99 Fun Facts About Lewis and Clark

Which Great Plains animal did Lewis and Clark ship alive to President Jefferson in 1805?

A prairie dog. It went down the Missouri in a cage beside four live magpies and crates of skins and bones, survived months of travel, and was lodging with Jefferson by October.

What job did Meriwether Lewis hold when Jefferson chose him to lead the expedition?

The president's private secretary. Jefferson had hired the young army officer in 1801 partly because he knew the western country, then sent him to Philadelphia's scientists to be tutored for the journey.

From which winter camp on the Illinois side of the Mississippi did the Corps set out in May 1804?

Camp Dubois. Clark built it on the east bank partly because the west bank was still in foreign hands: the American flag went up there only in March 1804, two months before the boats set out.

Clark waited at which Missouri River town for Lewis to ride in and join the boats in May 1804?

St. Charles. Clark's men spent five days at dances, dinners and a church service in the mostly French-Canadian village of about 450 people, and pushed off the afternoon after Lewis arrived.

Near which city was Lewis and Clark's keelboat built in the summer of 1803?

Pittsburgh. A drunken boatbuilder kept Lewis waiting six weeks while a drought drained the Ohio River, so when he finally cast off on 31 August the water was at a record low.

What breed was Seaman, the dog Lewis bought before setting off?

Newfoundland. Seaman earned his $20 price one night in 1805, when a buffalo bull charged through the sleeping camp and Lewis credited the dog with turning it away from the tents.

Which Philadelphia physician taught Lewis medicine before the trip?

Benjamin Rush. He also supplied 600 of his mercury-laced laxative pills, and traces of that mercury in an old latrine pit later let archaeologists confirm one of the expedition's campsites.

Which weapon, fired without gunpowder, did Lewis show off to astonish the nations he met?

An air rifle. At its first demonstration a bystander set it off by accident and the ball grazed the temple of a woman forty yards away; Lewis thought she was dead until she revived a minute later.

The Jefferson peace medals Lewis and Clark carried showed his portrait on the front and which image on the back?

Two clasped hands. One wore an officer's braided cuff, the other a chief's wristband, with the words 'Peace and Friendship'; in American eyes a chief who took the medal was accepting US sovereignty.

Which ration from Philadelphia fed Lewis and Clark's starving men in the Bitterroot Mountains?

Portable soup. By mid-September 1805 a few canisters of the boiled-down broth and a little bear oil were almost all the food left, and the men had already killed and eaten their colts.

Sergeant Floyd, the only member of the Corps to die on the expedition, probably died of what?

Acute appendicitis. Clark called it 'bilious colic', but doctors now think Floyd's appendix had burst, which was almost always fatal in 1804; his last request was that Clark write a letter for him.

In September 1804, Chief Black Buffalo defused an armed standoff between Lewis and Clark's men and which nation?

The Lakota. They wanted a toll before letting the boats pass; warriors seized a boat's cable, Clark drew his sword and Lewis called the crew to arms before Black Buffalo took the rope and ordered his men away.

Where did Lewis and Clark's expedition spend the winter of 1804–05?

Fort Mandan. The men built it of cottonwood logs beside the Mandan and Hidatsa villages, whose people brought corn and game to trade through weeks of weather far below zero.

What was the name of the French-Canadian fur trapper hired as interpreter, husband of Sacagawea?

Toussaint Charbonneau. At the helm when a squall tipped a boat in May 1805, he panicked while his wife calmly caught the light articles as they washed overboard; Lewis called him 'the most timid waterman in the world'.

Sacagawea was born into which nation?

Shoshone. Raiders had carried her off as a girl, and when the expedition reached her people in 1805 needing horses, the chief it had to bargain with turned out to be her own brother.

Which Montana landmark, where Clark carved his name in 1806, is named for Sacagawea's baby son?

Pompeys Pillar. Clark, who called the boy Pomp, named the sandstone butte 'Pompy's Tower' and cut his own name and the date into it, where visitors can still read them.

Where did Lewis and Clark's expedition first cross the Continental Divide?

