These men were pulling those boats against that current and into uncharted unknown territories and did it relatively peacefully as they went in among the native peoples and had encounters throughout that time. Just an incredible story of perseverance, of dedication, of team building. I think we’ll touch on that as we talk about some of the leadership lessons from this. 

But one of the things that makes this even more remarkable is this was not the first expedition to try to discover the Northwest Passage. There were three or four others that I recall, that tried and failed for a wide variety of reasons. What made them successful? I think that’s the study for us today. Why were they successful when others had failed before them?

Sean Murray  5:34  

Help our listeners understand the context why this expedition was launched, what was going on in the country at the time, and Jefferson was involved. We had the Louisiana Purchase, actually, during this period. So what initially was the purpose of the mission and why did it get commissioned? 

Jeff Ton  5:52  

Well, I think if you think back to 1800 to 1802, in that timeframe. We were still a relatively young nation, just 25 some odd years removed from the formation of the United States. The majority of the citizens of the US lived still east to the Alleghenies in the Appalachian Mountains. Jefferson believed as well as others believed that the rivers were the lifeblood, if you will, to the Republic. 

We kind of knew the Mississippi River more or less at that time. But this Missouri River, people just didn’t know where it went. In late 1790s, Gray discovered the mouth of the Columbia River over the Pacific coast. He’d gone around South America and up the coast and discovered the mouth of the Columbia. 

So now we kind of had a couple of data points, right. We had the Missouri River at where it meets the Mississippi and we had the mouth of the Columbia. The question was, did they connect in some way that we could have water travel across the majority of the United States and therefore, trade and establish trade channels, not only with the native peoples, but also with the Far East? 

It would be far easier to get there going that way and then to go completely around the African coast to the Far East. So that was the original piece. But Jefferson had this vision of a country that really spanned coast to coast. He really believed that the United States could grow. That it would have more states. He was one of the few people that really had this concept of, “No, Virginia just wouldn’t keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. We divide that into multiple states.” So he had this vision and that was really kind of his push to do that.

Sean Murray  7:48  

As a young country, we understand that the waterways are really the lifeblood of the commerce of the economy and the flow of commerce. We have this massive river flowing into the Mississippi. We don’t know much about it. And Jefferson wants to know more, and he commissions a young staff member. His chief of staff, Meriwether Lewis  led a party up the Missouri River, over whatever mountains there and down the Columbia and established this route. 

But with this huge territory of unknown landscape, unknown Native American tribes, potentially unknown animals to science and so forth in between, they really don’t know what’s there. So talk a little bit about Meriwether Lewis and what he did to start preparing for this expedition.

Jeff Ton  8:40  

Lewis was an interesting guy. He really had been focused on this journey for a good portion of his life. Even before Jefferson brought him on board as his secretary, his chief of staff. He had volunteered to lead an expedition that Jefferson was arranging when he was 18 years old. Jefferson obviously did not select him at that time. 

Lewis had had a military background. And that was one of the reasons Jefferson brought him on board as his chief of staff. He kind of wanted an inside person into the military. But one of the interesting things that Jefferson had Lewis do in preparation is go study. 

Jefferson sent him to spend time with some of the greatest minds of the time. He studied botany. He studied medicine, celestial navigation, with the leading voices in those spaces at that time. What a great understudy to be able to work with Dr. Benjamin Rush and Andrew Ellicott, and some of those great men that were involved in the founding of our country. 

Lewis was right there with them, rubbing elbows with them, learning from them, as he was preparing. And I think that also speaks to his character. He knew he didn’t know everything. He knew where some of the gaps in his knowledge were. And he did a couple of really interesting things to help fill in those gaps. One was, as I was just mentioning, go to study with the people that had that knowledge. 

But he also did something that was incredibly unusual. He reached out to an old army buddy, William Clark, and said, “Hey, would you be a co-captain with me?” Now, imagine that you’re in business today, and your boss taps you to run a new department or a department within your company. You go to him and say, “Thank you very much for the honor. But I really need Joe to be my co-leader with me for that department.” 

