The Lewis and Clark Expedition Across Missouri

The Lewis and Clark Expedition Across Missouri. .

"at [blank] P M we met a Mr. Alexander La fass and three french men from St. Louis in a Small perogue on his way to the River Platt to trade with the Pania Luup or Wolf Indians. This man was extreemly friendly to us he offered us any thing he had…", William Clark, Sept. 10, 1806

, The Lewis and Clark Expedition re-entered what is now Missouri on Sept. 9, 1806, covering 73 miles as their flotilla of seven dugouts and one pirogue made their way downstream. On Sept. 10, the party camped on the island before you, once in the channel of the Missouri River. Capt. William Clark wrote in his journal that "our party appears extreamly anxious to get on, and every day appears produce new anxieties in them to get to their Country and friends." Going upstream in 1804, the boats took 66 days to reach the present-day Missouri-Iowa border, averaging 11.78 miles per day. Now, with the current behind them, the men were only a couple of weeks from St. Louis., Clark also reported that Capt. Meriwether Lewis had recovered from being accidentally shot by Pierre Cruzatte while hunting on Aug. 11, almost exactly one month earlier: he Can walk and even run nearly as well as ever he Could. The parts are yet tender &c.&." Clark also noted on this day of return to day's Missouri that "the climate is every day preceptably wormer and air more Sultery than I have experience for a long time. The nights are now So worm that I sleep Comfortable under a thin blanket." , On the afternoon of Sept. 10, the expedition met one of the many trading parties encountered during the 1806 return, all heading upriver to trade for furs. This party consisted of Alexander La Fass and three Frenchmen from St. Louis, on their way to the Platte River to trade with the Pawnee. After exchanging news, Lewis and Clark traveled only three miles before meeting a seven-man group of traders led by "La Craw," probably English trader Joseph La Croix., After parting, the expedition pushed on "through a very bad part of the river Crouded with Snags and Sawyers and incamped on a Sand bar about 4 miles above the Grand Nehamar [Big Nemaha River]." This "sandbar" is now the island before you. Few islands in the Missouri River are 200 years old, but when Big Lake became an oxbow. It escaped the channelization that eliminated many islands on the river., Traders on the Missouri River , During the return to St. Louis in 1806, the expedition met an international procession of traders moving upriver, most if not all surprised and happy to see the given-up-for-dead explorers. All were seeking beaver furs because beaver hats were the fashion in Europe and America in the early 1800s. Like the expedition's own boatmen, many of the traders' boats were powered by French-Canadians, and many of the traders were based in St. Louis, epicenter of the fur trade. Decades before Lewis and Clark, by river and by land from the north, French and British traders had been in Missouri River country from St. Louis nearly to present-day Montana. Maps and narrative accounts of the region, some translated from French, already existed. But Lewis and Clark gave added momentum to the entrepreneurs through their reports of plentiful fur-bearing animals, their government positions in St. Louis - Lewis was governor, Clark, superintendent of Indian affairs - and their personal investments in the fur trade.