Lemhi Pass. Just below the top, where the Missouri had shrunk to a brook, Private Hugh McNeal stood with a foot on each bank and thanked God he had lived to bestride the mighty river.

Which Cascade volcano did Clark first call 'Falls Mountain' before realising British sailors had already named it?

Mount Hood. Clark named it for the great falls of the Columbia nearby; only after passing it did the captains match it to the peak on British charts, named for Admiral Samuel Hood.

Which scarce supply did a few of Lewis and Clark's men spend weeks making at a separate winter camp?

Salt. Three men kept kettles of seawater boiling day and night near today's Seaside, Oregon, yet made barely a gallon a day; Lewis called it 'a very tedious operation'.

In November 1805 the captains polled the whole party, York and Sacagawea included, to decide what?

Where to spend the winter. Clark tallied the choice of York, the man he enslaved, beside the soldiers', and noted that Sacagawea wanted a place with plenty of wapato roots to eat.

What did Lewis and Clark name the stockade they built near modern Astoria, Oregon, for the winter of 1805–06?

Fort Clatsop. The men named it for the Clatsop people living nearby, and on leaving in March 1806 Lewis gave the fort and its furniture to their chief, Coboway, in thanks for his kindness.

What was the main food of Lewis and Clark's party during its wet winter on the Pacific coast?

Elk. Christmas dinner in 1805 was elk 'so much spoiled that we ate it through mere necessity', and by spring the men had sewn the hides into hundreds of pairs of moccasins for the journey home.

In January 1806 Sacagawea insisted on joining a trek to the coast to see the ocean and which stranded animal?

A whale. She told the captains it was very hard, after travelling so far, to be kept from the 'great waters' and the 'monstrous fish'; they arrived to find only its skeleton, and bought 300 pounds of blubber.

Lewis wrote that he would 'rather fight two Indians than one' of which animal?

Grizzly bear. A wounded one had just chased a hunter half a mile, and a month later another ran Lewis himself into a river after he forgot to reload his rifle.

While exploring the Marias River country on the way home, Lewis's party killed two men of which nation?

The Blackfeet. Eight young men camped with Lewis's four and tried at first light to take their guns and horses; after the killings the Americans rode more than 100 miles in a day to get away.

Why did Pierre Cruzatte apparently shoot Lewis on an August 1806 hunt?

He mistook him for an elk. Cruzatte, blind in one eye and short-sighted in the other, fired at a figure in brown leather among the willows, then denied it; Lewis spent days lying face down in a boat.

In which river town did Lewis and Clark's journey end in September 1806, to three cheers from the bank?

St. Louis. The men fired three rounds as the town came into sight and the crowd on the shore cheered back; before the day was out Lewis was writing to tell Jefferson they had reached the Pacific and returned.

Which power repeatedly sent armed parties across the Plains to intercept and arrest Lewis and Clark's expedition?

Spain. Tipped off by James Wilkinson, a US general on its payroll, it sent Pedro Vial north from New Mexico in 1804; he reached the Pawnee villages only after the boats had passed, and later attempts failed too.

Clark's map corrected charts that drew which western chain as one ridge?

The Rocky Mountains. Jefferson expected one easy ridge between two rivers; Clark's map, drawn by 1810 and published in 1814, showed a tangle of ranges instead.

Which bird, taken alive in 1806, did Lewis and Clark judge 'the largest bird of North America'?

California condor. Two hunters wounded one near the mouth of the Columbia and carried it in alive; it weighed 25 pounds even in poor condition, and its head was sketched into the journal.

Which meat, bought from Columbia River villages, did Lewis call 'an agreeable food' though Clark wrote that he still disliked it?

Dog. With game scarce the party bought dogs from the river villages again and again; Lewis came to prefer the meat to lean venison, though his own dog Seaman was never on the menu.

Nicholas Biddle, who wrote Lewis and Clark's 1814 history, later ran which institution?

The national bank. As president of the Bank of the United States he fought Andrew Jackson in the 'Bank War' of the 1830s; twenty years earlier his name was left off the expedition's history, which credits another editor.