That’s in a sense, what Lewis did. He was pretty audacious to do that. He was pretty vulnerable to do that. But it ended up being one of the greatest partnerships in the history of our country.

Sean Murray  10:53  

Yeah, that’s a fascinating decision. And the fact that it was successful is really interesting. I think we’ll get into that as we follow the expedition on their journey across the country. What was it that made that partnership successful? 

It reminds me a little bit of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak or some of the other successful pairings. Sometimes in business today, we see that. We see Bill Gates and Paul Allen, or Sergey Brin and Larry Page, that sort of thing. It ended up being a great partnership in many ways. They complemented each other. And that decision very well could have been a number of I’d say 20 or 30 that ended up really impacting the expedition in a big way. 

He reaches out to William Clark. Clark accepts. The two of them are co-captains and then they start figuring out who’s going to be on this permanent party. What I think is interesting about this part of the story is they’re really inundated with young men and soldiers that want to join this expedition. This is like the place to be. A lot of people want to get on this expedition. In some records, it said 100 to 101 applicants to people selected. 

So they’re interviewing a lot of people. And they looked for, obviously, party members that had the right skills. But we also see at this time that they called them “gentlemen sons”. Sons of highly placed individuals, aristocrats, politicians that wanted their sons on this expedition that weren’t necessarily ready to endure hard labor and do the hard work that it would take to pull these boats up the Missouri. 

And what I thought was quite interesting was they were able to really reject those applications. To put it in stark terms, they did not compromise their principles. They maintain the values and the expectations of what they expected of their men. They went after the best people they could find, even if they were from a class of people that maybe were discriminated against at the time, and end up being several members of exhibition that were half Native American and half European. 

And because they had the skills, they were great hunters or guides or trackers or they could speak Native American languages. They brought them on the expedition. And I think that speaks to their open mindedness and their ability to be inclusive, which ended up also being a part of their success or contributing to their success.

Jeff Ton  13:17  

Absolutely. I think those months where Lewis is in Pittsburgh. He’s in Harpers Ferry. As he’s preparing, Clark has agreed to be his co-captain. They begin this exchange of letters talking about the number of men that they would need, the skills that they would need. And I love the story that you just talked about, about the “gentleman’s sons” because there’s this great line from Clark in one of his letters that really points out that he doesn’t believe they’re used to labor or something to that effect, which is going to be such a huge part of the expedition. 

They didn’t need anybody that would not be able to pull their own weight, which kind of foreshadows a decision that they make later that we’ll talk about. But in this forming of the team, the other key thing that they did that really set the tone for this co-captaincy was they both had to agree on who they were bringing in. 

So even though Clark was in Clarksville, Indiana, he was already starting to recruit some of the men or at least talk to them and interview them beforehand. But even then, it was not until Lewis came down the river and they met. And then they could talk with some of these candidates that they finally made those decisions. So they did it together. 

One can only imagine some of the discussions that they probably had, because I’m sure they didn’t always agree on either the selection of the men, or the expedition, or on some of the other things that went on in the expedition. But they were always united in front of the men.

Sean Murray  14:50  

They gathered this party of expedition members in the winter of late 1803 and early 1804. They set up in a camp called Camp Dubois across the Mississippi River from where St. Louis is today. They could have stayed at another nearby army fort. They could have stayed in St. Louis. They instead commissioned or tasked their men to build their own fort because they knew they’d have to build forts on the way. 

So one of the things they did to build the team that I find interesting is that they started to lead by example. They practiced the conditions that they face on the expedition. They practiced packing their boats in the morning, unpacking them at night, setting up camp, and building forts. They created or established competitions amongst the men to kind of keep them occupied. But also, to find out who was the best marksman, who was the best hunter, and so forth. And you see this team sort of coming together that winter to Camp Dubois.

