But I thought you might want to know ahead of time. Again, mentioned factually and without any sensationalizing. During the section "O! the Joy" they tell how Lewis and Clark found out that the Indians living near the west coast had already learned some English words from ship captains and such. Those are the words used in this brief comment. During the section called "Our Friends" an Indian ritual is described matter-of-factly that includes wives offering to "sleep with" other men in the tribe. Both are accurate and factual, not at all sensationalized, but you might want to know they are coming. I did want to mention two very short comments that are made during the documentary. They have formed a relation with this great idea and it shows! In fact, one of the men teared up when recounting Lewis' death. You can tell that the men who are interviewed, and whose comments are interspersed throughout the documentary, have a passion about this subject. Lewis asked Army buddy William Clark to go with him.I cannot recommend this DVD enough for bringing Lewis and Clark to life. Lewis And Clark: The Corps Of DiscoveryKEN BURNS' 'DAYTON DUNCAN, Living Next Door To A VampireGlenn Stevens, Le Palais De TimourMartet Jean, Air Power For Patton's Army: The XIX Tactical Air Command In The Second World WarDavid N. might explore the whole line, even to the Western Ocean, have conferences with the natives on the subject of commercial intercourse, get admission among them for our traders, as others are admitted, agree on convenient deposits for an interchange of articles, and return with the information acquired, in the course of two summers."Ĭongress approved the money a month later, and Jefferson chose Meriwether Lewis, an Army officer who had served as his personal secretary in the White House, as leader of the group. "An intelligent officer, with 10 or 12 chosen men. Without the need for vast hunting grounds, he reasoned, the Indians might be more inclined to sell their forests and "increase their domestic comforts."įurther on in the letter, Jefferson gets around to his main point: that this great uncharted territory might be worth checking out. Textbooks present the basic facts about this journey, but they fail to include the lesser known details which make Lewis and Clark’s story so. 18, 1803 letter to Congress to ask for funds, Jefferson said it would be worthwhile to convince native Americans to give up their nomadic lifestyle for farming. Dayton Duncan, writer and producer of Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, is the author of five other books, including Out West: An American Journey along the Lewis and Clark Trail, in which he retraced the route of the expedition. The explorations of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, which was referred to as the Corps of Discovery, provided a vital piece to the puzzle of westward discovery and expansion in North America. He believed it was out there, that the Missouri River was the key to it, and that's what he sent Lewis and Clark to find."īut exploration required money. "Most of all, he wanted the United States to be the nation that found what everyone believed was waiting for someone to find in the West - an easy water route to the Orient.
"They wanted to know what the plant life was like, what the wildlife was like, whether there was a tribe of blue-eyed Welsh-speaking Indians that were rumored to be somewhere over the next Western horizon, mountains of salt, exploding volcanoes," Duncan says. The explorers found a varied landscape and a dizzying diversity of Indian peoples. Dayton Duncan, who collaborated on a book and documentary film about Lewis and Clark with award-winning documentarian Ken Burns, tells Naylor that Jefferson hated not knowing what lay west of the Mississippi. Ken Burns' LEWIS & CLARK re-creates the 1803 journey to locate the Northwest Passage. Louis was a foreign city, controlled by the Spanish and later, the French. The expedition opened up the American West to other explorers, and to settlement.īut in 1803, the city of St. Re-enactors dress up like members of the Corps and hike the Lewis and Clark trail. The impact of the expedition, Naylor says, is still being felt two centuries later.Ģ00 years later, the journey is now part of American legend. NPR's Brian Naylor reports on a recent ceremony at Jefferson's home, Monticello, to mark the anniversary of that request.
In the case of the Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the uncharted wilderness west of the Mississippi River, it was a letter from then-President Thomas Jefferson to Congress, requesting $2,500 to fund what came to be called the Corps of Discovery.
A representative of the Blackfoot tribe attended the bicentennial ceremony at Jefferson's Monticello home in Virginia.Īs the saying goes, a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.
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