[MUSIC] >> The mighty Mississippi.

[MUSIC] In the early 1800s.

The land west of this river was largely unknown to European settlers.

Exploring this uncharted land was a dream of our nation's third president, Thomas Jefferson.

[MUSIC] His dream would be realized in 1803 with the launch of an exploration known as the Corps of Discovery.

We refer to it today as the Lewis and Clark Expedition, a history making campaign that included stops along the Illinois backroads.

[MUSIC] Today, the backroads lead us to Madison County, near the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

We're here to learn more about the Corps of Discovery and Lewis and Clark's time at camp River Dubois in Illinois.

[MUSIC] >> Welcome, welcome.

Thank you Ben.

Thank you for having us out there.

We are at the Lewis and Clark State Historic Site in Hartford, Illinois.

This is Ben Pollard, who is the site interpreter.

And Ben is going to give us a tour of the place today.

And I guess it all started with a vision of one man, and that was Thomas Jefferson in.

>> Thomas Jefferson's mind.

He's been focusing on this for years.

Um, he's been looking for a way of sending someone out to explore.

It's out west.

There's been decades, long before the expedition, uh, begins preparations.

In 1803, William Clark's older brother, George Rogers Clark, had been invited to go on an expedition by Thomas Jefferson.

He has debts and business affairs to deal with.

He can't do it.

But his younger brother, William Clark, will be the one that helps to command the expedition that heads out.

>> And he joins Meriwether Lewis, and they become historic.

>> They become some of the biggest and most recognizable figures in American history.

>> As you enter the interpretive center, you're greeted by a statue of Lewis and Clark and Lewis's dog, a Newfoundland named seaman.

There's also a display describing the origins of the quest.

President Jefferson selected Lewis, his personal assistant, to lead the expedition.

He was a military leader and an avid outdoorsman.

Lewis then selected his friend William Clark, another military leader, to serve as co-leader of the excursion.

The goal was to answer some big questions Jefferson had, after making the Louisiana Purchase a $15 million expense that doubled the size of the young nation.

The trek would include filling in the blanks on the map with help from Native American tribes like the Mandan and Hidatsa.

>> Lewis and Clark are going to do it by way of the Missouri.

They're really hoping that's going to get them all the way out to the Pacific Ocean.

Um, but even then, they only really know where the Mandan and Hidatsa are.

Everything after that is going to become really unclear.

>> So this journey, they're trying to fill in all these blanks that we're seeing now, and they're going into uncharted territory that they really didn't know what to expect out there, did they?

>> Yeah.

After that first length of river, uh, where they've maybe had a chance to ask fur traders or, or, uh, different, uh, military officials from other countries that have gone up this way.

It's largely unknown.

They don't know a lot about those Native American nations that are going to encounter, uh, they don't know much about the terrain, the flora and fauna.

Uh, so when they're preparing for the expedition here at camp River Dubois, they're packing for so many unknowns.

They don't even know how long they've been gone for.

William Clark's estimating about a year and a half journey.

It ends up being almost two and a half years, two years, four months, nine days.

Uh, and this is the last place to shop, the last place to pack, get the last, uh, recruit with the right skill set, you need all to try to fill in just a little bit of this map right here.

>> We are now in the area known as visions for the expedition.

Ben.

We've talked about mapping the Louisiana Purchase, but what were some of the other visions that they had for this expedition?

>> Lewis and Clark did a bunch of ideas of what they're supposed to be doing, looking for Thomas Jefferson himself gives him many pages of handwritten instructions.

But if we break it down, there's kind of four big goals.

So making that map, filling in some of the questions of the Louisiana Territory.

That's goal number one, finding a water route that's going to get them all the way out to the Pacific.

If they can find something that's going to connect them, maybe with a few days portage, that's going to completely revolutionize the American economy.

Trade with Asia is going to be much simpler.

So they're really, really hoping the Missouri River is going to just go right to the Columbia River.

No problem.

The Rocky Mountains have a say in that.

They, uh, they're going to get in the way.

But the other big goals for the expedition are to meet on a friendly basis with all the Native American nations.

Lewis and Clark will meet with over 50 different Native American groups along the way.

And they're supposed to get to know them.

They're supposed to help introduce the idea of trade with the Americans.

They're supposed to study them.

Lewis is making some early ethnographies, descriptions of the language, the culture, the religion of the people they're meeting, and they're supposed to do this all trying to establish friendship with all these new tribes.