After Lewis and Clark's expedition, what reward did York, the man Clark enslaved, receive for his service?

Nothing. Every other man got double pay and 320 acres; when York asked for his freedom, Clark refused, writing that he did not think 'his services has been so great'.

Which nation fed Lewis and Clark's starving men after the Bitterroot crossing and kept their horses safe all winter?

The Nez Perce. Some warriors are said to have wanted to kill the weak, well-armed strangers, until Watkuweis, an old woman once helped by white traders, told them: 'Do them no harm.'

Which explorer crossed mainland North America to the Pacific in 1793, before Lewis and Clark?

Alexander Mackenzie. Jefferson read his account of the crossing in the summer of 1802, saw in it a British plan to control the fur trade of the far West, and hurried forward his own expedition.

Which institution founded by Benjamin Franklin became the keeper of Lewis and Clark's original journals?

The American Philosophical Society. The captains' notebooks lay there largely forgotten until the naturalist Elliott Coues rediscovered them and brought out a new edition in 1893, 79 years after the first.

Which Stephen Ambrose bestseller of 1996 retold the story of Meriwether Lewis and the expedition?

Undaunted Courage. Jefferson praised the man he chose in almost those words: 'Of courage undaunted, possessing a firmness and perseverance of purpose which nothing but impossibilities could divert.'

Which Oregon city staged a great exposition in 1905 to mark the centennial of Lewis and Clark's journey?

Portland. Suffragists raised the money for a bronze Sacagawea, cast from Oregon copper and unveiled at the fair; the statue was later moved to the city's Washington Park.

What post did Jefferson give Lewis in 1807 as a reward for the expedition?

Governor of the Louisiana Territory. The post undid him: Washington questioned his spending of public money, and in 1809 he set out for the capital to defend his accounts and died on the way.

In which state did Meriwether Lewis die of gunshot wounds in 1809, at an inn on the Natchez Trace?

Tennessee. He was riding to Washington to defend his accounts when he stopped at Grinder's Stand; Jefferson and Clark both accepted that it was suicide, but the argument over murder has never ended.

In which colony was Meriwether Lewis born in 1774?

Virginia. He was born near Charlottesville, a neighbour of Jefferson's, spent part of his boyhood on the Georgia frontier after his father died, and came home in his teens to run the family plantation.

Which federal post did William Clark hold from 1822 into the last year of his life?

Superintendent of Indian Affairs. He had governed the Missouri Territory from 1813, but voters turned him down for governor of the new state in 1820, and he took the federal post two years later.

Which Montana river did Clark name for Julia Hancock, his future wife?

The Judith. Clark, who called her Judith, gave her name to a clear tributary of the Missouri in May 1805, nearly three years before he went east to marry her; their first son was named Meriwether Lewis Clark.

What was William Clark's actual army rank on the expedition, though the men knew him as 'Captain'?

Lieutenant. The War Department refused Lewis's request to make his partner a captain, so the two kept the commission secret from the men for the whole journey; the promotion finally came in 2001.

Which Le Page du Pratz book did Lewis borrow, carry to the Pacific and return in 1807?

The History of Louisiana. One of Lewis's tutors lent him the copy in June 1803; four years later he handed it back with a note inside saying it had been 'conveyed by me to the Pacific ocean'.

Why did Lewis and Clark wait nearly a month at Camp Chopunnish in spring 1806?

Deep mountain snow. Lewis called the Bitterroots 'that icy barrier which separates me from my friends and country'; the party set off in June anyway and had to turn back before a second try succeeded.

Which US coin marked Lewis and Clark's bicentennial with the words 'Ocean in view!'?

The nickel. It already carried Jefferson, who had sent the expedition, and got four special designs in 2004 and 2005; the Mint corrected Clark's spelling, since he had written 'Ocian'.

Lewis and Clark's men celebrated 4 July 1805 by finishing the last of which supply?

Liquor. Lewis shared out the last of the spirits, the fiddle came out and the men danced until rain stopped them; they did not taste another drop for fourteen months, until they met a trader on the way home.

