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Lewis and Clark spent months overseeing preparations — from deciding how much whiskey or ink was needed to the number of rifles. Lewis and President Jefferson even designed a steel-framed, collapsible boat, clad in big game skins, that the Corps used. From here, there would be no turning back. Lewis, Clark and their men would spend the next two years cut off from civilization as they knew it.
On May 14, 1803, the party set off. They slowly worked their way upstream, against the torrential springtime currents of the Missouri River. The men were divided into three work groups; each with a sergeant in command. They labored hard: rowing, pushing and pulling to move boats and gear. The coming months would require this strenuous work time and again.
Although traders had explored much of the land from present-day St. Louis to Bismark, North Dakota, there was much to fear. Lewis and Clark worried about meeting Sioux and other Native American tribes along the way. They put tight security plans in place. Campsites were chosen with care. Men were posted as nighttime lookouts.
Their first problems, however, originated from within the Corps. A poor diet caused their skin to break out in boils. Many of the men suffered from dysentery, which Lewis blamed on the water. Three men would be tried, convicted and punished of crimes before they finished this brief leg of the journey.
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In Their Own Words... |
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“Nature appears to have exerted herself to butify the Senery by the variety of flours Delicately and highly flavered raised above the Grass, which Strikes and profumes the Sensation, and amuses the mind."
~ Clark, writing before the Fourth of July festivities | | The men, in short, were getting used to the rigors of the expedition and chain of command. They celebrated the Fourth of July by firing their cannon and reveled in the beauty of the river valley.
Much of what they first saw is lost. Lewis’ journals from this period did not survive. Still, one can imagine they learned of the Missouri River’s many fish species, saw flocks of birds like the greater prairie chicken, walked amid waves of prairie grasses like big bluestem and were exhilarated at beginning this historic journey.
Next: Traveling the Mighty Missouri | 