Jeff Ton  15:46  

I think that’s really what served as the most key part of their success. It was this team building that they did over those months from, call it December to May of 1803 to 1804, as I recall. It was from when they built the fort. I love that you called that out, Sean, that they could have stayed somewhere else. Instead, they built that fort. 

They really had no idea at that point about how many forts they were going to have to build along the trip. They had an idea of how long it would take them to get up there and get back. But they really had no concept of that. Well, they ended up building three forts, including camp Dubois. And I find it interesting that each fort had a different design. So they were continuing to learn as they went. 

This is a team building effort of laying down the rules of the camp, and laying down the hierarchy. It was a military expedition, even though there was some civilian personnel that went along with them. By any stretch of the imagination, it was a military expedition. 

“Gamifying” is what we would call it today. They gamified some of the training they had competition among the men just to see who could shoot the best. They brought in some of the locals who were known as being very adept at shooting skills and at hunting skills. And they’d set him up in competition against the civilians from the surrounding areas, just to challenge them, and to help them grow. 

That whole concept that you mentioned about “loading and unloading the boats”, again, they had no idea how long they were going to be gone. But every night, basically, they would have to unload the boat to set up camp. And every morning, they would have to reload it and head out. They needed to be very efficient at that. 

The other thing that they had to learn was how to navigate the boat when it had tons of gear in it. And so they would take these excursions a short way up to Missouri, and a short way up to Mississippi, just to see what it was like. How did it handle this incredibly strong current when it had all this gear in it? Those six months, give or take, really set the foundation for their success. I think had they recruited this core and immediately started on their journey up to Missouri, I do not believe they would have been successful.

Sean Murray  18:15  

In the Spring of 1804, they set out on the journey. They started up the Missouri. As you mentioned, it was upstream, so they’re going against the current. They get to a point where discipline sort of breaks down the first time.

Jeff Ton  18:33  

You’ve got one of the men who is on guard duty. And again, keep in mind that they are going into unknown territory. It could be hostile territory. In 1803 to 1804, there was still a lot of conflict between the native peoples and the European Americans. That was a concern. Animals were a concern. And so staying on guard was a vital part of your safety. 

What happened was, I think it was Collins, as I recall, one of them that was on guard duty. They had these barrels of whiskey that each person had a daily ration of that they could drink. It was a jille of whiskey, which in our day is about five ounces. So you are allowed five ounces of whiskey a day, which is a pretty good share. But they also knew that it was a limited supply. It was going to run out some time depending on how long that they were on this journey. 

And so what happened is, one night while on guard duty, one of the guards decided to tap into the whiskey supply. He first had a drink and then another drink and then another drink and pretty soon, he was pretty roaring drunk by my guess. And when the next guard came on to relieve him, they kind of just pitched in and started drinking together. So the camp wakes up the next morning and here’s these two guys that not only risked their safety in a very real way by being drunk on duty, but stole whiskey that belonged to the group in general. 

I think it’s interesting that they formed a court martial. It was made up of the captains obviously. But it was also made up of the men. They did a court martial trial. And they found these two guys guilty. I know this sounds harsh in today’s world, but they found them guilty. One of them got 100 lashes and the other got 50 lashes. 

It goes back to some of the expectations that were set earlier that year in Camp Dubois about here’s the rules of the camp. Here’s the expectations. Here’s the accountability. And here’s the consequences. If you deviate from those, there are going to be consequences. I think that’s a great leadership lesson for us today. It goes beyond accountability. There has to be some sort of consequences.

I’m not suggesting lashes in the business world today. But people have to understand what happens when the team norms get broken. And the fact that they had everybody involved in this decision, it really was the team norms. It just wasn’t the captain saying, “Oh, you broke a rule.” It was the entire expedition that said, “Hey, that is not right. And you need to suffer some consequences.”