After splitting up in July 1806, Lewis and Clark planned to reunite at the mouth of which river?

The Yellowstone. Clark got there first, found the mosquitoes unbearable and moved on downriver, leaving a note behind; Lewis read it days later and caught up with him on 12 August.

Which ruler sold the United States the western lands Lewis and Clark set out to explore in 1804?

Napoleon Bonaparte, facing a fresh war with Britain, let the whole tract go for $15 million. The deal was struck in Paris in 1803, while the expedition was being fitted out.

Which crushed ingredient, stirred into water, was given to Sacagawea to speed her son's difficult birth in 1805?

Rattlesnake rattle was a folk remedy put forward by one of the party's interpreters. Lewis, acting as the camp doctor, wrote the whole episode into his journal entry on the baby's arrival.

Which animal stands between the portraits of Lewis and Clark on the famous 1901 United States $10 note?

A bison fills the middle of the note, with Lewis on the left and Clark on the right. It is sometimes wrongly said to be Black Diamond, a zoo bison linked to a later coin.

Which future president, then Secretary of State, had a Three Forks river named for him by Lewis in 1805?

James Madison got the middle fork of the three. The other two headwater streams honoured the sitting president and Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin.

Which instrument did the one-eyed boatman Pierre Cruzatte play to cheer Lewis and Clark's men after a long day?

The fiddle came out so often that it drew visitors: in April 1806 some Yakama people called at camp just to hear it, and the men danced to please them.

In which state is Sergeant Floyd of the Corps buried, beneath a 100-foot obelisk above the Missouri River?

Iowa holds the grave, on high ground at Sioux City. The white sandstone shaft, finished in 1901, later became the first National Historic Landmark designated in the United States.

In William Clark's view, the sight of Sacagawea and her baby signalled what to the nations the party met?

Peaceful intentions were what she proved, Clark wrote, because no woman ever travelled with a war party in that country. He called her presence a token that reconciled everyone they met.

The twin cities of Lewiston and Clarkston face each other across the border between Washington and which state?

Idaho has Lewiston, believed to be named for Meriwether Lewis, who camped at the site in October 1805. Smaller Clarkston sits immediately to the west, so the two captains' names meet at the state line.

Sacagawea gave up her own belt of which colour of beads so the captains could buy a sea otter robe?

Blue beads from her belt closed a deal the captains had failed to strike with every other article they offered. Clark's journal admits they had tried a string of goods before the robe's owner gave way.

Which insects did Lewis say tormented the party so badly in July 1806 that even Seaman howled?

Mosquitoes were so thick, Lewis wrote, that the men often breathed them into their throats. He spent three-quarters of his own time shut under a net to escape them.

Which animal's tail did Lewis call a most delicious morsel, comparing the boiled meat to fresh codfish?

Beaver was a delicacy to the whole party, Lewis noted in May 1805. He added that one tail was usually big enough to make a plentiful meal for two men.

How much did the president ask Congress for in a secret 1803 message to fund Lewis and Clark's journey?

$2,500 was the whole request, made in a confidential message of 18 January 1803. For that sum the president proposed sending a small party all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Which federal armory on the Potomac supplied Meriwether Lewis with guns, tomahawks and an iron boat frame in 1803?

Harpers Ferry kept Lewis far longer than he planned. A one-week visit stretched past a month while the mechanics struggled to assemble the collapsible boat frame he had designed.

Which president signed William Clark's posthumous promotion, nearly two centuries after the expedition ended?

Bill Clinton promoted Clark to captain in the US Army in 2001. Lewis had offered him that rank in 1803, but the War Department issued a lower commission.

Which nation's raiders captured Sacagawea when she was about twelve and held her near present-day Washburn?

The Hidatsa took her and several other children in a raid around 1800. That is why she was living hundreds of miles from her birthplace when the captains arrived four years later.

The president wrote to Lewis in 1804 of a tribe rumoured to descend from Prince Madoc and speak which language?

Welsh speakers were said to be living somewhere up the Missouri, the president wrote to Lewis in January 1804. The legend held that a medieval prince had sailed to America centuries before Columbus.

