To the Moon!
Historians can’t help but draw a parallel between the Apollo moon landing in 1969 and the transcontinental voyage of the Corps of Discovery. The vision of a president to explore the unknown, the gathering of specimens never before known to science, a calculated risk bankrolled by Congress—all uncanny similarities. Sure, Captain Meriwether Lewis standing with one foot on each side of the Continental Divide doesn’t seem to hold the same public appeal as Neil Armstrong’s “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” But the Corps of Discovery was the same sort of long shot, a one in a million chance, maybe even more of a dice game than the moon landing. Nothing prepared them for what they would encounter. The Great Falls, the wildlife, Native Americans and the rugged Rocky Mountains were all new to Lewis and Clark, and they couldn’t radio Houston when they were hit with giant hailstones, when their canoes capsized in icy water or when a grizzly appeared in camp.

Astronaut James Lovell described the significance of the Corps of Discovery when he said, “I think that the nature of America, how it was born, how it grew up, sort of exemplified the idea of exploration. We were a young country, we grew, and I think this idea of being explorers is ingrained in our psyche here in this country. I think we’ll always be explorers.”

They Ate What?!
Do horse meat, dog and candles sound appetizing? How about an oily sludge made of beef broth and vegetables encased in lead canisters? It certainly isn’t the Galloping Gourmet, but it was how members of the Corps of Discovery survived the arduous hike across the Continental Divide.

First, they broke out the emergency rations: what they called Portable Soup, which was made by boiling beef and vegetables down to a mush and sealing it in heavy, lead canisters. The Portable Soup was made long before they set out up the Missouri River, so it was no wonder they waited to eat it until it was all they had. When that was gone, they began killing their horses—colts first because they weren’t carrying any supplies. They ate three colts in all. Then, when that plan was exhausted, they ate their candles and an unlucky wolf that happened by.

By the time they stumbled out of the Rocky Mountains, they were on the very brink of starvation and at the mercy of unfriendly Indians, until an old Indian woman pleaded with her chief to take pity on the men. He did, and gave them dried berries, camas roots and salmon. The men, unaccustomed to the rich, new diet, were sick for days.

The Spirit of Democracy
On November 24, 1805, Lewis and Clark faced a dilemma: where to spend the winter. Should they stay near the ocean where they might see a trade ship and stock up on much needed supplies? Should they winter with the Indians along the north shore of the Columbia River? Should they move inland along the south side of the river, or travel back the way they had come in hopes of finding dry ground and game?

Though the United States was still in its infancy in this case, democracy was exercised. They put the decision out to a vote of the people. Everyone had a vote, and together the group decided to winter inland along the south shore of the Columbia River.

Sacagawea voted more than 100 years before women or Indians were granted the privilege. And York, Clark’s black slave, also voted 60 years before slaves were emancipated.

The Difficulties of Translation
In the course of the two-and-a-half-year-long journey, the Corps of Discovery encountered some 50 different Indian tribes, and since nearly every tribe had its own language, communication was a constant struggle.

Lewis and Clark could manage to exchange basic information through hand signals and gestures, but for any real communication they relied on a cumbersome method of translation. When they could find a speaker of Shoshone, they called on the services of Sacagawea, who would translate the conversation into Hidatsa for her husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, who would convey the message to Francois Labiche, a member of the Corps who spoke both French and English. Labiche would then pass the information on to Lewis and Clark.

Charbonneau spoke no English, only French, but he could speak Hidatsa, Sacagawea’s second language. She was a Shoshone, kidnapped as a child by the Hidatsa Indians. Sacagawea spoke no English either, but, thankfully, she knew the language of at least one tribe that the Corps expected to encounter later in the expedition. She became invaluable in August 1805, when Lewis and Clark used her skills as an interpreter to trade for Shoshone horses to cross the Continental Divide.

Mammoths, Megalonyx and Monsters
Contemporary science asserted that the West was populated by prehistoric beasts and menacing savages. After the discovery of a fossilized giant sloth, which President Thomas Jefferson named the Megalonyx, and the finding of mammoth skeletons in Ohio, it was surmised that the creatures were still among the living somewhere west of the Mississippi River. Captain Meriwether Lewis received instruction on how to spot them, and was told to carefully observe the unusual beasts.

Needless to say, the expedition had its hands full with the grizzly bears they encountered, and likely thanked goodness they didn’t encounter a giant sloth, or woolly mammoth.

