In 1803, when the United States purchased Louisiana from France, the
great expanse of this new American territory was a blank--not only on
the map but in our knowledge. President Thomas Jefferson keenly
understood that the course of the nation's destiny lay westward and that
a national Voyage of Discovery must be mounted to determine the nature
and accessibility of the frontier. He commissioned his young secretary,
Meriwether Lewis, to lead an intelligence-gathering expedition from the
Missouri River to the northern Pacific coast and back. From 1804 to
1806, Lewis, accompanied by co-captain William Clark, the Shoshone guide
Sacajawea, and thirty-two men, made the first trek across the Louisiana
Purchase, mapping the rivers as he went, tracing the principal waterways
to the sea, and establishing the American claim to the territories of
Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Together the captains kept a journal, a
richly detailed record of the flora and fauna they sighted, the Indian
tribes they encountered, and the awe-inspiring landscape they traversed,
from their base camp near present-day St. Louis to the mouth of the
Columbia River. In keeping this record they made an incomparable
contribution to the literature of exploration and the writing of natural
history.