Louisiana was the vast land of about
280,000 square miles to the west of the 13 U.S. states. It possesses parts of today’s
states of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wyoming, Nebraska,
Iowa, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas.
Before the 1800s, the
Spanish owned the land. But in 1800, the French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte
seized control of it hoping to establish a brand new, out of the package,
empire.
Americans were worried that Napoleon
would take over. Napoleon’s empire was very strong and America had barely won
their war against Great Britain. Finally, President Thomas Jefferson decided what
to do. His decision was to buy the land.
In 1803, the land was bought. The price
was about 15 million dollars. This would be a very small price for that much
land, but during that time one cent was worth 28 of today’s dollars. This
purchase was known as the Louisiana Purchase. Thomas didn’t want to just
quickly go ahead and make towns and cities in the land because of the hostile
Indians. He decided on an expedition. Captain Meriwether Lewis volunteered and Tom
chose him. Lewis agreed and brought along with him his companion, Lieutenant
William Clark.
On May 14th, 1804, the expedition
began. On August 20th, 1804, Charles Floyd a member of the expedition
died from a sickness. Charles was the only man of the 33 men to die.
During the whole expedition,
Lewis and Clark befriended with 24 Indian tribes.
The expedition sometimes had trouble
with the tribes that they met such as the Sioux tribe. The expedition was just
trying to pass through their territory to get to a different place, but they
wouldn’t let them. The Sioux were very warlike, aggressive, and powerful. Soon
both sides were starting to come close to fighting. Once one of Lewis’s and Clark’s horses were
stolen and they believed that the Sioux did it. It stayed this way like for a
while so Lewis and lark decided to move on.
In the winter of 1804 to 1805, the
men built fort Mandan. At that fort they met Toussaint Charbonneau and his wife
Sacagawea. They helped as Indian translators for when speaking to other
tribes.
Before
the men and woman passed through the Continental Divide, they split up into two
teams because they both wanted to explore different places. Before they met
again, one of the hunters thought that maybe that the moving thing in the woods
was an elk so he shot. He was wrong. It was actually Lewis. Lewis was injured
in the thigh.
Finally on March 22nd, they
finished their goal by reaching the Pacific Ocean. They made all their maps and
started to go home. Finally, in 1806, they reached St. Louis and the
expedition ended.
