Meriwether Lewis Explores the Louisiana Purchase—Journal

Many explorers kept journals to record interesting things they saw or events that happened to them, as well as their thoughts and feelings. They often wrote in their journals every day. In the excerpts below, Meriwether Lewis wrote about what he saw as he led the Corps of Discovery across the United States.

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I saw immence quantities of buffaloe in every direction, also some Elk deer and goats; having an abundance of meat on hand I passed them without firing on them; they are extreemly gentle the bull buffaloe particularly will scarcely give way to you. I passed several in the open plain within fifty paces, they viewed me for a moment as something novel and then very unconcernedly continued to feed.

…[W]e saw a great quantity of game today particularly of Elk and Buffaloe, the latter are now so gentle that the men frequently throw sticks and stones at them in order to drive them out of the way.… [T]he river for several days has been as wide as it is generally near it's mouth, tho' it is much shallower or I should begin to despair of ever reaching it's source;…the water also appears to become clearer, it has changed it's complexin very considerably. I begin to feel extreemly anxious to get in view of the rocky mountains.

Background

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson doubled the size of the United States by buying the Louisiana Purchase. However, Americans in the East knew very little about the land, water, and people of the West. Jefferson received $2,500 dollars from Congress to support an expedition to the West. The Corps of Discovery, as Jefferson called it, was led by two men, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. For four years, the group traveled across the Midwest, over thousands of miles.

You may notice the unusual spelling of some of the words in Lewis's Journal. At the time this journal was being written, many words had several different spellings.

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