We can follow Lewis and Clark's exact route via their latrines

Ira Wesley Kitmacher

Thomas Jefferson was elected President in 1801 and saw enemies in the British to the north and the French and Spanish to the west. He believed the only way to protect the U.S. was to expand by having independent landowners buy the “space” to the west (the “American continent”).

Jefferson envisioned an agrarian “empire of liberty” stretching across North America. In 1803, he boldly entered the Louisiana Purchase with Napoleon and France. The land cost $15 million (about $250 million today), a bargain. The U.S. then controlled the Mississippi Valley, extending west to the Rockies and north to Canada.

After the Louisiana Purchase, which today accounts for about one-third of the U.S., Jefferson asked his private secretary, trusted assistant and old family friend, Meriwether Lewis, to lead the “Corps of Discovery” to explore beyond the “great rock mountains” to the west. Lewis asked William Clark, his former military superior, to co-lead the effort with him. The Corps of Discovery explored the West from 1804 through 1806.

Few, if any, individuals did more to advance the early scientific and geographic knowledge of our region than Lewis and Clark. Their exploration gave rise to industry (with the fur trade among the earliest examples), and strengthened America’s interest in and claims to what would become the West Coast.

In these times of paved roads, air travel, GPS, and other technologies, it’s hard to overstate the hardships Lewis and Clark faced on their travels. Some say it was equivalent to going to the moon!

President Jefferson believed the group might encounter dinosaurs, salt mountains, Welsh-speaking Native peoples, herds of woolly mammoths, and giant ground sloths. His beliefs were in part due to the discovery of fossilized bones of strange, unknown creatures.

The concepts of fossils, extinction, and evolution were not understood until 1859, with the publication of Charles Darwin’s book, “On the Origin of Species.”  While they didn’t encounter any long-extinct animals, they did document 122 new species, including the grizzly bear, coyote and a mysterious, giant bird most likely a California condor. They also faced harsh weather, dangerous waters, disease, starvation, strange terrain, unknown wildlife, and friendly as well as hostile Natives.

Some Native tribes greatly helped Lewis and Clark, including the Mandan (who provided winter housing), the Shoshone (who provided horses and the guide Sacagawea), the Nez Perce (who offered food, shelter and horses after the arduous journey across the Rocky Mountains), the Salish and others. Sacagawea was a teenage Shoshone Native who served as an interpreter and guide for the group. In 1805, she protected them in an encounter with other Shoshones (the tribe’s chief turned out to be her long-lost brother).

Ready for European powers’ intervention and possibly hostile Natives, the Corps carried one of the largest arsenals (at the time) west of the Mississippi. They carried tomahawks, pikes, knives, rifles (including an experimental air rifle), muskets, 200 pounds of gunpowder, and 400 pounds of lead for making bullets.

Spain sent hundreds of troops to arrest the Corps’ members, but fortunately, they were unsuccessful in locating them. Lewis was almost killed in an encounter with a grizzly bear, and the Corps came across at least 40 bears on their journey. Despite the hardships, only one member of the Corps died during the journey: Sergeant Charles Floyd died in 1804 due to what was most likely a burst appendix.

So, how do we know the exact route Lewis and Clark took?

One of the little-known facts (there are many) about Lewis and Clark involves “Rush’s Thunderbolts.” Archaeologists have traced Lewis and Clark’s exact route by locating high concentrations of mercury (which doesn’t decompose) found in old latrine pits.

The mercury (which we now know to be toxic) came from Dr. Benjamin Rush’s (a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a Continental Army surgeon general) “bilious pills,” nicknamed “thunderbolts.” The pills were thought at the time to be a cure-all (a laxative that violently cleansed the body) for various illnesses and ingested by Corps members.

I’ll share other little-known Lewis and Clark stories in future columns.