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EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

Subject: Social Studies

Details:

Anthropology
Lewis and Clark were the first anthropologists to study Native Americans living along the Missouri, Snake and Columbia River systems. Their ethnographical records are still cited today by many researchers and writers who seek to understand Indian lifestyles that have since disappeared. For example, Chinook villages along the lower Columbia were decimated by disease by 1830, yet the careful descriptions by Lewis and Clark give us important information about their culture.

Archaeology
The journals record several instances where Lewis and Clark discovered historic sites, old burial grounds and remnants of ancient villages likely dating back hundreds even thousands of years. Near present-day _____, a (the conical mound associated with spirits) was described by the explorers and is still safely visible today (though on private property). The only physical Trail evidence remaining from the Corps of Discovery is protected at a BLM park east of Billings, Montana–Pompey’s Pillar where Clark carved his name and date in the sandstone, now surrounded by subsequent initials over the intervening years.

Economics
A primary motive for the Expedition was commercial: to hopefully find a direct water link between the eastern U.S. and the Columbia River/Pacific Coast so beaver pelts and other valuable furs could more quickly be traded with India and Asia. Along the way, Lewis and Clark discovered there was already a very active trading system that had been underway for centuries and that the Hudsons Bay and Northwest trading companies had accessed in present-day Canada. They were also surprised to discover that European goods had already been traded into the mid-Columbia region during the ten short years since the Columbia River had been discovered. They also discovered they’d failed to bring along enough trading goods of their own, particularly the highly-favored blue beads. What they found in the Columbia River system was a sophisticated marketplace, particularly in The Dalles region, where salmon was the medium that attracted thousands of Indians annually–any feuds forgotten when valuable food and other trade items were at stake.

Ethnography
This subset of anthropology dealing with language and customs of indigenous peoples was a particular strength for both Lewis and Clark whose detailed notes give us an inside look at the life of Native Americans at the time of their encounters. Lewis was tutored with experts in the field in Philadelphia and apparently devised an elaborate spread sheet to record basic words and the phonetics of each tribe and band they met. Unfortunately these records have never been found. Being European American, their journals provide many examples of bias and stereotypes about Indian life and customs that sound all too familiar today. However, Lewis and Clark also recognized how much their success depended on help from the tribes they met.

Geography/Cartography
Part of their mission as explorers of new American territories was to prepare the way for expansion and identify potential centers of commerce. Jefferson not only wanted to identify transportation links between the Atlantic and Pacific, but had a compelling personal urge to find out what was in the "garden" Congress had purchased for about 22 cents an acre. Some thought mastodons might still be inhabiting the territory or that there were great pillars of salt and other strange geographic features. The consolidated map Lewis and Clark carried (based on intelligence from many sources) predicted a single range of mountains, likely the same height as the Appalachians, with perhaps a half-day portage at most between the Missouri and Columbia. What the Expedition discovered, of course, was a series of mountain ranges more difficult than anyone ever imagined (but, of course, the local Indians knew well). The careful field notes and drawings kept by the captains were compiled by Clark during those long, dreary months at Fort Clatop and refined further when the trip was completed. Many experts marvel today at how accurate they were in documenting the geography they encountered and the eventual communities that are now located at strategic points along their original trail.

History: American
Lewis and Clark were the first land-based explorers to document the new Louisiana Purchase and lay claim to the Oregon Territories that would officially join the union some 50 years later. They were the first Americans to "stake out" the lands lying west of the Continental Divide and thence down the Clearwater, Snake and mid-Columbia Rivers. British and Americans established loose claims on the mouth of the Columbia and part way upriver based on forays in the 1790s, but no white men knew for sure what lay beyond the estuary. They knew nothing of the huge summer trading center already operating very efficiently near The Dalles, 25 years before a trading post at Fort Vancouver and 175 years before blue light specials, casinos, outlet malls. This chapter in America’s history opened the door to massive immigration to America’s Garden of Eden: rich agriculture production, huge extraction industries, vast hydroelectric power infrastructures, diverse manufacturing opportunities and all the new problems these benefits create.

