Subject: Science

Details:

Chemistry
The contributions of chemistry to success of the Expedition are also intertwined in daily life along the trail. The Corps’ use of salt as a way to make foods (sometimes nearly spoiled) more palatable and as a preservative was highlighted by the work party sent to the Pacific Ocean to boil seawater for six weeks. Crude matches proved more useful as pyrotechnic displays to impress Indians than for starting fires where flint and steel was much more reliable. Before making the portage around the Great Falls of the upper Missouri, Sacagawea was apparently greatly relieved by sulphur water from a small pond that is still accessible today. Tanning hides, making medicines, keeping gunpowder safe and dry, making soap, making hominy and other foods all required an understanding of chemical processes in a time when much of this scientific knowledge was still evolving.

Entomology
The naturalists Lewis and Clark were not much interested in finding, preserving and describing insects, but they certainly were plagued by two species in particular: mosquitoes and fleas. Along the Missouri they reported clouds of pesky mosquitoes so troublesome that even Lewis’s dog Seaman was tired of them. Traveling through and settling near Indian villages of the Columbia, they were greeted by biting fleas that lived comfortably in their bedding and clothes waiting for lunch. In the next decades, mosquitoes may have helped spread disease that wiped out the Chinooks.

Geology
Checking out the mineralogy in each section of land they passed through was another requirement Jefferson issued to the Expedition. While they did not spend a lot of time digging or picking, Lewis and Clark were careful to describe the geologic formations they passed through and the minerals they encountered along rivers and streams, valleys and mountains, plains and plateaus, cliffs and draws. If they did not know the correct names of what they found, they compared it to something from their youth and young adult years as farmers and outdoorsmen in the Virginia country.

Meteorology
Weather information was kept in the journals, even including temperature readings until the thermometers were all lost or broken. Still, daily entries usually commented on what the day was like. Frigid cold during the winter at Fort Mandan was unlike any they’d experienced in the southeastern U.S. Occasionally a weather event would receive greater detail, particularly if it posed a danger to persons or equipment. Rain and windstorms on the Missouri, for example, were responsible for at least two close calls: one when a boat carrying Sacagawea and valuable items was capsized and she calmly retrieved copies of the journals and other goods another when she, Clark and another corpsmember were taking cover in an arroyo near Great Falls and a flash flood nearly caught them all. During the weeks at Fort Clatsop, the Expedition only had a handful of days without rain and precious little sunshine to rekindle flagging spirits. The early snows of 1805 in the Bitterroots and the late snows and thaw in the following spring might today be blamed on El Niño or La Niña.

Oceanography
As they completed their journey down the Columbia past Mount Hood, the Expedition began to notice the effects of tidal action, though still in fresh water many miles away from the river estuary. Moist ocean air would affect their climate at Fort Clatsop, but temperatures were much warmer than at Fort Mandan the winter before. Though living inland from the Pacific itself, the Corps made trips to the ocean more than once. A work party spent several weeks boiling seawater to make salt near present-day Seaside, Oregon and when they heard about a beached whale further south on the Oregon coast, even Sacagawea insisted on seeing the mighty creature.

Physics
The laws of physics were important to Lewis and Clark and Corpsmembers’ practical of knowledge of this subject would be important many ways: loading and rigging their boats, building shelters and several caches, balancing weight on themselves and their horses, moving heavy dugouts over about 18 miles of hilly terrain on the portage around Great Falls, using their forge and blacksmith skills to repair metal items and make trading axes, wowing tribes with their airgun, fixing latitude and longitude.

Zoology
Again reflecting the strong interests of their President, Lewis and Clark were faithful in their mission to document fish, mammals and birds they encountered and to describe in detail any that seemed to be new to science. Their total accounting of new flora and fauna is something over 300 species not found in existing records in the U.S. or Europe. Some of the names given by Lewis and Clark are still commonplace and some of their encounters with animals are some of the most memorable stories in the journals: seeing prairie dog colonies along the middle-Missouri plains and encountering grizzly bears in present-day Montana. Some of the specimens captured by the Expedition were given rudimentary taxidermy treatment; othertimes only bones, horns and hides were kept. In every case, careful descriptions were made about appearance and habits. Still amazing today is how several small mammals and birds (including a prairie dog and magpie) were shipped back to Monticello alive in wooden cages after the cold Mandan winter and long trip back down the river and up the Ohio.

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