How2Day: Lewis & Clark Attributes

It required people with remarkble attributes to explore the frontier. Mount Clark, Yosemite with Pine Trees image by Robert Ulph from Fotolia.com
When Thomas Jefferson commissioned Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to look for a northwest passage from the eastern United States to the Pacific Ocean, he knew that the knowledge gained during their expedition would prove to be invaluable. Lewis and Clark's journey would help to reveal the character of the West. Lewis and Clark's expedition also forwarded the objectives of the United States in settling the West, though Native Americans would pay a heavy toll as a result of western expansion. They and their guide, Sacajawea, were people with interesting character and attributes.

Born in Virginia in 1774, Meriwether Lewis was from an early age fascinated by the outdoors. He quickly became an avid hunter and explorer. His fascination with natural history included an early understanding of medical herbs and native treatments. Because of these attributes and his military service, he was selected to lead an expedition into the west with William Clark. Lewis had a strong curiosity about the world, and especially the frontier. Well educated and intelligent, he was, however, apparently of a fairly sensitive and melancholy disposition. Although the details of his death are disputed by some, it seems likely that he committed suicide.

William Clark was born in Virginia in 1770, the son of fairly humble emigrants. While not poor and able to read and write (if poorly), he did not have the advantages of education that he would have liked. Undoubted, he envied Lewis for his abilities in this area. It was at about the age of thirteen, when his family moved to Kentucky, that he began to learn basic survival and hunting skills. Clark had considerable experience with native tribes, having interacted with them, or fought with them, many times before Jefferson formed the Corps of Discovery and sent it westward. This experience made him a natural choice to accompany Lewis.

Born in what is now Idaho some time around 1788, Sacajawea was from the Shoshone tribe. In 1800, she was taken captive by the Hidatsa and spirited away to North Dakota. There she was forced to marry a trapper by the name of Charbonneau. When the Lewis and Clark expedition encountered her, they realized that she could be of invaluable help to them, since she could act as a translator for them in the Shoshone territory they would soon be traveling through. During the expedition, she showed herself to be both brave and loyal, at one point diving into a river to rescue the expedition's lost notes.

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