History: World
The Lewis and Clark Expedition was planned and carried out against a backdrop of worldwide politics and international intrigue. More than one nation had their eye on the territory lying west of the Mississippi. There was yet no fixed boundary with Canada, but Alexander MacKenzie, another famous Western explorer, had already tried to find the fabled Northwest Passage by following a route that led him to the Fraser River flowing out of British Columbia today. French Canadian trappers, usually traveling alone, were already busy in present-day Minnesota, North and South Dakota and Montana. Russians had designs on the Oregon Country as they moved southward from Alaska and toward Puget Sound. Spanish and British sea captains had been plying Pacific waters for many years, trading for furs as they could. Indeed it was beaver pelts that were a key factor in the international trade pressure to improve trade routes from America to India. Businessmen needed a faster way to get their goods to the marketplace and manufacturing centers, particularly to make top hats preferred by those who could afford their fine water repellant qualities and sleek appearance.

History: Western
Lewis and Clark and the 58 tribes they met typically receive a few paragraphs in Western History studies, but this story of how a culturally diverse team entered a culturally diverse territory and forever changed the West deserves a lot more study and reflection. As Lewis and Clark were nearing St. Louis on the return trip, they passed boats of trappers and traders heading to the West they’d heard about after first reports were printed of the Corps’ first 10 months on the trail. But already there had been major changes underway: smallpox had wiped out many Indian communities, buffalo herds were beginning to dwindle and would nearly be gone by the late 1800s. The history of the West really begins 10,000 years ago when Kennewick Man did his vision quest, when She Who Watches began keeping her eye on everything that came and went, when music and dancing kept traditions alive in Mandan mound houses, when Nez Perce forefathers predicted that white men would come someday. Maybe none of them would be surprised today that thunderbirds (California condor) seen by Lewis and Clark have been replaced by Boeing jetliners and that Sioux City, Iowa would be the corporate home of Gateway Computers, a box that would make a shaman’s work easier today.

History: State
Every state in America today, along the Trail or not, can find a way to link its history to Lewis and Clark and the Indians they met. Members of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation come from every state and many nations. Descendants of Expedition members are proud to claim their linkage to the story. Some Corpsmen figured prominently in further development of the USA: John Colter explored Yellowstone Park, Jean Baptise Charbonneau (the infant son of Sacagawea and Toussant Charbonneau) was adopted by Clark, educated in Europe, served as a guide on the Mormon Trail, was a California goldminer and died at age 61 in Eastern Oregon while traveling to Montana on news of a new goldstrike.

Political Science
The co-captains may have benefited from a crash course in Political Science to help them deal with the Washington bureaucracy, with suppliers, with Army officers to provide good men, with businessmen in St. Louis and of course with any number of Indian chiefs and tribal members with dozens of different languages and widely varying cultural patterns. They never knew two different Spanish forces had been sent out of Mexico to try to stop the Corps of Discovery from moving westward, one reaching as close as 400 miles of the Expedition before turning back. Another group of Spanish-speaking venturers led by de Anza had established the Presidio in San Francisco some 25 years earlier. How the U.S. wound up buying the Louisiana Purchase rather than gradually taking it over by settlement may have been because Napoleon needed funds to finance his war in Europe. The territory had already passed hands between Spain and France. And back in Washington DC, even in Congress there was a great debate whether such an investment was needed when the land might be something as strange and fearful then as Mars might be to some of us today.

Psychology
Understanding how people behave under varying conditions was a talent both captains practiced daily. After recruiting their basic Corpsmembers, and training them at Wood River, Illinois for several months, Lewis and Clark still faced difficulties during the first weeks of the Expedition. The journals describe problems with alcohol, fighting, insolence, sleeping on the job. After leaving Fort Mandan, the captains knew individual gifts and talents would be tested to the limit. Some believe other good reasons for Sacagawea and her son to accompany the Expedition were not only be her ability to help obtain horses near the Rockies and identify key geographic landmarks, but be a visible sign of peaceful intent to suspicious tribes and to provide the men with a daily reminder of loved ones back home. Psychology at work is found throughout the journals: appearing stoic in the face of Indian threats or being assertive if that seemed to be a better ploy, calmy talking a Corpsmember through a precarious cliff-hanging accident, encouraging men to keep their attention focused by making more moccasins than they would ever use during long, rainy weeks at Fort Clatsop.

Sociology
Group behavior, particularly teamwork, was equally as important as healthy individual psyches. Rarely did individual motives render harm to the Expedition family. Group pressure seemed to maintain a good balance when times were rough as well as when times were easier and slower. The journals seem to reflect a lot of caring and trust, particularly, for example, when we know that the majority of Corps members were from a society that would have viewed York just as another slave or Sacajawea as just another Indian and may not have felt comfortable in close quarters with people different from themselves.


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