In A Memoir Of That Distinguished Young Officer,
Written After His Death, Jefferson Said:
"Of courage undaunted;
possessing a firmness and perseverance of purpose which
nothing but impossibilities could divert from its direction;
Careful as a father of those committed to his charge,
yet steady in the maintenance of order and discipline;
intimate with the Indian character, customs and principles;
habituated to the hunting life; guarded, by exact observation
of the vegetables and animals of his own country, against losing
time in the description of objects already possessed;
honest, disinterested, liberal, of sound understanding,
and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever he should
report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves - with all
these qualifications, as if selected and implanted by nature
in one body for this express purpose, I could have no hesitation
in confiding the enterprise to him."
Before we have finished the story of Meriwether Lewis and his companions,
we shall see that this high praise of the youthful commander
was well deserved.
For a coadjutor and comrade Captain Lewis chose William Clark,[1] also a
native of Virginia, and then about thirty-three years old. Clark, like Lewis,
held a commission in the military service of the United States, and his
appointment as one of the leaders of the expedition with which his name
and that of Lewis will ever be associated, made the two men equal in rank.
Exactly how there could be two captains commanding the same expedition,
both of the same military and actual rank, without jar or quarrel,
we cannot understand; but it is certain that the two young men got on
together harmoniously, and no hint or suspicion of any serious disagreement
between the two captains during their long and arduous service has come
down to us from those distant days.
[1] It is a little singular that Captain Clark's name has been
so persistently misspelled by historians and biographers.
Even in most of the published versions of the story of the Lewis
and Clark expedition, the name of one of the captains is
spelled Clarke. Clark's own signature, of which many are
in existence, is without the final and superfluous vowel;
and the family name, for generations past, does not show it.
As finally organized, the expedition was made up of the two captains
(Lewis and Clark) and twenty-six men. These were nine young men
from Kentucky, who were used to life on the frontier among Indians;
fourteen soldiers of the United States Army, selected from many who
eagerly volunteered their services; two French voyageurs, or watermen,
one of whom was an interpreter of Indian language, and the other
a hunter; and one black man, a servant of Captain Clark. All these,
except the negro servant, were regularly enlisted as privates
in the military service of the United States during the expedition;
and three of them were by the captains appointed sergeants.
In addition to this force, nine voyageurs and a corporal and six
private soldiers were detailed to act as guides and assistants
until the explorers should reach the country of the Mandan Indians,
a region lying around the spot where is now situated the flourishing
city of Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota.
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