Sean Murray  21:26

I think it’s a great leadership lesson. It speaks to this idea that sometimes in a team, people put their own self interest above the team. It ends up jeopardizing the team in some way. A real team environment is where people put the team first. And it’s about team success, not individual success. 

As a leader, if you see this happening, it’s really incumbent on you to step in. You have to reorient the team back to team success. You have to identify and point out that, “This is not right. This behavior is not right. It’s not what we agreed to. It’s not living up to the values that we agreed to as a team. It doesn’t align with our mission”, and readjust. 

What’s interesting is that there were a few more court marshals as they moved up the Missouri that spring. But as far as the remainder of the expedition to the Pacific and back, they really didn’t need to do it. After that first spring, the culture had been established. And after that, they were a team. And so it ended up that they came out of this experience as a more cohesive team, and as a stronger culture. Then they went into it. That speaks to Lewis and Clark’s leadership.

Jeff Ton  22:36  

I think the other thing on that accountability and the flogging is that there’s at least one story that the flogging took place in front of some Native Americans. I can’t remember exactly the exact concept, but the Native Americans were kind of horrified that they were flogging their own men. They made them run the gauntlet of switches. It’s kind of interesting because we always, as European and Americans, sometimes think that the Native Americans were savage and brutal back in that day. That was the perception, as Lewis and Clark were heading out on the expedition. And that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes we were brutal as well to our own people. I just found that interesting.

Sean Murray  23:24  

Now, the reason we know these details is that the captains, the sergeants who are kind of the next level down in the hierarchy, and even many of the privates were asked to, or commanded in some instances, to write a journal every night. And that decision, what it’s left us is this legacy of over a million words, I think or maybe more of what happened during this expedition. 

Each night we can imagine. They sat around the campfire and they wrote in these journals. They were eventually published. A couple things about that. It gives us the record of the expedition. But I also think that it impacted the leadership because Lewis and Clark, and the men in the party wrote every night. 

It forced them to reflect on the day to think about what they learned, and to think a little bit about how to apply that to what’s coming up around the next bend. I think it had a net positive impact on the culture and on their leadership. What do you think about the impact of the journals?

Jeff Ton  24:27  

I think you’re exactly right. As you know, I’m a big proponent of journaling in general, because it does force that reflection on the day’s activities. It also gives you a record of going back and re-reading what you were thinking and what you were feeling. Their stories throughout the expedition, where they would spend time copying the journals, especially over the winters when they’re in camp. They would make copies of the journals, in case one copy got lost. 

So you can imagine them reflecting back on those even in longer term than what happened today, but what happened six months ago. And how does that change their view? So I think as leaders today, journaling is an important exercise that we can do ourselves to help us understand what’s happening around us. 

I think the other thing that this became was, as you know, in a team environment, ritual is important. One can imagine the ritual of sitting by the campfire, writing in your journal, potentially Cruzatte playing his fiddle, so you’ve got some music playing around the campfire. It’s just a daily task that grounds you. It is something that feels normal and feels comfortable when everything around you is unknown and in chaos. 

But that focus time, I think was incredibly important for them to rest and to reflect. But that ritual, that team building ritual, I think also enabled them to move forward into some really unbelievable circumstances.

Sean Murray  26:07  

Let’s get back to the trail here. So they’re moving up the Missouri. They go through a few series of court marshals to sort of instill this discipline, kind of get an understanding of the rules, how they’re going to work and operate.  They knew they were going to encounter Native American tribes. This was something Jefferson anticipated and wanted the exhibition to establish peace with each tribe that they interacted with, to get to know the tribes in some way, and get to know their customs. 

So they weren’t there to conquer. They weren’t there in any belligerent way, but it was sort of incumbent on them to try to establish peace. As they work their way up the river, the first tribe they came to was the Otto tribe. It went fairly smoothly. They established peace, but this tribe was a smaller tribe than the tribes further up the river. 