Which swift Plains animal did Lewis and Clark's journals call a goat or an antelope when first recording it?

The pronghorn had been glimpsed by earlier explorers, but nobody had studied it closely. The captains met it near the mouth of the Niobrara River and wrote several accounts of how it behaved.

Down which river did Lewis take the newly built keelboat in 1803 to collect Clark near Louisville?

The Ohio carried Lewis and his first crew downstream to the falls at Louisville, where Clark was waiting in October 1803. The two then wintered near the Mississippi before the real journey began.

Which soft, brittle tree supplied the wagon wheels for Lewis and Clark's portage around the Great Falls?

Cottonwood was badly suited to the job, as Lewis admitted. He counted himself lucky to find one trunk 22 inches across, doubting there was another sound one within 20 miles.

Lewis named a Montana river for Sacagawea in May 1805 and recorded that her name meant which two words?

Bird Woman was the translation her husband gave the captains. Lewis's journal for 20 May 1805 names the stream bird woman's River, after the party's interpreter.

Which chief, met by the party in August 1805, did Sacagawea recognise as her own brother?

Cameahwait led the band she had been taken from as a girl. In their language one word covers both brother and cousin, so how closely the two were related is unclear.

Which sergeant, the Corps' chief carpenter, beat the captains into print with the first published journal in 1807?

Patrick Gass got his account out seven years before any book based on the captains' own journals. He died in his 99th year, the oldest surviving member of the expedition.

Which snowbound route did Lewis and Clark follow across the Bitterroots in September 1805, guided by Old Toby?

The Lolo Trail is a National Historic Landmark, though the captains never used that name for it. Native travellers had been crossing the range by the same route for generations.

Traces of which element, from the men's pills, let archaeologists confirm Lewis and Clark's Travelers' Rest camp?

Mercury made up more than half of each purging pill and most of it passed straight through the patient. Vapour tests on a shallow trench therefore picked out the camp latrine two centuries later.

Meriwether Lewis's grave monument, designed to symbolise a life cut short, takes which form?

A broken column was a common emblem of the time for an early death. A stonemason named Lemuel Kirby chose it for the explorer, who was only 35 when he died.

Which 1998 comedy, Chris Farley's last leading role, follows two explorers racing Lewis and Clark to the Pacific?

Almost Heroes paired Farley with Matthew Perry and reached cinemas five months after Farley's death. In the film their ragged party beats the real captains to the coast by a matter of minutes.

Which Hollywood star played William Clark opposite Fred MacMurray's Lewis in the 1955 film The Far Horizons?

Charlton Heston was close to Clark's real age during filming. MacMurray, by contrast, was 46 and playing a man who had set out on the journey at 29.

Which state's Garrison Dam holds back a vast Missouri River reservoir named Lake Sakakawea, after Sacagawea?

North Dakota's lake uses Sakakawea, the spelling made official by the Three Affiliated Tribes. The lake behind the dam is the third largest reservoir in the United States by volume, after Lake Mead and Lake Powell.

Which rumoured all-water route across North America did the president hope Lewis and Clark would finally find?

The Northwest Passage, he hoped, would turn out to be a link between the Missouri and Columbia rivers. Such a connection would have given American traders a boat route to the Pacific.

William Clark's older brother George Rogers became a general and a frontier hero during which war?

The Revolutionary War drew in all five of Clark's older brothers. William, born in 1770, was too young to fight and learned his wilderness skills from George afterwards.

William Clark's grandson, Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr., built the track that hosts which famous American horse race?

The Kentucky Derby is run at Churchill Downs, which he built after founding the Louisville Jockey Club. The track takes its name from the Churchills, his relatives on the maternal side.

Meriwether Lewis, born in 1774, owed his unusual first name to which source?

His mother's family supplied it: she was born Lucy Meriwether. Her son simply carried her maiden surname as his given name.

William Clark wrongly took the bird now called Clark's nutcracker for which kind of bird in 1805?