And then, of course, the flora and fauna.

Everything's new out west.

Uh, for these outdoorsmen that have signed up for this trip, this is a treat.

They get to do some really cool hunting, some really cool, uh, bird spotting.

Uh, this whole trip is going to let them dig in and see a lot of new nature.

300 different plant and animal species documented by Lewis and Clark on this trip.

>> And this part of the site describes those goals.

>> Exactly.

We've got a panel here that talks about the Native American nations, and it gives a scale to show kind of the trade centers amongst these different nations.

We show some of the Spanish and the English territories to show kind of that fine, that fine path.

Lewis and Clark have to weave to not be too far on anyone's in someone else's yard, if you will.

And then we've got the flora and fauna and some of the the questions of science that Lewis and Clark were trying to answer.

They've been asked to look for volcanoes, mountains of salts, uh, but also just what grows out here, what's going to be good for farmers if they make their way out here?

>> The expedition began with a keelboat trip down the Ohio River, with a stop near Louisville to pick up men whom Clark recruited for the expedition.

>> Well, we refer to them as the nine young men from Kentucky.

The nine young men from Kentucky are, uh, long hunters, farmers that have these frontier skills.

None of these guys, as far as we know, had served in the Army.

Or if they had not for very long, but they seek out William Clark.

We heard you going on a trip.

We want in.

And so these are these are go getters.

They're hunters.

They're they're guys that would have been exciting to go along and see.

>> Rough and tumble.

>> Kind of guy.

They were seeing it through their eyes would have been would have been something.

>> Okay.

>> They're also going to pick up York.

They're.

York is enslaved to Captain Clark.

Uh, he's the only non-volunteer they're picking up as they're coming down the Ohio.

Everyone else has to prove their skills.

They have to, um, beat out other soldiers to get to go on this trip.

York.

We don't know if he wanted to go or not.

Clark decides he's coming.

Um, but this is going to be still an indication that York is quite the competent hunter.

Uh, because William Clark had already decided he wasn't going to take anyone that couldn't pull their own weight.

So he's putting a lot of trust in him, but he's also not giving him the choice.

>> But he also served as a valuable asset when it came to the Native American relations.

Right?

>> Yeah.

There are Native American tribes that don't have a particular interest in being with, uh, Lewis and Clark.

They've already met with white traders that are Spanish or French or, uh, British.

They don't they don't see a big difference with the Americans as they're coming in, but they've never seen someone like York and they want to know his story.

So they'll agree to sit down because they want to meet him.

So he becomes a man that goes from enslaved status to a diplomat of sorts, or this, uh, point of interest, at least for the for the Native Americans.

>> Yeah.

And sadly, though, once the expedition is over, he must go back to the enslaved status.

>> Snatched back into slavery.

Yeah.

>> The next stop was Fort Massac, near present day Metropolis, Illinois.

It was here where Lewis and Clark recruited another valuable member of the mission.

>> George Drouillard Metropolis is home to Superman.

Fort Massac was home to George Roulade.

He's pretty close.

Uh, he is going to be this super interpreter hunter tracker, um, French father, Shawnee mother who has been along the rivers.

He knows many different languages.

And maybe most importantly, he knows the Plains Indian Sign language.

It's a semi universal language of hand signs and sign language that get the big ideas across.

Hey, we come in peace.

We'd like to camp here.

Can we meet with your chief?

Do any of you speak these languages?

And he is going to be critical to the success of the expedition.

Without Drouillard.

They're not going to be able to talk to the people they want to talk to.

>> After recruiting Julliard and others from Fort Massac, the party camped for a few days at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers near modern day Cairo.

A marker at Fort Defiance State Park pays tribute to their time here.

This is where Lewis and Clark tested their sextant and other equipment needed for mapping the new territory, a task that would fall largely on Clark.

>> Map making is going to be really easy to practice here, because at this point, there have been dozens and dozens and dozens of people over well over 100 years that have been mapping this one spot.

They know what the number is supposed to be when they finish doing the math.

So this lets them make sure that everything's tuned in correctly.

Lewis had just trained in Philadelphia under some of the best cartographers in North America, and he's able to give some pointers to to Clark.

And Clark has this amazing, rich background, having helped survey with his dad and his older brothers throughout parts of Kentucky.

So they're, they're trading trading tips and making sure their equipment is going to work.

>> So then they eventually make their way up the Mississippi and they arrive here and up.

