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[Illustration: Wm Clark
               Meriwether Lewis]




LEWIS AND CLARK



MERIWETHER LEWIS

AND

WILLIAM CLARK



BY

WILLIAM R. LIGHTON



BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
PORTLAND, OREGON
THE J. K. GILL COMPANY

1905

COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY WILLIAM R. LIGHTON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




Transcriber's Note: The symbol "^" in "Miss^ie" is used to indicate
that the letters following it are printed in superscript.




CONTENTS


CHAP.                                                         PAGE

   I. CHARACTERISTICS                                            1

  II. THE EXPEDITION                                            15

 III. TERMS OF THE COMMISSION                                   25

  IV. THE START                                                 34

   V. WITH THE SIOUX                                            51

  VI. TO THE FALLS OF THE MISSOURI                              69

 VII. OVER THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE                               82

VIII. THE LAST STAGE OF THE WESTWARD JOURNEY                    93

  IX. WINTER ON THE COAST                                      107

   X. HOMEWARD: IN THE MOUNTAINS                               117

  XI. RECROSSING THE DIVIDE                                    134

 XII. HOME                                                     142

XIII. AFTER LIFE                                               149




LEWIS AND CLARK




CHAPTER I

CHARACTERISTICS


In the years 1804, 1805, and 1806, two men commanded an expedition
which explored the wilderness that stretched from the mouth of the
Missouri River to where the Columbia enters the Pacific, and dedicated
to civilization a new empire. Their names were Meriwether Lewis and
William Clark.

As a rule, one who tries to discover and to set down in order the
simple signs that spell the story of a large man's life is confused by
a chaos of data. No such trouble arises in this case. There is great
poverty of fact and circumstance in the records of the private lives of
these men; so careless were they of notoriety, so wholly did they merge
themselves in their work. Anything like ostentation was foreign to
their taste, and to the spirit of their time, which took plain, dutiful
heroism as a matter of course. No one knows any "characteristic
anecdotes" of Meriwether Lewis; and the best stories about Clark are
those preserved in the tribal histories of Western Indians. The
separate identity of the two men is practically lost to all except the
careful reader. Each had his baptismal name, to be sure; but even their
private names are fused, and they are best known to us under the joint
style of Lewis and Clark. In effect they were one and indivisible. For
evidence of their individuality we must look to the labors which they
performed in common.

When, several years after the conclusion of the great expedition, the
manuscript journals were being prepared for publication, the editor
could not find sufficient material out of which to make a memoir of
Captain Lewis, and was forced to appeal to Mr. Jefferson for aid; for
Jefferson had been an early neighbor and friend of the Lewis family,
and later, on becoming President, had made the lad Meriwether his
private secretary, and had afterwards appointed him to direct the
exploration. The sketch written by Mr. Jefferson is, like most of his
papers, appreciative and vital. It is to this document, dated at
Monticello, August 18, 1813, that every biographer must have recourse:--

    "Meriwether Lewis, late governor of Louisiana, was born on the 18th
    of August, 1774, near the town of Charlottesville, in the county of
    Albemarle, in Virginia, of one of the distinguished families of
    that State. John Lewis, one of his father's uncles, was a member of
    the king's council before the Revolution. Another of them, Fielding
    Lewis, married a sister of General Washington. His father, William
    Lewis, was the youngest of five sons of Colonel Robert Lewis of
    Albemarle, the fourth of whom, Charles, was