How important were Lewis and Clark?

       Lewis and Clark were incredibly important to the examination of the new land that was acquired by president Jefferson in the Louisiana Purchase. How important was the examination of the land by the company of Lewis and Clark? They ventured off into the uncharted territory which was unprecedented at the time. They did not know what they were going to encounter out there in this new, yet strange land that just seemed uninhabited. As we all know, the land was not uninhabited and had been being lived on by the many nations of Native American tribes. These nations fiercely protected their lands from intruders and outsiders. All the Lewis and Clark expedition wanted to do was study the area and see what was out there per the President. Ultimately, the president was looking to find the easiest route via map to get to the other side of the land. 

 

The obstacles were to be mapped out by the former military comrades and the President really just wanted to see what he had paid for in such a minimal price at the time. In a photo by Jim Wark, it shows where the mouth of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers was the time in the early nineteenth centuries according to the expedition. Many of these kinds of notes and sketches were taken to account for the many different routes that the goods and services were going to travel to support the trade via the water in the years to comes. Also, the expedition encountered the different tribes and their people along the way. As shown in the image by Michael Haynes, they met many Indians that appeared to be just hunting and gathering for their tribes and families. Many of the people on the Lewis and Clark expedition may not have survived if it was not for these people showing them the ways of the land and how to live off of it. This expedition was extremely important to discovering who all these foreign people were, to the expedition anyways, and how to find the easiest and most accessible route for trade on the United States’ “new” land. If it was not for the people of the expedition risking their lives going into the unknown, who knows what would have happened with all this newly acquired land.

References:

http://www.lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=3007 

http://www.lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=2952

PBS Lewis & Clark: The Native Americans http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/native/index.html