They warned the expedition. They said, “As you go up the river, you’re going to encounter another tribe. This tribe is not going to be happy to see you. Especially if you’re not going to trade with them, they’re not going to allow you to move up the river. They’re going to block this expedition.” I don’t know exactly the reaction of Lewis and Clark to that. Maybe they waved it off, “Oh, no big deal. We’ve got all these guns. we’ve got 45 to 50 men. We should be fine.” 

They eventually did run into this tribe. The tribe they were referring to was the Teton Sioux in particular. So maybe you could talk about that. first, I’d say, intense encounter, potentially disastrous encounter with the more hostile Native American tribe, the Teton Sioux. What happened there? What can we learn from Lewis and Clark, and their leadership?

Jeff Ton  27:44  

I think you’re right. It was a pivotal point that was still early in their journey because they could have been turned back. This was not the first time that people had gone up the Missouri River and encountered the Teton Sioux, only to be sent back to St. Louis. The Teton Sioux really kind of set up, we call it today, “a tollbooth”. You got to pay a toll, or we’re not going to let you pass. 

This was around close to Pierre, South Dakota in today’s world. And they did. They encountered the Teton Sioux. They stopped to have what they were hoping would be their normal talks with them, to talk about the “Great Father” in Washington, and exchange beads and peace metals. What the Teton Sioux were really interested in was the whiskey and the guns. They were not going to let them pass. This encounter grew very, very tense. 

At first, they invited some of the chiefs onboard the keelboat. Everything was going okay, more or less. But then, when they wouldn’t trade for the guns or the whiskey, tension started to escalate. I think I recall one of the chiefs tried to take some things off the boat and was stopped. But in whatever case, they’re letting the chiefs back on the shore. Clark is letting the chiefs back on the shore. And the Native Americans grabbed the ropes to the boats. 

And then, along the shoreline, numerous warriors appear, looking down on the expedition. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but the Corps was very heavily outnumbered in this encounter. And I love the words that Clark uses to describe the situation. He got hot. 

I think he was talking about his temper. Clark was a redhead. So you can imagine him just getting red in the face with anger. But what was amazing about all of these men that are involved on both sides of this encounter, no one fired an errant rifle. No one fired an errant shot. They all follow the lead of those that were in charge, including Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery. Not one person took a shot that would have probably ended in death for most of the people there, including the Corps. 

It was one of the chiefs, black Buffalo, I believe that really was the one that de-escalated things. He kind of said, “Well, our women and children really want to see some of the things on your boat. If you let them on and see some of your things, then we’ll let you go.” And so eventually, they were able to move on, but if cooler heads had not prevailed, it very easily could have gone the other way.

Sean Murray  30:38  

I agree. Fortunately, they passed their first big test in leadership, and the first big test of the Corp of Discovery which we should mention was the name that was attached to the expedition. They move beyond the Teton Sioux. It’s getting later in the late summer, early fall of 1804. They get to, as winter was setting in, to a very large gathering happening every year in the plains in today’s North Dakota. It was called the Mandan Villages. 

Several tribes, which are the Mandan and the Hidatsa would come together. It was basically where they would spend the winter. These were tribes that hunted the buffalo on the plains. And during the winter, they couldn’t hunt on the plains. So they would sort of pull up in this area. They were very peaceful tribes that the Corps of Discovery established peaceful relations with. They decided to build the second of those three forts that you talked about there, Jeff. They called it Fort Mandan.

They spent the winter there. It was a very harsh winter. But several things happened that winter that were interesting that I want to touch on. One is, they signed on a young woman to the expedition in an interesting way. Maybe you could tell that story. They also gathered some intelligence about what was to come.

Jeff Ton  32:00  

I think it’s important to know about the challenge in adversity. You’re talking about, “Well, we’re going to spend the winter here. We’ve got a fort.” But the snow was measured in feet, not inches. They recorded temperatures as cold as 52 below zero. They probably were ill-prepared. The Mandan and the Hidatsa helped them through that time, with maybe some furs and some ways to keep warm. 

