Whenever my wife mentions that she is nervous about forgetting to pack something before a trip in the U.S., I tell her, "This is America. We can buy anything we need when we get there." This may be true in the 21st century. In his stirring new book, This Vast Enterprise, historian Craig Fehrman explains just how untrue this was for Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in 1803, when Thomas Jefferson directed them to find out whether there was a passage to the Pacific Ocean via the Missouri River.
Lewis had been Jefferson's private secretary in the White House at the beginning of his administration. He even lived in the White House and undertook important meetings on Jefferson's behalf. When Jefferson came up with the idea of exploring the West, Lewis seemed like the right person. Clark, an old military compatriot of Lewis's, complemented him well. The two acted as co-captains of the enterprise, even though Clark, for complicated reasons, was unable to attain the military rank of captain, which rankled him.
Everything the two men needed would have to be brought with them, made on the way, or obtained via trade with unknown and possibly hostile Native Americans. Fehrman recounts the many battles and rivalries between the Hidatsa, Lakota, Arikara, Mandan, Shoshone, and others — a complex web of alliances and enmities that Lewis and Clark had to navigate as well. They began with 30 tons of provisions, a staggering number. They also had about 30 people, many of them from the military, whom they selected for a variety of skills, including tracking, translating, and hunting.
Today we would think nothing of driving 10 or 20 miles for lunch. For Lewis and Clark, 10 to 20 miles was an entire day's journey. Ideally, they would travel via the river, but when this was impassable, they had to portage: carry their boats and all their provisions over land. The expedition, called the Corps of Discovery, required an incredible amount of nonstop work over three years. It's a miracle that only one of their number died during the trip: Charles Floyd, who succumbed to appendicitis.
Fehrman writes, "Each task created a new task, and each task had to be done by hand." He observes that "this labor left the soldiers ravenous." When the men felled a grizzly bear, for example — no small feat — they made the most of its carcass, including using its fat as mosquito repellent. "During a typical day," First Sergeant John Ordway "burned five thousand calories or more," replenished by "a lot of jerked bear meat." Fehrman is not wrong to conclude: "The expedition's greatest resource wasn't gunpowder or Enlightenment ideas. It was manpower."
In addition to the complex logistical challenges, the journey had political, international, and scientific implications. Jefferson's political opponents hoped that the expedition would fail. The Spanish, who believed that Lewis and Clark were intruding on their territory, sent military units to intercept the expedition. They tried, and failed, four times. Accounts of these failures serve as something like comic relief throughout Fehrman's book, though the Spanish threat was no laughing matter for the Corps of Discovery. Fehrman writes, "With a different officer, or a different president, or a different departure date, history could've unfolded in a radically different way." When the expedition eventually returned, the men found that a false rumor had circulated that the Spanish had indeed captured them and put them to work in silver mines.
The expedition was greatly assisted, as is widely known, by a young Shoshone girl, Sacajawea. She had been taken as a girl by the Hidatsa, so she had no love for them. She was also married to — or enslaved by — a brutish man named Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian explorer, and was pregnant with his child, who was born on the journey and named Pahmpi. Charbonneau had come on the expedition as a translator and was of marginal use, but Sacajawea proved her worth on multiple occasions. In one instance, Charbonneau's fecklessness almost capsized a vessel carrying crucial supplies; Sacajawea's quick action rescued most of the provisions. Clark, in particular, noticed her usefulness. In one of the most moving parts of the book, Fehrman recounts how the expedition allowed Sacajawea to return, at least temporarily, to her people and the place from which she had been taken by the Hidatsa.
In addition to giving us more detail about Sacajawea, Fehrman examines the personalities of many of the Americans on the expedition and of the Natives they encountered. We learn about Clark's slave York and about Ordway, a talented manager who wins over an initially disobedient man named John Colter. Fehrman dives deeply into the oral histories of the Native Americans to reveal their perspectives on the explorers.
Although the men discovered that there was no water route all the way to the coast, which necessitated their difficult trip through the Rockies, they finally reached the Pacific. After a winter on the Oregon coast, they returned east having no idea how famous they had become in their absence. Jefferson later wrote: "Never did a similar event excite more joy through the United States. The humblest of its citizens had taken a lively interest." Clark sent a letter to Jefferson that was reprinted across the country and around the world. Not everyone was happy. Fehrman notes that "the Spanish fumed when they read it."
Clark became a hero and served as the superintendent of Indian affairs for six presidents. He did not free his slave York — an indispensable part of the expedition — until 1820, for which Fehrman correctly criticizes him. Lewis's tale is sadder. Although he became governor of the Louisiana Territory, he struggled and failed to finish writing a book about the expedition. He committed suicide in 1809. To complete the project, Clark enlisted a young lawyer named Nicholas Biddle, who would later serve as the last president of the Second Bank of the United States.
As for Sacajawea, she chose not to stay with her people and returned east with Charbonneau. She had another child with him, a girl named Lisette. After she died, sometime around 1812, Clark became the guardian of both her children: a fitting statement about the good that the enterprise wrought to unite this land and its people.