Lewis and Clark Trivia
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99 free Lewis and Clark trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Lewis and Clark trivia follows the Corps of Discovery from a winter camp on the Illinois shore in May 1804 to the Pacific in November 1805 and back to St. Louis in September 1806, a round trip that Jefferson had funded with a secret message to Congress and a budget of $2,324. Along the way there was a Newfoundland dog, a repeating air rifle, a standoff with the Lakota, a winter with the Mandan, a teenage Shoshone mother and her newborn, an appendicitis death that turned out to be the only one, a vote on where to camp in which a woman and an enslaved man both had a say, and a captain shot in the backside by his own hunter. This quiz covers the preparations in Philadelphia, the keelboat from Pittsburgh, the Indian Peace Medals, Camp Dubois, Sergeant Floyd, Black Buffalo and the tobacco, Fort Mandan and Charbonneau, Lemhi Pass and the Bitterroots, Dismal Nitch and Fort Clatsop, the Chinook letter that beat them home, the Blackfeet fight on the Marias, York's fate, the 140 maps and 200 species, Nicholas Biddle's 1814 edition, Lewis's death at Grinder's Stand and Clark's years as governor of Missouri Territory. Easy questions suit anyone who remembers the names from school; the expert tier is for people who know how many pounds of portable soup they packed. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the expedition and its two captains, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
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Q 01Which Great Plains animal did Lewis and Clark ship alive to President Jefferson in 1805?
A prairie dog
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.
Q 02What job did Meriwether Lewis hold when Jefferson chose him to lead the expedition?
The president's private secretary
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.
Q 03From which winter camp on the Illinois side of the Mississippi did the Corps set out in May 1804?
Camp Dubois
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.
Q 04Clark waited at which Missouri River town for Lewis to ride in and join the boats in May 1804?
St. Charles
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.
Q 05Near which city was Lewis and Clark's keelboat built in the summer of 1803?
Pittsburgh
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.
Q 06What breed was Seaman, the dog Lewis bought before setting off?
Newfoundland
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.
Q 07Which Philadelphia physician taught Lewis medicine before the trip?
Benjamin Rush
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.
Q 08Which weapon, fired without gunpowder, did Lewis show off to astonish the nations he met?
An air rifle
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.
Q 09The Jefferson peace medals Lewis and Clark carried showed his portrait on the front and which image on the back?
Two clasped hands
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.
Q 10Which ration from Philadelphia fed Lewis and Clark's starving men in the Bitterroot Mountains?
Portable soup
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.
Q 11Sergeant Floyd, the only member of the Corps to die on the expedition, probably died of what?
Acute appendicitis
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.
Q 12In September 1804, Chief Black Buffalo defused an armed standoff between Lewis and Clark's men and which nation?
The Lakota
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.
Q 13Where did Lewis and Clark's expedition spend the winter of 1804–05?
Q 21What did Lewis and Clark name the stockade they built near modern Astoria, Oregon, for the winter of 1805–06?
Fort Clatsop
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.
Q 22What was the main food of Lewis and Clark's party during its wet winter on the Pacific coast?
Elk
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.
Q 23In January 1806 Sacagawea insisted on joining a trek to the coast to see the ocean and which stranded animal?
A whale
Fort Mandan
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.
Q 14What was the name of the French-Canadian fur trapper hired as interpreter, husband of Sacagawea?
Toussaint Charbonneau
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'.
Q 15Sacagawea was born into which nation?
Shoshone
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.
Q 16Which Montana landmark, where Clark carved his name in 1806, is named for Sacagawea's baby son?
Pompeys Pillar
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.
Q 17Where did Lewis and Clark's expedition first cross the Continental Divide?
Lemhi Pass
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.
Q 18Which Cascade volcano did Clark first call 'Falls Mountain' before realising British sailors had already named it?
Mount Hood
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.
Q 19Which scarce supply did a few of Lewis and Clark's men spend weeks making at a separate winter camp?
Salt
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'.
Q 20In November 1805 the captains polled the whole party, York and Sacagawea included, to decide what?
Where to spend the winter
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.
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.
Q 24Lewis wrote that he would 'rather fight two Indians than one' of which animal?
Grizzly bear
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.
Q 25While exploring the Marias River country on the way home, Lewis's party killed two men of which nation?
The Blackfeet
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.
Q 26Why did Pierre Cruzatte apparently shoot Lewis on an August 1806 hunt?
He mistook him for an elk
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.
Q 27In which river town did Lewis and Clark's journey end in September 1806, to three cheers from the bank?
St. Louis
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.
Q 28Which power repeatedly sent armed parties across the Plains to intercept and arrest Lewis and Clark's expedition?
Spain
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.
Q 29Clark's map corrected charts that drew which western chain as one ridge?
The Rocky Mountains
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.
Q 30Which bird, taken alive in 1806, did Lewis and Clark judge 'the largest bird of North America'?
California condor
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.