lewis will set out about the same time for Philadelphia.”38 Lewis hurried under an already impossible deadline and was burdened by the responsibilities of his troubled official post as governor. Lewis intended to distribute the specimens he had collected throughout the expedition to those who could help him evaluate them and arrange for expert assistance in compiling a narrative dealing with the natural history of the expedition. In addition to that challenge, he had just a few months to compose a narrative of the great adventure, for he realized that at least two of the enlisted men who had made the trip had kept journals of their own and were interested in publishing them. In Saint Louis, after the return of the expedition, Lewis had given Pvt. Robert Frazer permission to publish his private journal. Now Sgt. Patrick Gass was planning to publish his scribbled notes as well, beating the “official” version of the expedition to bookshops across the country and becoming the first detailed glimpse into the hardships, adventures, and accomplishments of the trek.
Lewis intended to do more than merely publish the raw field journals. He intended to produce a synthesis of the journals coupled with precise descriptions of the natural history specimens that he had collected, giving a comprehensive description rather than a mere day-to-day account of adventures like Gass's and Frazer's publications promised to do. Lewis asked Alexander Wilson, the celebrated ornithologist, to make some drawings of the bird specimens that were brought back from the expedition. “It was the request and particular wish of Captain Lewis, made to me in person, that I should make some drawings of such of the feathered tribes as had been preserved, and were new.”39
Lewis outlined his intentions with printer John Conrad. From what must have been a rudimentary description, Conrad worked out an estimate of the cost at the beginning of April 1807 at $4,500, and he developed a revised proof of the prospectus.40 The prospectus described a narrative of the voyage in the first volume, with a second volume devoted to geography, Indians, and the fur trade embellished with a number of plates. A third volume would be confined exclusively to scientific research, principally in natural history, under the heads of “Botany, Mineralogy, and Zoology…including a comparative view of twenty-three vocabularies of distinct Indian languages,” and of course, the great map of North America.41
The prospectus was published in the Philadelphia Aurora on June 16, 1807.42 The following morning, Lewis and his friend Mahlon Dickerson accompanied a party to Peale's museum to see a stuffed monkey and other exhibits.43 During the time that Lewis spent in Philadelphia, Dickerson's record paid close attention to the ladies they visited. During a hot June and July, Dickerson and Lewis visited a number of homes that may have sheltered eligible daughters. The young women might have been impressed by Lewis's southern manners, but parents may have observed that his future lay in a frontier French town of uncertain respectability. Additionally, a governor's lady would be, in the view of jaded upper-class Philadelphians, meeting rustic strangers, dirty linen Frenchmen, Spanish scoundrels, and even Indians.
Lewis returned to his family home in Albemarle County on November 3, 1807, and wrote Dickerson to arrange for the education of his half-brother John Marks. Lewis then talked of romance, noting that “his little affair” with Anne Randolph was short, perhaps due to the fact that she was “previously engaged.”44 The references that Lewis made about his disappointed overtures did not entirely mask shyness—Lewis may have met the 16-year-old Letitia Breckenridge or her younger sister Elizabeth—and in the November letter to Dickerson, Lewis revealed that his heart remained in Philadelphia.45
At the end of November 1807, as he returned to Saint Louis to assume his duties, Governor Lewis's entourage included his brother Reuben and John Pernier, the free mulatto valet whom Thomas Jefferson sent along to look after Lewis.46 There were wagoners and horse handlers to deal with who hauled the governor's papers, the wardrobes of the two young gentlemen, and household furnishings necessary to make life bearable in Saint Louis. Lewis carried with him the heavy documents of the exploration of western America, which was a constant reminder of what he needed to complete for the publisher. Would he have any time to complete the journals in addition to governing the most challenging territory of the United States?
The slow-moving wagon gave the brothers time for conversation and to check on the lands that belonged to their mother and their half-brother John Marks, which appeared to be secure. But Lewis's holding on Brush Creek in the Ohio Military Reserve, a land grant descended from his father's service, was in doubt, and Lewis was resigned to losing the greater part of it. When they reached Lexington, Kentucky, on January 14, 1808, the citizens gave Lewis a huge party “in testimony of their regard and respect for him.”47 By mid-February they arrived in Louisville to find that William Clark had been there as late as the third of the month. They had failed to intercept him on the road as he traveled east to his wedding.
Lewis found an opportunity to write to their mother while Reuben set out in a flat-bottomed boat with the baggage and carriage, accompanied by Maj. Hughes, Mr. Cox, and Pernier. After descending the Ohio for 320 miles, they disembarked on the west side of the Mississippi River and covered the next 165 miles by land. Lewis expected to leave the next day, traveling overland by way of Vincennes (Indiana) and Cahokia (Illinois). After a dizzying year of business, he arrived in Saint Louis to begin his tenure as governor on March 8, 1808.48