Constructing a Crew for Lewis and Clark: Skill, Fortitude, and the Call for Adventure - Essay Example

?Running Head: HISTORY TERM PROJECT Constructing a crew for Lewis and Clark: Skill, fortitude, and the call to adventure Constructing a crew for Lewis and Clark: Skill, fortitude, and the call to adventure It was President Thomas Jefferson who commissioned the Corps of Discovery to explore and report on the territories that were included in the Louisiana Purchase. President Jefferson formed this Corps in order to establish his dominance over this area, and to extend that dominance into to the Pacific Northwest. The Corps of Discovery was led by U. S. Army Captain Meriwether Lewis and William Clark who had retired from the military, but had the respect of Captain Lewis and was brought in to partner with him on the expedition (Hitchcock, 1905). The expedition grew to be known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition and is one of the more famous events of exploration in North America. In the process of creating an expedition force such as this, the type of men needed to complete the journey would need to have a fortitude and ambition for travel and exploration. The journey would be long, treacherous, and without any guarantee of success. The men needed to join Lewis and Clark on the journey of exploration that defined the nature of the territories across the nation to the Pacific Northwest required men who had skills of survival and ambassadorial congeniality. The men that accompanied Lewis and Clark on their journey were going to face indigenous populations that were rumored to be hostile. One of the ways in which they intended to meet these people and hope to create peaceful relationships with them was through the distribution of ‘Indian peace medals’. According to Lewis, Clark, and Moulton (2003), the explorers took with them red leggings, dress coats, blue blankets, tobacco, whiskey and the silver medals as ways to make first contact, establish sovereignty over the Native American nations, and to provide honor as a way of negotiating peace. While stories of the indigenous populations might suggest hostility and danger, the men that accompanied Lewis and Clark into the Louisiana Territories and beyond would need to try peaceful approaches before panicking and beginning hostilities between the cultures. Therefore, the first type of individual that needed to be chosen for this journey needed to have the skills of a soldier, with the ability to temper fear and aggression in order to establish peaceful relationships. According to Lewis, Clark and Jones (2000), the following men were a part of the Corps of Discovery. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark commanded the mission with John Ordway, Nathanial Pryor, and Charles Floyd acting as sergeants until Charles Floyd died on August 20, 1804 when Patrick Gass was appointed to replace him shortly after Floyd’s death. George Druoillard and Toussant Charbonneau went as interpreters for the Corps. Included in the group were 25 men, one of which was dropped and one of which deserted. A slave named York, the Shoshone wife of Charbonneau named Sacagawea, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau (son of Sacagawea and Charbonneau) and Seaman, a dog that belonged to Meriwether Lewis. This group of men and one woman comprised the actual group that traveled across the Louisiana Territories in order to plot out the environment and define the topography of the newly acquired lands. The job of moving a camp from one side of the country to another consists of hard labor and isolation from the European styled comforts as they were interpreted in America. Discipline was kept and even though the isolation kept allowed for a fairly unified group, Private Moses R. Reed made an excuse to go back to a meeting site in order to find a knife he had left behind and tried to desert his post. While the act of desertion was subject to the death penalty, instead he was made to run the gauntlet four times, a form of punishment in which the men flogged his naked shirt. He was then expelled from the group, which is presumed to have been his goal in deserting in the first place. Meanwhile, Private John Newman was arrested for “mutinous expression”, sentenced to seventy-five lashes, and discharged dishonorably from his service (Lewis, Clark and Moulton, 2003, p. xxi). With only two incidents of this type of serious discipline, combined with the historic sense of success that was accomplished, the group must have been able to master their singular ambitions and feelings and work together to achieve the goals that were outlined for their expedition. An important part of the expedition would be the sense of unity that would be required to maintain a sense of discipline so that the survival of the group in unfamiliar territories could be established and maintained throughout their journey. In addition, the group sustained only one death which meant they were able to peacefully move through the territories, despite the fact that they were primarily based upon military personnel (Lewis, Clark, and Jones, 2000). The focus of the group was maintained on the mission of exploration and the success of the mission is defined by the primarily peaceful movement through the territories. The type of men who were chosen for this journey began with men who decided to go on the journey, however the ranks were filled with men who were in the army, made to go and put in a position of great danger regardless of their own aspirations. While only one man died, and that was most likely from a ruptured appendix, that only one man would meet a terrible fate was not assured (Lewis, Clark, and Jones, 2000). A man who is in the army knows that his life and his location is within the control of those of higher rank, however, on a journey that had exploration as the primary goal, with extensions of peace to the indigenous populations as an additional goal, the needs of the group were greater than just a military presence could provide. The success of the group can, in part, be attributed to Sacagawea who was pregnant on the trip, traveled across country with the army recruits and civilian explorers, giving birth in 1805. Her husband, Charbonneau, was chosen to be the interpreter for the group, partly due to the fact that she would accompany them and spoke Shoshone, a language they were need along the journey. However, the myth of Sacagawea, that she was the guide that led the group, is proven to have been an invention of Eva Emery Dye who wrote historical novels, and other women who were part of the suffragette movement who were seeking a heroine to be their champion for propaganda purposes. The history of the journey that