Here, Take This
From broken bones to rash to fever to abdominal pain, the common medical treatment in the early 1800s was bloodletting. And that was the advice the United States' premier physician, Dr. Benjamin Rush, gave Meriwether Lewis before the Corps of Discovery set off from St. Louis in 1804. If that didn’t help, medicine was given to induce sweating or the patient was instructed to take a strong laxative, developed by Rush himself. The powerful pills were aptly named “Rush’s Thunderbolts” by the crew because of the intense, immediate reaction they produced.

Mercury was prescribed for the rampant venereal diseases common at that time. Altogether, Lewis took with him some 30 different primitive medicines including laudanum, opium and potassium nitrates as well as a variety of forceps, syringes, bloodletting lancets and other medical equipment.

Given the modern medical practices of the early 1800s, it’s a wonder no one on the expedition died from the treatment of illness.

Spelling. Yikes!
Lewis and Clark were fearless in their approach to recording the journey of the Corps of Discovery. They spelled words phonetically, often forgot punctuation or used it incorrectly and loaded their journal entries with spontaneous capitalization. There are 19 different documented spellings of “mosquito” in the journals of Lewis and Clark and almost as many versions of the word “Sioux.”

The captains were a picture of literacy in their day, but by today’s standards, their journals would be an editor’s nightmare. Keep in mind, however, that they were written a full 20 years before Noah Webster published his first Dictionary of Standard Spellings.

Spelling and grammar aside, Lewis and Clark were eager to stretch their poetic wings at the sight of Montana’s landscape and wildlife. One historian labeled them the “writingest explorers of their time.”

By the Numbers
When the Corps of Discovery set out from St. Louis, Missouri, into the unknown Louisiana Territory in May of 1804, the party consisted of just 43 men, a dog and a fleet of two canoes and one flat-bottomed keelboat loaded with 3,500 pounds of gear. What lay ahead of them was some 4,000 miles of river, through country known only to the Indian tribes who lived there.

A brainchild of America’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, the expedition was led by two captains, Meriwether Lewis, who was just 28 years old, and William Clark, 32. A congressional appropriation of $2,500 started the expedition officially, along with letters of credit, the party was stocked with supplies including an arsenal of the finest flintlock rifles of the time, 30 gallons of brandy and 12 pounds of soap. The Corps’ mission: to discover an all-water trade route to the Pacific Ocean.

Pushing against the Missouri River’s strong current, the Corps averaged just 14 miles a day. They arrived in what is now Montana in the spring of 1805 after a bitterly cold winter spent with the Mandan Indians. There they recruited the services of Charbonneau and Sacagawea, a teenage Shoshone woman who would later prove herself an invaluable interpreter.

Lewis and Clark were among the first white men to behold the beauty of Montana’s landscape, which greets visitors still today. Roughly 25 percent, almost 2,000 miles, of the trail followed by the Corps of Discovery is in Montana. And it’s in Montana where they faced their greatest challenges, including a month-long portage around the Great Falls and the crossing of the Continental Divide.

By the end of the two-and-a-half-year-long journey, the party had traveled more than 8,000 miles by canoe, on foot and by horseback. Along the way, they fearlessly faced grizzly bears and starvation, encountered 50 different Indian tribes, catalogued 122 species of animals and 178 species of plants that were totally new to science and even delivered a baby. Only one member of the Corps died in the course of the journey—of natural causes in the first month of the expedition.

Lewis and Clark became the first U.S. citizens to cross the Continental Divide, the first U.S. citizens to reach the Pacific Ocean by land and likely the first American visitors to Montana.

The Experiment
In his preparations for the expedition, Lewis traveled to Harpers Ferry and oversaw the construction of an iron boat frame, which he refers to in his journals as the Experiment. It was hoped the frame could be covered by wood or skins and used later in the journey. The Experiment failed when the Corps couldn't find any pine tar on the Montanan prairie to seal the elk and buffalo skins stretched over the frame. When the boat was launched, the skins soaked with water and shrunk. The iron frame was abandoned, skins and all.

Even worse, the Experiment was conducted just days after the Corps spent a grueling month in thunderstorms, heat and hail portaging around the Great Falls--hauling the heavy hulk of the iron frame every inch of the way. With the Rocky Mountain Front looming in the distance, the captains were eager to make up for lost time and to cross the Continental Divide before winter set in.

The Experiment wasted precious time, and even more time was wasted searching for trees large enough to be hollowed out and made into dugout canoes.