Page 14
On to St. Louis
The Corps of Discovery
began to take shape. Meri-
wether Lewis and William
Clark headed the command as
co-captains. They established
an easy working style and
quickly realized their skills
complimented one another.
As they traveled west-
ward on the Ohio they hired
key personnel and learned
how to handle the keelboat in
the tricky river currents.
Their first attempt at seri-
ous scientific work occurred
at Cairo, Illinois where the
Ohio and Mississippi Rivers
came together. The two men
studied the currents, and on
November 19 turned the keel-
boat, north, into the
current of the Mississippi.
The voyagers stopped
and climbed Tower Rock on
an island in the middle of the
great river and rowed into Ft.
Kaskaskia on November 25.
Kaskaskia was the north-
ern and western most fort of
the United States when
the Captains docked at the
settlement of 467 people.
Six soldiers enlisted
at Kaskaskia from Russell
Bissell's Company, 1st U.S.
Infantry
Regiment:
Sgt. John Ordway and pri-
vates Peter M. Weiser, Rich-
a r d W i n d so r, P a t r i c k
Gass, John Boley, and John
Collins. In addition, John
Dame, John Robertson,
Ebeneezer Tuttle, Issac
White, and Alexander Hamil-
ton Willard of Capt. Amos
Stoddard's company, U.S.
Corps of Artillery, enlisted
for the journey. This
important crop of men added
immeasurably to the success
of the expedition.
Francois Labiche, an-
other half-Indian, half-
Frenchman, enlisted with the
expedition on November 30.
Lewis remained at the fort
while Clark and the new re-
cruits pushed up stream.
The presence of the mili-
tary soldiers was not an acci-
dent. From the start, the jour-
ney was to be organized and
operated as a military expedi-
tion into the interior of the
newly acquired territory.
Clark's job became the
training of the men for the
westward journey.
Lewis
remained away from the men
and took care of the paper-
work and handling of the
local politics.
The lands the Corps of
Discovery were to travel on
were just in the process of
being transferred to the
United States so delicate ne-
gotiations were critical.
The keelboat passed
Sainte Genevieve, wealthy
community of 1,000 primar-
ily French inhabitants, and
continued toward St. Louis, a
fur-trading city of
about the same size as Sainte
Genevieve.
Lewis left Kaskaskia and
arrived at Cahokia, Illinois
traveling overland. The two
captains reunited again along
the banks of the Mississippi
River on December 7, 1803.
The men immediately
went to work building log
huts for their winter quarters
and hunting parties searched
for game further inland. The
winter was time to learn to
work as a cohesive unit to
survive the adventures that
lay in front of the men.
Hinze is a professional
historian and tour guide. He
leads tours and presents at
conferences on Lewis &
Clark, and other topics per-
taining to early American
history, for the American
History Education Associa-
tion.
You can reach Hinze at
1-800-298-1861
or
AHEA2004@yahoo.com
It’s what you learn
after you know it all
that counts
- John Wooden -
Illinois Valley News, Cave Junction, OR Wednesday, October 29, 2003