A Lewis & Clark poem
http://meganwillome.com/2013/09/29/a-lewis-clark-poem/
LEWIS & CLARK, 1805-1806
From the border of Idaho and Montana
no one heard from them.
They disappeared
into wildness only Indians knew.
Just in case
the expedition failed
Lewis & Clark sent back
a keelboat
filled with letters, reports to President Jefferson
and treasures:
four magpies and a prairie dog.
Safe in the hands of their least capable co-
workers, the craft traveled all the long way
down the Missouri River
while the duo journeyed on to the Pacific.
When they reached St. Louis a year later
the crowds gasped. They were not dead,
only forgotten. Jefferson welcomed them home —
“the length of time without hearing of you
had begun to be felt awfully.”
This poet says she got her information from http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2013/09/23
September 23:
It was on this day in 1806 that Meriwether Lewis and William Clarkreturned to St. Louis, Missouri, after a journey that had lasted almost two and a half years and covered 8,000 miles. Lewis, Clark, and their crew had traveled all the way to the Pacific Ocean and back, exploring the new territory that Thomas Jefferson had added to the nation through the Louisiana Purchase.
Lewis and Clark each kept detailed journals, which is why we know so much about their trip. During the expedition itself, however, they had very limited communication with anyone back home. They left St. Louis in the spring of 1804 and spent their first winter at an encampment on the Missouri River in what is now North Dakota. In May of 1805, they set off west from their encampment into unknown territory. They were worried that they wouldn't survive and Jefferson would never receive any findings from the trip. So in April of 1805, they sent a large keelboat back down the river to St. Louis — accompanied by the least helpful of the expedition's members. They included some private letters to friends and family, but mostly reports for Jefferson. They wrote extensively about the new plants, animals, landscapes, and people that they encountered. They were especially amazed by some of the animals — grizzly bears, antelope, and endless herds of buffalo. Along with descriptions, maps, weather data, accounting records, and journals, the keelboat included all sorts of objects. There were skeletons and skins, antlers, dried plants and rocks. There were Native American artifacts, including a cooking pot, a bow and arrows, corn, and a buffalo skin beautifully painted with a battle scene. And there were live animals: four magpies, a sharp-tailed grouse, and a prairie dog that the men had captured the summer before in South Dakota and kept alive in a cage for months. The keelboat traveled down the Missouri River to St. Louis, at which point everything was transferred to another boat and taken down the Mississippi to New Orleans, and from there put on a ship in the Gulf of Mexico and taken up to Washington, D.C. The reports and specimens reached Jefferson in August, by which point Lewis and Clark were at the present-day border of Idaho and Montana. It was the last news that anyone would hear of the expedition until their return to St. Louis.
So when Lewis and Clark did return, everyone was astonished. Two days earlier they had arrived in St. Charles, Missouri; expedition member Sergeant John Ordway wrote in his journal: "Towards evening we arrived at St. Charles fired three rounds and Camped at the lower end of the Town. The people of the Town gathered on the bank and could hardly believe that it was us for they had heard and had believed that we were all dead and were forgotten."
When they returned to St. Louis on this day in 1806, Lewis wrote a letter to tell Jefferson the news; it took almost a month to reach the president. Lewis wrote: "It is with pleasure that I announce to you the safe arrival of myself and party ... In obedience to your orders we have penetrated the Continent of North America to the Pacific Ocean, and sufficiently explored the interior of the country to affirm with confidence that we have discovered the most practicable rout which dose exist across the continent by means of the navigable branches of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers."
After some time in St. Louis, the explorers made their way eastward. They stopped at the home of Clark's sister in Louisville, where the citizens threw a banquet and bonfire in their honor. Lewis continued on to Monticello, Jefferson's home in Virginia, to report on the expedition. In late October, Jefferson wrote to Lewis: "I received, my dear sir, with unspeakable joy your letter of Sep. 23 announcing the return of yourself, Capt. Clarke & your party in good health to St. Louis. The unknown scenes in which you were engaged, & the length of time without hearing of you had begun to be felt awfully. Your letter having been 31 days coming, this cannot find you at Louisville & I therefore think it safe to lodge it at Charlottesville. Its only object is to assure you of what you already know my constant affection for you & the joy with which all your friends here will receive you."
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