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Prior to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Thomas Jefferson had sponsored several attempts to explore the West.
At the time, Americans knew relatively little about western North America. Traders and trappers had reported that the source of the Missouri River was in the mountains in the Far West. No one, however, had yet blazed an overland trail.
As president, Jefferson was eager to expand the United States, establish relations with Native American peoples in the West, and strengthen the economy through expansion of the fur trade.
The Lewis and Clark ExpeditionA detail from The Lewis and Clark Expedition, a painting by Thomas Mickell Burnham from about 1850, shows the explorers setting out into the unknown.
Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming (Museum purchase 21.78)/Shutterstock.comThe United States had recently purchased the Louisiana Territory from France. After the Louisiana Purchase was completed in 1803, there was heightened interest in exploring these lands that few people of European descent had ever visited.
Effects
The Lewis and Clark Expedition provided valuable scientific and geographic knowledge of the West.
Maps that William Clark made showing the geography of the West were published in 1810 and 1814. These remained the best maps of the region until the 1840s. The expedition did not find an all-water route across the continent, but the maps showed how to reach the Pacific Ocean by a combination of waterways and land routes.
Meriwether Lewis identified 178 plants new to science, including bitterroot, prairie sagebrush, Douglas fir, and ponderosa pine, as well as 122 animals.
The expedition aided the expansion of the fur trade.
The expedition also strengthened U.S. claims to the Pacific.
Another of the expedition’s objectives—diplomacy with Native Americans—was accomplished. The expedition held numerous councils with American Indians and promised trade with them.
American settlers and traders soon began to travel over the route the Corps of Discovery had blazed.