But during the winter, they encountered this Frenchman, Toussaint Charbonneau. Toussaint Charbonneau had two Indian wives. One was, I believe, a Mandan woman and the other one was a young woman named, Sacagawea. Sacagawea was about 15 or 16 years old at that time. She was a Shoshone. 

Over the course of that winter, Lewis and Clark learned that the Shoshone Tribe was the tribe that’s basically at the foot of The Rocky Mountains. They knew they were going to have to cross the Rocky Mountains. They knew they would encounter this Shoshones. 

Well since she was Shoshone, they thought that Sacagawea would be able to serve as an interpreter when they got that far. And so they started talking with Charbonneau about hiring him as a guide, as an interpreter, as a cook. In reading the journals, I forget who says it, but basically he had one redeeming quality. That was he could cook boudin blanc, which is a sausage. That’s what he was known for. 

So I think it’s interesting that they wanted Sacagawea to go along. But in order to do that, they had to hire Toussaint Charbonneau. At one point, they actually get in an argument with Charbonneau. He takes his toys and goes home, so to speak. He packs up his stuff, moves out of the fort, sets up camp somewhere and says, “I’m not going and if I go I’m taking my other wife, not this one.” 

And so they kind of made peace with them. I think in February that winter, Sacagawea gave birth to her son, who was named, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. All of a sudden, you’ve got this army corps of mostly military men, some civilians, but rough outdoorsmen. And now, they’re going to have a 16-year old woman going with them. And a couple month-old baby going with them on this expedition. 

I just can’t imagine the conversations that led up to that decision to do that. I think it ended up being one of those decisions that you don’t know all the positives that’s going to come out of it. You think you do. But as we see in the expedition, it ended up probably being one of the more pivotal decisions that they made to take her along.

Sean Murray  34:54  

So they go outside of the conventional. They invite a young woman, a mother, And they allow her to bring along this young son. They become something a little bit more than a military expedition, in my mind. They become maybe something closer to a tribe or a family. I think it changed the culture a little bit. It certainly impacted their fate as we’ll find out later on, in many ways. 

So that winter, a couple other things happened. I just want to touch on. They learned some intelligence from the Hidatsa and demanded information about what was coming up on the Missouri. No American or European explorer had ever been beyond into the upper Missouri, which is beyond Mandan. It was completely unknown territory. I think Clark had a map and it’s sort of where the map ended.

Jeff Ton  35:43  

This was the map of the United States at that time. First of all, the Missouri River itself was a dotted line because they really didn’t know where it was going to go. This whole expanse of the Western United States was labeled, “conjectural”. That was part of the interesting piece of this expedition. It was filling in the blanks. 

Clark was the primary cartographer. I mentioned earlier that this was a journey of about 8,000 miles. So think about 4,000 miles one way. The map that he drew was only off by 40 miles. Just incredible because a lot of it was dead reckoning. One of the two of their sextants or their octets got broken along the way. So they’re using compass and dead reckoning to do this. He was only off by 40 miles out of 4,000. 

They learned a lot from the Mandans over that winner. I forget exactly how many months they were there. But probably four or maybe five months before the river. The ice thawed enough in the river that they could move upstream. They spent a lot of that time in conversation talking with them about the journey ahead. 

The Mandan and the Hidatsa told them a lot about what they were going to experience so they were a little more prepared than completely unknown. But when they left St. Louis, they thought they were going to find woolly mammoths still wandering around on the plains. They thought they might encounter redheaded Native Americans descendants from Leif Erikson. 

They have all these preconceived notions that maybe were countered by some of the information they learn from the Mandans. Maybe some of it wasn’t. I think another leadership lesson for us is that they were open to learn from the people that knew. And they were open to change their perspective on things as they moved and learned more throughout the expedition.

