What They Found — and What it Meant
Lewis and Clark’s expedition to discover a direct water route to the Pacific Ocean resulted in accomplishments never imagined. While they explored and mapped and measured and ultimately concluded that there was no water route all the way to the Pacific Ocean, they discovered and described more than 40 American Indian tribes and one hundred and twenty two (122) animals. In addition, they collected more than 200 specimens of plants, many of them new.
In North Dakota, the Expedition’s most important discoveries were the prairie dog and the grizzly bear. Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1804-05 at Fort Mandan, ND. In the spring the Captains sent a large shipment down the Missouri addressed to President Thomas Jefferson. They enclosed journals, field notes, maps, astronomical observations, and notes regarding rivers creeks and “remarkable places”. They also sent boxes containing animal skins and bones, samples of minerals, sixty plant specimens including bur oak and coneflower, and cages with four live magpies and a prairie dog.
In Common to This County Verlyn Klinkenborg notes, “Many of the plants Lewis described and collected are now so familiar to us that it is hard to imagine them as being newly discovered. But that’s the way it is with the familiar. Lewis and Clark went looking for plants “not of the U.S” when the United States was only the narrow eastern seaboard.”
In North Dakota, Lewis and Clark discovered the narrow leaf coneflower, (Echinacea) and learned of its many medicinal purposes including curing snakebite, toothache, and other ailments.
Prickly Pears are mentioned numerous times in Expedition journal entries. Lewis wrote “our trio of pests (mosquitos, gnats and prickly pears) still invade and obstruct us on all occasions.”
For a complete list of all the animals, plants, and Indian tribes discovered and documented by the Lewis and Clark Expedition, visit the National Geographic website at : http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lewisandclark/
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