included Sacagawea shows her as being courageous and with a great deal of influence, but her position as a guide is greatly exaggerated (Clark and Edmonds, 1983). Her position within the group, however, did provide a focus for history, a center of appreciation on which the adventure and accomplishment of the exploration. Her presence within the group is considered to have had a calming affect so that Native American tribes, who initially felt hostility from the intrusion of white travelers, saw her and believed that the group was friendly. This facilitated a number of introductions between the Lewis and Clark expedition and the indigenous people. Although carrying her infant child across the country, and enduring the same difficulties as the men, Sacagawea managed to survive the trip and see the ocean, a goal that she had developed for the journey (Clark and Edmonds, 1983). As much as the presence of Sacagawea was a strong influence on the peaceful exploration that was intended, it is highly possible that the construction of the group did not truly reflect the mission that it was designed to accomplish. The mission that was charged to Lewis and Clark was to establish relationships with indigenous populations and to collect scientific specimens, documenting the natural world of the territories that had been defined in the Louisiana Territories. In addition, the group was to find some sort of a pathway between the East, across to the Pacific. With these three primary goals in mind, a specific type of group could have facilitated the journey a bit better. Meriwether Lewis was a learned man, thus his education came as a great benefit to the journey, He had been a personal secretary to President Thomas Jefferson and was chosen for the task because of the great respect that President Jefferson had for Lewis. William Clark had skills as a draftsman, with both men being experienced frontiersman, able to survive in the territories (Perry, 2011). As leaders, the pair seemed a logical choice to lead the expedition towards its goals. However, some of the goals might have benefitted from a wider variety of learned men in order to create a larger volume of information than was brought back from the expedition. As well, the goal to create a path from the East to the West, in order to more easily accessed Asia was not a definitive success. Providing more educated men to the expedition who were like Lewis and Clark and had a variety of specialties might have allowed for deeper success for the mission. The use of soldiers for security had wisdom, but the lack of academic based minds within the group is odd considering the mandates of the mission. One of the stories that came from the adventure of the expedition includes a moment when Sacagawea was in a boat that almost capsized, dropping a number of things into the water, including some of the journals that had been kept by Lewis and Clark that were documenting the trip (Clark and Edmonds, 1983). This story, and of course the existence of the journals themselves, help to show that the nature of the journey was being attended to by those in command. However, one might wonder what would have happened if a man dedicated to botany had been included on the trip. A man who was involved in sociological studies might have provided deeper context to the interactions with the indigenous cultures. Someone who was studied in zoology and ethology might have had a great impact on the overall understanding of the territories. For an expedition that was to map the natural environment and gain an understanding of the cultures and general capacity for life, the expedition was short on academic expertise. Therefore, the requirements for a crew that would be selected for this journey would first be based upon a military presence, just as this crew was based, in order to provide security. The next level of people that would have been selected would be an appropriate group of academically inclined men who could have studied the world along the journey. Each man should be asked what they intended to get out of the journey. That question would define the appropriateness of the member, as the man would have to want to explore and discover, finding new ways in which to define the world as it was known during that time period. While the expedition is found to be respected within the annals of history, the trip could have been better had there been a more academically inclined presence within the group. The academics would have had to have the skills of the frontiersmen, or at least the fortitude, in order to survive the journey. The group included people who were useful in interpretation and in creating relationships with the Native American cultures that they encountered and this was a necessary addition to the journey. Sacagawea was a vitally important member of the group, even if she had not done all the things attributed to her, but for the historic representation that she holds of the strength and fortitude of women. The expedition that Lewis and Clark took to discover the territories of the Louisiana Purchase and to see if a path was possible from the East to the Pacific is a story of both historical and mythological significance. The journey that was undertaken by this expedition was difficult and treacherous, and would not appeal to me as a pursuit. While I like to travel, I do not like to have the aspect of the unknown that is outside of social control as a part of my travels. The tales of the discovery of the Americas all hold some mythology, while the historical values are potent and material to the cultural fabric of America’s past. However, in constructing the group that undertook this expedition, the emphasis on military and the absence of academia suggests that the group could have been more successful if a different configuration had been present. Although a great deal of information came from the expedition, it is possible that a different America would have evolved from a more academically designed pursuit. References Clark, Ella E., and Margot Edmonds. 1983. Sacagawea of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press. Hitchcock, Ripley. 1905. The Lewis and Clark expedition. Boston: Ginn & Co. Lewis, Meriwether, William Clark, and Landon Y. Jones. 2000. The essential Lewis and Clark. New York: Ecco. Lewis, Meriwether, William Clark, and Gary E. Moulton. 2003. The Lewis and Clark journals: an American epic of discovery : the abridgment of the definitive Nebraska edition. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Perry, Douglas. 2011. Teaching with documents: The Lewis and Clark expedition. The National Archives. Retrieved from http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/lewis-clark/ Read More