Sean Murray  37:42  

They also learned that there would be a large waterfall, the Great Falls of the Missouri on the plains. So they were aware that they would encounter a waterfall. They knew that if they encountered that waterfall, they were on track. There were several rivers that they would encounter coming into the Missouri. One very large one called the Yellowstone. 

They were familiar with the Yellowstone River and a number of other rivers. The Native Americans sort of gave them a heads-up that they should be seeing these things. They also were warned of a very large aggressive animal, a bear. What they were referring to, of course, was the grizzly bear. Lewis and Clark, and the Americans on the expedition had never encountered a grizzly bear before. They had encountered black bears which are quite passive compared to a grizzly bear. They soon found out that the grizzly bear was not an animal to be messed with.

Jeff Ton  38:32  

A great example of having a little too much hubris. They were really confident that this was just another bear. They encountered many grizzly bears over this stretch and would take multiple shots to down a bear. There’s stories of them having to run after shooting one of these animals because it just didn’t slow them down. At some point, Lewis writes in his journal, something about it. 

I think the attraction to this animal in our men is satisfied. In other words, “they’ve had enough”. I probably butchered that quote, but it’s something to that effect. I think that’s a great picture of a lot of the discoveries of the animals they made. I mean, that’s one of the things. This was an incredible scientific expedition. 

They were keeping track of all the plants and the animals that they’d never seen before. They were drawing pictures of them. Killing them when they could and sending them back. They sent a big shipment back from Fort Mandan before they departed that spring of some of the things that they had discovered. It was a huge wealth of scientific information that they uncovered on this journey as well.

Sean Murray  39:47  

Weather improved in the Spring of 1805 at Fort Mandan. The river eventually thawed because it had frozen over, as it did at that time, traditionally in the wintertime. The river started to thaw. They could navigate the river once again. And the large boat we were referring to, the keelboat was turned around and sent back to St. Louis with a copy of the journals with many of the animals and plants that they had discovered up to this point. 

That eventually made it all the way back to Monticello where Jefferson lived. He was very delighted and excited to get that early shipment. At that point, civilization knew that they’d made it to the Mandan villages, but the expedition itself was now reduced to what we call the “Permanent Party”. So we have 33 members in this Permanent Party. Three of whom are a small family Sacagawea and Toussaint Charbonneau and their young son, Jean Baptiste. 

Jeff Ton  40:42  

And don’t forget the dog. 

Sean Murray  40:48  

Lewis also brought along his dog. We should also mention that Clark brought along his slave. Clark came from a slave-owning family. He had an African-American who he knew since boyhood. You get the feeling they were very close. I don’t know the exact nature of their relationship but they knew each other quite well. 

The Native Americans met York. They’d never seen an African-American before. They were quite taken by how physical he was and how strong he was. They couldn’t believe that his skin was black. They would rub his skin and call him “Big Medicine”. I would say, a member of the expedition who may have particularly served Clark in his interest, but was not what we think of as an African-American slave on a plantation. 

But I want to just paint the picture of where the expedition is at this point. It’s the Spring of 1805. They have 33 members. They send the rest of the party back down the river to St. Louis. They embark up the river once again into this territory, which isn’t completely unknown, but really has not been explored before. They think they can get to the Rocky Mountains over the mountains to the Pacific and back to spend the next winter at Fort Mandan. That was their goal. Maybe even get all the way back to St. Louis. 

What happens next is really one of the greatest stories in American history. When we come back for Part 2, we’re going to talk about that. Is there anything you want to tell the audience as we leave them and come back to talk about Part Two?

Jeff Ton  42:19  

I think that is a great cliffhanger because there were several events on this part of the journey out and back to the ocean. Spoiler alert, it took them a little longer than one season. But there are some amazing leadership lessons that we can pull from during that section. And it is one of the greatest coincidences in American history. I’ll just leave you with that.

Sean Murray  42:44  

All right, Jeff, until next time. Thanks for being on the show.

Jeff Ton  42:48  

Certainly, Sean. My pleasure.

Outro  42:50  

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