A woodpecker was Clark's guess as he watched the bird feeding on pine cones. A genuine example of the kind, also met on the journey, was later named for Lewis.

Which member of Lewis and Clark's Corps left the homeward party in 1806 to trap furs as a mountain man?

John Colter was discharged nearly two months early so he could lead two trappers back upriver. He went on to spend months alone in the wilderness.

What name is given to the two large open boats that accompanied Lewis and Clark's keelboat up the Missouri?

Pirogues were the party's two open workboats, known as the red and the white. The white one nearly capsized in May 1805 with the captains' instruments and papers aboard.

Which spiny plant pierced the men's moccasins so badly at the Great Falls that they sewed on double soles?

Prickly pear carpeted the plains along the portage route. Clark noted in June 1805 that the baked ground was also hard enough to hurt the men's feet badly.

Which science did Philadelphia professor Benjamin Smith Barton teach Meriwether Lewis before the journey?

Botany lessons paid off handsomely: 226 sheets of the plants Lewis pressed survive in a herbarium at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

Which gloomy name belongs to the Washington cape at the Columbia's mouth that Lewis and Clark reached in 1805?

Disappointment was the verdict of the British fur trader John Meares, who named the cape in 1788. He took the river mouth beside it for a mere bay, too shallow to enter, and sailed on.

Which fish, first described from catches near the Great Falls, has William Clark's name in its Latin name?

Cutthroat trout were classified as clarkii in his honour. The westslope subspecies the men most likely caught was later given a second tag, lewisi, for his partner.

Which river carried Lewis and Clark's canoes from the Clearwater to the Columbia in October 1805?

The Snake went into Clark's notes as Lewis's River, replacing the Native name he had first written down. The captains were the first non-natives known to have seen it.

The Columbia River, Lewis and Clark's road to the sea, was named by Captain Robert Gray in 1792 after what?

His ship was the Columbia Rediviva, in which Gray found the river and claimed it for the United States. That was thirteen years before the captains paddled down to its mouth.

Which chief travelled east with Lewis and Clark in 1806 to meet the president in Washington?

Sheheke, also known as Big White, agreed to go only after a trader named René Jusseaume smoothed over the rivalries the invitation had stirred up. His wife and son made the trip with him.

Which pet name did William Clark use for Sacagawea, including in a letter he sent her husband in 1806?

Janey turns up in Clark's offer to raise and educate her young son. He suggested she had best come along too, to care for the boy until Clark could take charge of him.

Which vegetable was the keyword for the secret cipher the president devised for Lewis's reports from the West?

Artichoke unlocked a sample message announcing a safe arrival at the head of the Missouri. Lewis never found an occasion to send anything in the code.

Lewis's iron-framed boat was abandoned in July 1805 because the party lacked which sealant for its hide seams?

Pitch needed pine trees, and none grew near the camp. The charcoal and tallow paste the men tried instead peeled away, so the frame Lewis had brought all the way from the East was buried and left behind.

Which spear-like officer's staff saved Lewis from a ninety-foot fall down a riverside cliff in June 1805?

An espontoon let Lewis recover his footing on a narrow, slippery ledge. Seconds later he heard one of his men cry out behind him, hanging over the same drop.

A misreading of Lewis's journals meant that Seaman was once known to historians by which wrong name?

Scannon was a transcription error for the name Lewis actually wrote. The animal behind the mix-up was the only one to complete the entire journey with the party.

Water from which natural source was used to treat Sacagawea when she fell ill at the Great Falls portage?

A sulphur spring opposite the mouth of Belt Creek had a reputation for curing the sick. It lies inside the National Historic Landmark district that marks the portage route.

Which US coin, first minted in 2000, shows Sacagawea carrying her infant son on its front?

The dollar carries a portrait by the sculptor Glenna Goodacre. Its brassy alloy earned the coin a popular nickname based on its golden look.

Which bulb, dug by Native families near Weippe, fed the starving Corps after it staggered out of the Bitterroots?

Camas fields had drawn a large Native encampment to the meadows in September 1805. Clark and the first of the men walked out of the mountains weak with hunger on the 20th and found it there.