The U.S. Postal Service recently announced the names of some admirable and important people it would honor this year with commemorative stamps. With all due respect to the others on the list–among them composer Henry Mancini, actor Spencer Tracy, athlete Wilma Rudolph–explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark are the most admirable of the bunch.
The stamps are a small item in what will surely be a mountain of ceremonies, awards and commercialism marking the 200th anniversary of the year these two young men–29 and 25 respectively–set off from present-day Wood River, Ill., on an 8,000-mile round trip that would last four danger- and wonder-filled years.
They did so at the behest of then-President Thomas Jefferson, who the year before had paid $15 million (a million less than Sammy Sosa will make playing baseball this year) for some 838,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River. What became known as the Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the United States.
The Lewis and Clark expedition, aptly named the Corps of Discovery, consisted of 31 other members, including a black slave, York, who was Clark’s servant, and Sacagawea, a Shoshone woman carrying her infant boy. Even Lewis’ pet dog, Seaman, went along. Their mission was to search for an overland trade route to the Pacific, establish ties with Native American tribes (they encountered 50) and produce a scientific record of its plants and animals. Jefferson wrongly imagined that the group might discover such things as erupting volcanoes. What it did find was even more amazing: mighty rivers, massive buffalo herds, the Rocky Mountains and America’s future.
Tribune photographer Chris Walker calls the Lewis and Clark journey “this country’s greatest adventure story.” Walker became enthralled with Stephen Ambrose’s 1996 book, “Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West.” He was inspired to pick up “The Journals of Lewis and Clark,” which revealed not only the explorers’ horrible spelling but also the beautifully forthright and quietly heroic refrain, “We proceeded on . . . “
Last year, Walker traveled to various spots visited by Lewis and Clark. The results of his trips are on this and the following pages. They form a moving and thought-provoking look at a land forever altered.
“I am awed at how we’ve wrested control of the natural barriers Lewis and Clark faced,” he says. “The currents of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers were no match for man. Twenty-two dams control the flow of the two rivers. Dwindling populations of wild salmon, grizzly bears and wolves now wear ID tags and tracking collars. The prairie has been divided and fenced, the forests harvested of their timber. The buffalo–reduced nearly to extinction after guns were introduced–are raised on ranches. Native Americans struggle to retain their culture amid the grinding poverty of reservations.”
It’s easy to understand why Walker has emerged from his “adventure” with a greater appreciation for the natural wonders of this land that remain intact beyond the highways; with a greater understanding of the delicate balance between man and nature; and with the hope that as this nation proceeds on, it does so with care.
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More Lewis and Clark photos can be seen at chicagotribune.com/lewisclark
