Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier

Lewis had the postman of St. Louis wait for him as he hastily wrote a letter to accompany his compilation of notes and samples to send ahead of him to Jefferson. He broke the unwelcome news that there was no all-water route between the East and West coasts of their territory, and also that the portage between rivers was difficult in the extreme. He then wrote an inventory of the furs, plants, and Indigenous language vocabularies he was sending ahead. He decided to save the bulk of his discoveries for a meeting in person, for lectures to the Philosophical Society, and for later publication, which in retrospect “was a big mistake” (409). John Quincy Adams, Jefferson’s main opponent and a Federalist, used the bare-bones letter and inventory to ridicule the expense of the expedition. Lewis did not take into account the political issues the letter might cause between the partisan factions of the government: Instead he wrote directly to his mentor Jefferson, knowing that he would “be greatly excited by the unadorned paragraph” (409) instead of an exhaustive list.

In the letter, Lewis also reported his success in keeping nearly all his men alive and well, and also gave a “splendid tribute to his dearest friend” (411) Clark, stating that they deserved equal credit for the expedition and asking for him to be treated as captain and co-commander by the government, whatever his actual rank during the expedition.