Reference no: EM133923949

Problem

Exploring the Louisiana Purchase

The crowning achievement of President Thomas Jefferson's administration was his purchase of the Louisiana Territory from the French emperor, Napoleon, in 1803. By doing so, he effectively doubled the amount of land occupied by the United States. This annexation was 530 million acres of wilderness. While there had been indigenous people living on that land for years, it had not been mapped and categorized by a member of the United States government yet. In order to take stock of what was in that territory and what existed on the western half of the continent, Jefferson decided to send a team of explorers to investigate and report back to him. Jefferson selected Meriwether Lewis to be the leader of the team, and Lewis chose John Clark to be his co-captain.

The team was named the Corps of Discovery, and they hoped to find passages, animals, and plants which would be new and unheard of to the eastern-dwelling Americans. It was in this spirit that the team of approximately four dozen men-and Lewis's Newfoundland dog-set off from St. Louis, Missouri, in May, 1804. Get the instant assignment help.

At the time, American geographers and cartographers held suspicions that there was a waterway leading from the middle of the continent heading west to the Pacific Ocean. Believing this river existed, the expedition planned to find it. Instead, they followed other rivers north, then west, and crossed mountain ranges and prairies before eventually meeting the Pacific Ocean in Oregon. Because this territory wasn't yet on their maps, the team had to bravely guess which paths would take them to their desired destination. The country was dangerous and required all hands to keep the team safe. Various tribes of Native Americans inhabited the land they were passing through, and the expedition team wisely sought their help through their Shoshone interpreter, Sacagawea. Sacagawea was married to a French-Canadian trapper, Toussaint Charbonneau. After meeting Lewis and Clark, Charbonneau offered his help as a guide in the region as well as Sacagawea's skills as an interpreter. During the expedition, Sacagawea gave birth to a baby boy, who she carried during the rest of the journey. Did Sacagawea want to join the expedition as a young mother? She may not have had a choice. Nevertheless, she joined the team in what is now North Dakota and provided invaluable service to the Corps of Discovery during the journey.

As they traveled, the team took extensive notes. They tracked their longitude and latitudes, mapped rivers, and recorded mountain ranges. All this information would serve to make better and more useful maps of the continent. Their patron, President Jefferson, was highly interested in botany, and therefore the explorers made note of plants and flowers they encountered that did not grow along the eastern seaboard of the United States. In total, they registered 178 plants previously unknown to the botanists of Europe and America. They did the same with animals since the western United States had very different fauna from the eastern states. They recorded 122 species of animals, including prairie dogs and grizzly bears. The expedition team was not the first group of humans to see such plants and animals, but they were the first representatives of their society, and therefore each encounter was a new discovery for them.

In the subsequent 200 years, some people have discounted Lewis and Clark's team's contributions. It can be said that because the land was inhabited, they did not discover anything new; they simply claimed it for the United States' government. And while that may be true, the extent of their bravery still stands. Two hundred years ago a small team of people explored the wilderness without modern technology or convenience. This spirit of discovery and exploration that the expedition manifested is also a part of the American spirit. From Lewis and Clark to transoceanic flight, to talking pictures to the space race, the American spirit compels citizens to reach farther, race faster, and find something new. Without the patronage of President Jefferson and his clever intuition to buy the land from Napoleon, this extraordinary journey would not have been possible.

Which paragraph from the passage most strongly suggests that the Lewis and Clark expedition was not the success they expected?