>> Is going to be really important to what you just said.

They struggled coming down the Ohio.

The water was too low, but turning and going against the current really drives home how tough an expedition this is going to be.

Their goal is to find the headwaters of the Missouri.

They're about to go the entire length of one of the longest rivers in North America, and they realize we don't have enough soldiers for that.

So they're going to raid Fort Kaskaskia, a.

14 new recruits are going to be added on.

Some of them have been in the Army, some of them are from the area.

They're really going to help to to build up the Corps of Discovery here at Fort Kaskaskia.

>> The Corps spent the winter on the Illinois side of the Mississippi, preparing for a spring excursion into the new territory.

In December of 1803 they built a camp near wood River, or, as the French called it, Riviere du Bois.

The group would call Camp Dubois home for the next five months, and it proved to be a valuable time.

>> Five months of brainstorming for a trip where they don't know where they're going, how long it's going to take to get there, who they're going to meet along the way.

And this is the last place to get the things they might possibly need.

So this is a chance for the captains to look at the soldiers.

These guys were recruited.

Are they worth it?

Are they going to cause trouble?

They're soldiers that get kicked out of camp here.

Uh, better to subtract them here than have them drag down the party later on.

We want reliable soldiers.

Uh, so this is the last chance to get information from the locals.

And they're going to make the most of those five bonds here at camp River Dubois.

We see point after point along the trail in the journals where preparations here pay off big time later on.

>> The men under Lewis and Clark's command had to build a frontier fort by hand, with timbers taken from nearby woods.

>> What were the quarters like for the troops at full capacity?

>> Camp River is going to have about 50 people in it, so each corner cabin is going to have up to a dozen soldiers.

They're sharing bunks.

So two to a bed, which sounds a little uncomfortable, but it gets down to the -20s here over the winter.

So maybe sharing some body heat and a blanket isn't so bad.

Um, these are going to be pretty spacious quarters compared to Fort Mandan and Fort Clatsop.

Um, and they would have felt familiar to a family of ten back home.

So.

So these guys, this would feel, this would feel normal, even if a little crowded by our standards.

>> The highlight of this interpretive center near where Camp Dubois once stood, is a display featuring a life sized replica of the keel boat.

The expedition used to travel from Pittsburgh to North Dakota.

>> Ben, this is incredible.

This is well worth the trip to see this keel boat.

>> The keel boat to scale from Captain Clark's notes.

This is the easiest way to picture yourself loading up supplies.

Heading out for a journey.

Uh, it just being there in person against it really just gives you that much deeper appreciation.

>> It sure does.

But how in the world did you get it in here?

Did you build it on site?

>> So it was built by a boat builder, uh, Butch Bevier, who has made a few of these historic models and replicas of the boats along the trail.

Um, but this one here, the whole building is designed around it.

So when you come in and look up, the ceilings, go up past the mast so we can fit it up in full sail here in the building.

So one of the last things they did before they finished the wall here was back the trailer in and unload the boat.

They actually had it turned around the first time in the wrong direction.

They had to pull it back out, bring it in, make sure it was facing west.

Uh, but the full scale boat dropped in here, made by Butch.

It's really well done.

>> The 55 foot long keel boat shows the outer structure on one side, and a cutaway of the contents on the other, giving visitors an idea of what items were stored on the boat and how they were packed for travel.

>> If you if you come to the visitor center, you're going to be struck by how narrow the boat is eight foot at the widest, and its design is not to be particularly nimble on the water.

It's not it's not very responsive.

It's difficult to sail or to row or Order!

Pull.

It's a difficult barge, is how they're referring to it in their notes.

But it's narrow because it can fit through sandbars.

The Ohio, the Mississippi, the Missouri.

They're full of sandbars.

These are much slower moving rivers.

There's not the locks and dams and other water management systems we're used to today.

Right.

And so the goal is to get a lot of heavy stuff upriver.

And this does that job very well.

This thing had anywhere from 15 to 20 tons being loaded onto it.

And that's everything.

That's gifts and trade goods for the Native American nations.

That's food, medicine, hunting gear, all of it being loaded up on this and the other boats.

>> So it took some creative packing.

Exactly.

>> All winter long, Clark is going to have the men load the boats, take them out for a test spin, bring them back.

And he's taking notes.

He's too front heavy.

This stuff isn't in the right spot.

Um, I like to compare it to a dad who's really into where his things go.

