William Clark
Born in Virginia in 1770, William Clark entered military service in the USA in 1789. Rather surprisingly, given his later career, he was a participant in several campaigns against Indians (Native Americans), including the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, which ended the threat of the Northwest Indian Confederation.
Following the American purchase of the Louisiana Territory in 1803, Clark was invited by Captain Meriwether Lewis to share the leadership in an extensive exploration of the vast uncharted area of the Northwest. Clark had become close friends with Meriwether Lewis when they served together in the army in 1795, and accepted his invitation to serve as co-leader of the 1803 Corps of Discovery.
Meriwether Lewis is a fascinating character in his own right – called ‘undoubtedly the greatest pathfinder this country (USA) has ever known’ - he was born into a well-off Virginia planter family in 1774.
In the 1790s he met and became friends with Thomas Jefferson, who chose him for the expedition and during the period 1801 and 1803, while the slow process of the appropriation of government funds took place, he studied with members of the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and gathered information about his proposed route.
After several months studying astronomy and map-making, Clark joined Lewis and they journeyed down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh. Together they travelled to Wood River, Illinois, at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, where they made final preparations over the winter. The following spring, the expedition set out by travelling up the Missouri. By autumn it had reached the Mandan villages in present-day North Dakota, where the group decided to stay for the winter as weather conditions prevented travel.
Their enforced stay with the Mandan taught Lewis and Clark to trust the Native Americans and to rely on their goodwill – an astonishing turnaround from the years when both men had pursued tribes across the country, killing them and breaking up their social and military groups. The Mandans gave them food, military protection, and invaluable information about the path ahead. The most valuable help though, was to be found in the presence of Touissant Charbonneau, a French Canadian whom the expedition took on as an interpreter, and his Shoshone wife Sacagawea, who provided help as a guide and interpreter. Clark noted in his journal, ‘we find (that she) reconciles all the Indians, as to our friendly intentions - a woman with a party of men is a token of peace.’
The Lewis and Clark Expedition was extremely successful, largely because of the cordial and complementary leadership provided by the two men. Clark acted as mapmaker and artist, portraying in great detail the animal life they observed and entering all details in diaries and maps the group kept, at Jefferson's request. The journals include accounts of many adventures including hostile Indians, accidents, sickness, grizzly bears and rattlesnakes, exposure and near starvation. Given all this potential disaster, it was considered incredible that only one member of the expedition died during the journey.
At the end of the expedition, President Thomas Jefferson awarded Clark 1,600 acres of public land and made him brigadier general of militia for the Louisiana Territory and superintendent of Indian affairs. Clark kept this post the rest of his life and, from 1813, served as governor of the Missouri Territory too. His experiences on the expedition gave him a lifelong investment in what were called ‘Indian affairs’ and he often appealed to the federal government for better treatment of Native Americans. He died in 1838.
Other Great Explorers
tenzing, Vancouver, Almagro, Alvarado, Balboa, burton, clark, drake, eriksson, grant, heyerdahl, hillary, humboldt, ingstad, james cook, livingstone, magellan, Piccard, Raleigh, Scott, Shackleton