2005-01-31 - 1:00 p.m.
“When only 8 years of age,” Jefferson wrote of Meriwether Lewis, “he habitually went out in the dead of night alone with his dogs, into the forest to hunt the raccoon and the opossum…” Lewis had made such an impression on Jefferson that eleven days before his inauguration he wrote saying he needed a secretary, “ not only to aid in the private concerns of the household, but also to contribute to the mass of information which it is interesting for the administration to acquire. Your knolege [sic] of the Western country, of the army and of all its interests & relations has rendered it desirable… that you should be engaged in that office.” Initially, Jefferson had it in mind that Lewis’ familiarity with the “Western country, of the army and of all its interests & relations” would help him blunt the power and influence of the Federalists who were his political foes, but it wasn’t too long after—having tutored Lewis in the finer points of natural science, geography, philosophy, literature, history, and teaching him to write—that Jefferson conceived a bigger purpose.
Jefferson wanted to find out what lay west, and whether there was a water route to the Pacific. Learning that Napoleon was willing to sell what became the Louisiana Purchase, his desire turned acute. The expedition, The Corp of Discovery, was entrusted to none other than Meriwether Lewis.
Lewis engaged William Clark, under whom he had served in the Army, to share command of the enterprise. “It was remarkable for Lewis to propose a co-command. He did not even have to add a lieutenant to the party, and most certainly did not have to share the command. Divided command almost never works and is the bane of all military men, to whom the sanctity of the chain of command is basic and the idea of two disagreeing commanders in a critical situation is anathema. But Lewis did it anyway.” Such was his regard for Clark.
One of the important purposes of the expedition was to make contact with and secure the co-operation of the Indians. It was for this reason that Sacagawea was added to the party. As the expedition entered the land of the Shoshone, it became a matter of survival for the Lewis and Clark expedition to secure horses for the trip over the Rockies. But the Indians were uncooperative, shying from contact. They feared attack by rival Indians; in fact Sacagawea had been separated from the Shoshone as a young child when abducted by the Hidatsas during a raid.
Lewis reasoned the solution to their difficulty in making contact with the Shoshone was simple. He needed only to announce to them that he was not an Indian but a white man. Clark had earlier asked Sacagawea what word her people used for the white man, but the Shoshone had no such word, never having met a white man before. Not knowing the captains' intent, Sacagawea complied as best she could and gave them the word she thought her people would use to describe those they had never seen before: “tab-ba-bone,” meaning possibly either ‘enemy’ or ‘stranger’.
(Quoted excerpts taken from “Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West” by Stephen E. Ambrose)