In the truck or in the car on a camping trip.

Only on a on a multi-ton scale.

>> And there were four ways, I guess, to get the boat to move.

For lack of a better term.

>> The favorite way to move it is that sail.

Um, if you can throw that thing up and let it push you, that's an easy day.

You can almost read the elation in their journals as they get a good breezy day, but they're going against the wind most of the time.

Uh, if the water is deep enough, you can row.

So they have these massive sweeps that are 10 to 12 foot long, sweeping out over the river, pushing the boat if it gets a little shallower.

But the men can stay on the boat.

You're gonna have big poles.

You're gonna walk along the length pushing it.

They're almost the poles are almost like spider legs going down and pushing the boat along the bottom of the river.

But the most common way to move the boat is also the least favored way to move the boat.

And that's Cordelli tying off ropes to the front of the boat and then walking along the shores or in the shallows, towing that boat upriver.

It's backbreaking work, and they're still averaging about ten miles a day.

>> And then they had to pack all of their supplies and fit those in.

And we can see that on the other side, right?

Yes.

>> It's cut away just for you to get to explore the packing process.

>> Okay.

[MUSIC] Let's talk about some of the items that they had to bring along.

And I guess a lot of it was for food for the trip.

Correct?

>> They're going to pack thousands of pounds of salted pork, salted beef stuff that they're going to have to rely on to keep themselves fed when game is scarce.

But game is going to be their main form of sustenance.

They need reliable hunters, and hunters need reliable tools.

So they're going to have rifles just made at Harper's Ferry that they're going to be relying on, and lots and lots of gunpowder.

We have here a replica of some of the gunpowder canisters that Lewis especially had made for the expedition.

£12 canisters plugged up here and inside is going to be the appropriate amount of powder to fire the amount of lead holding it on the outside.

Each one is its own self-contained, correct proportions of powder and lead.

This will make sure that they are fed and protected on the entire trip.

They don't run out of this.

They run out of a lot of other things, but the lead and powder they have plenty of.

>> And they would melt this outside canister down to make the little balls.

>> Exactly.

Pour the powder out into your powder horns or some other storage.

Break off these chunks, put them in a pan over the fire, and you're forming your your musket balls, your rifle balls, all from the lead that was containing and keeping that powder dry before.

>> Wow, Ben, I know much of what they brought with them had to do with relations with the Native American tribes.

And these so-called Indian bales were part of that, correct?

>> Absolutely.

Lewis and Clark know that one of their main goals is going to meet with the Native Americans and get to know them, They even entice them into trade with Americans in the future.

And a great way to do that is to have these prepackaged, prepackaged bundles ready to go.

So they're going to hire a man by the name of John Hay from Cahokia.

And he's been trading up the Lower Missouri for many years.

He knows some of the first 30 some odd tribes they're going to run into.

He's got advice for relations with them, and he's going to pre-pack the bundles, write their name on it, and the number in which he thinks they're going to run into them so they can pack these in part in size based on importance, how important it's going to be to make a good impression with this tribe.

So for the Mandan and Hidatsa, who they're going to stay with all winter, right?

They get nice big bundles with lots of stuff in them, but each one is going to be packed with what they think that tribe is going to want.

Maybe different colored beads depending on the tribe.

Tobacco is going to be this ceremonial, almost sacred gift that they can give.

Uh, in early meetings with the chiefs along the way, finished metal goods are going to be huge.

So scissors, thimbles, tomahawks, knives.

All of these are going to be incredibly useful.

And they're very practical tools.

So they're small lightweight, but they're going to carry a lot of weight with the tribes that they're meeting.

>> Throughout the interpretive center, you have these little hidden gems where people can open it up and reveal something underneath, in this case, about the whiskey that they brought along the all.

>> Important.

>> Whiskey.

>> This is a military requirement.

You've got to have this.

If you're taking soldiers on a trip.

Now, soldiers are guaranteed as part of their army ration, four ounces of hard liquor before bed every night.

Lewis and Clark are going to stock up on it here.

It's coming from Kentucky.

They're trading for some down in Cahokia.

This is part of what's fueling the expedition.

>> You were talking about the whiskey.

There's the whiskey right there with.

>> The tap ready to go for the evening rations.

>> And what else do we see in this display?

>> So we have a small cabin here on the back of the back of the barge.

and it looks like it might be where someone's sleeping, but most of the time they're setting up camp on shore.

