A recreation of a pirogue boat used by the expedition. From the NETV production Platte River Road. You'll need the QuickTime Player.

Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and around 48 other members of the expedition left St. Louis on May 14, 1804. They traveled in a big keelboat that was 55 feet long, 8 feet wide and capable of carrying 10 tons of supplies. They also have two smaller boats called pirogues. They sailed by rowing, setting poles and sometimes by wading ashore and pulling the boat with ropes. They make 14 miles up river on a good day and passed a few trappers coming down to sell their pelts in St. Louis. By May 25th they passed the settlement of La Charette, a cluster of seven dwellings less than 60 miles west of St. Louis. Charles Floyd notes in his journal, this is "the last settlement of whites on this river."

You can search through the Journals of Lewis and Clark and many of their men at this site.

They made it to present-day Nebraska on July 15th, making camp near the Little Nemaha River. Clark reported that, "I saw Great quantities of Grapes, Plums, of 2 Kinds, wild Cherries of 2 Kinds, Hazelnuts, and Gooseberries."

Captains Lewis and Clark holding a Council with the Indians. This engraving was added by Matthew Carey of Philadelphia to the 1812 publication of the journal of Sergeant Patrick Gass (1771-1870), the first eyewitness accounts of the expedition to be made public in 1807, seven years before the official Lewis and Clark narrative. The pictures were said to depict actual incidents in the Lewis and Clark journey. Source - LOC, Rare Books and Special Collections.

On July 21, they reached the mouth of the Platte where it enters the Missouri. The next day, they went 10 more miles up river and decided to stop and make contact with the local Indians. It was here that they held their first "Council" or discussion with local tribes. The Americans offered gifts of roast meat, flour, and corn meal, and the Indians responded with a gift of watermelons. Although the search for a Northwest Passage was their primary goal, Lewis and Clark had been commanded by Jefferson to complete anthropological, diplomatic and commercial missions to the Missouri River Indian tribes. Lewis had worked out a standard speech that promised military protection and trade advantages in return for peace with the tribes. The first nations to hear this pitch were the Otos and the Missourias, at a council held on August 3, north of present-day Omaha. The Indians responded favorably because they needed both the trade goods offered and protection from their northern neighbors, the Teton Sioux. The site became known as "Council Bluffs."

You can see Captain Clark's report of the Council here.
You'll note that Clark was an inventive speller.

The only fatality on the entire transcontinental expedition of Lewis and Clark was that of Sergeant Charles Floyd, who died near present-day South Sioux City, August 20, 1804, most likely of a ruptured appendix. The captains did what they could for him, but their standard remedies were of little help and may have hastened his demise. Bleeding and purging were commonly used, if they were, it would have hastened the inevitable death of Floyd. The surgery that could have saved him wasn't invented yet. Clark noted in his diary:

"Serj. Floyd Died with a great deal of composure, before his death he Said to me, ‘I am going away I want you to write me a letter.’ We buried him on the top of the bluff 1/2 Mile below a Small river to which we Gave his name, he was buried with the Honors of War much lamented, a Seeder post with the (1) Name Sergt. C. Floyd died here 20th of august 1804 was fixed at the head of his grave."

Although he was the expedition's only fatality, the explorers suffered from a variety of illnesses and accidents. On August 22, Captain Lewis became ill. Although the cause is unknown, Captain Clark mistakenly believed it was caused by arsenic in rocks Lewis had examined. On the return journey in 1806, Lewis was injured in a hunting accident.

One of the reasons they were able to survive is that they made friends and were taken in by the Mandan and Hidatsas. On October 24, 1804, the Corps reached the Mandan Villages north of what is now Bismarck, North Dakota. There they found earth lodges housing 4,500 people — a larger city than St. Louis or even Washington D.C. at the time! The Captains decide to build their own dwellings across the river from the main village and call it Fort Mandan. But they developed close ties with the tribe and with some of the fur traders living with them. It was here that they meet and hire Toussaint Charbonneau, a French Canadian fur trader, and his young Shoshone wife Sacagawea.

Considering the hazards of a two-year trip across uncharted territory, the fact that Floyd was the only fatality is remarkable. A monument in his memory was erected near Sioux City, Iowa in 1901.

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