So after every day of hard work, you're setting up your tents, setting up your camp.

And that's including the captains as well.

So there is a place to stay though.

This is going to be for your injured or sick soldiers.

Maybe if a captain's been up all night using that sextant there to take some readings of the stars, maybe they're catching up on some sleep, but what's stored in here is kind of the, uh, hard to replace items.

So we've got some scientific tools.

The sextant, the thermometers that are easy to break, the scientific books that they're going to be references as they're writing about the flora and fauna that's all loaded up in here.

We have on display the fiddle.

Maybe Pierre Cruzatte is keeping it here so it doesn't get wet as they're traveling, but he can bust that out at night to raise the mood of the soldiers with some of his tunes.

>> And I imagine during the winter of 1803 and 1804 at camp River Dubois, they needed some lighter times.

>> Exactly.

Hard work in the.

In the cold and the wet dragging logs in the camp.

That's going to be a bit of a downer after a few days of that.

So some good music, some good conversation, maybe a little good whiskey, uh, gonna put all the soldiers in a much better mood.

>> And after going through this hard winter, then they had to make this incredible journey.

And what was the incentive for these men to make that trip where they didn't know if they were going to be gone for a year, year and a half, two years or longer.

>> It's an open ended trip where they've been told, you can't have a family because you might die.

Who's going on that trip?

That's a great question.

Some of them know that they're going to get some extra pay.

They're hoping for land grants.

Land grants are easy to flip for money, or you can build a farm and start a family.

Uh, there's a lot of options with a land grant.

Um, some of their soldiers are just in it for the adventure.

John Colter will go off and become a mountain man after this.

Uh, and some of them are wanting that insider track of information.

Americans haven't really been on the fur trade on the Missouri River for very long.

So they're going to be some of the first Americans to know where the good trapping is, who the trade, who to trade with on the river.

Mhm.

They now have insider information to start their own fur trade business.

So a lot of these guys are thinking steps ahead.

They have to survive this trip.

But then if they do, they're going to have some really valuable intelligence for the entire Louisiana Territory.

>> Incredibly, despite the dangers from weather conditions, possible confrontations with natives and fur traders and animal attacks, only one person perished on the journey.

Sergeant Charles Floyd died of an apparent appendicitis attack.

>> Ben.

Once they left camp River Dubois, they headed up the Missouri River.

And that was, I guess, the actual start of the Corps of Discovery.

And that is what's depicted in this area, correct?

>> Yeah.

We've got a timeline of the expedition from when they set out here.

May 14th of 1804, up the Missouri, encountering Native American nations, seeing new plants and animals, staying with the Hidatsa and the Mandan over the winter up in North Dakota, continuing on to the Rockies all the way out to the Pacific Northwest.

This gives you an idea of what they're saying.

We've got pictures of animals and sights they might have seen.

The sketches that are on the wall are all from the journals.

Those are Captain Clark's sketches of things that he saw along the way.

We wanted to focus on Lewis and Clark and their preparations here at camp River Dubois, but you can't tell the Lewis and Clark story without giving at least a taste of what they saw in that two and a half year journey.

>> That historic journey also included the incredible story of Sacagawea, the teenage Native American wife of guide Toussaint Charbonneau, who joined the expedition in North Dakota.

>> She is going to be an interpreter.

That is critical in getting them the horses they need to cross the Rockies from the Lemhi Shoshone.

Uh, she is going to help keep them from starvation on a few different counts.

Uh, because she knows how to forage for food in areas that they're not familiar with.

Uh, we probably would have had gaps in our knowledge of the expedition without her.

She jumps into the river when a wave washes away a box carrying some of the letters and journal entries.

She jumps into the water and saves those documents.

So she is an incredible woman.

Probably only a teenager, 14, 15, maybe 16.

And she's doing all of this with a newborn.

Little Jean Baptiste is traveling with them on this journey.

An incredible woman, um, who she's one of the more famous members of the expedition and probably could be discussed even more, in my opinion.

>> Yes.

>> There is so much more to see and touch at the Interpretive Center, providing young and old alike with a hands on look at history made in our own backyard.

[MUSIC] >> We have really enjoyed our time here at the Lewis and Clark State Historic Site.

If you would like more information on this place, you can scan this QR code.

It will take you to the site's website for more information on upcoming events.

Their hours of operation, and much more information.

Make sure you make it a stop as you travel the Illinois backroads.

[MUSIC]