Daily Glimpse of History

[theGinsue]

On This Day - May 14, 1804, the Lewis and Clark expedition departed St. Louis, Missouri to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase. Meriwether Lewis, President Thomas Jefferson?s private secretary, and William Clark, an Army Captain, had been chosen by the President to travel west from the Mississippi with a group of 45 men in the hopes of finding a water route to the Pacific Ocean. On the way they were to gather all the information they could on the new land. On May 14, Lewis and Clark, along with their ?Corps of Discovery,? began the journey west by traveling up the Missouri River in boats almost fifty feet in length.

Along the way, as they got deeper into the American interior, they were joined by a French-Canadian fur trader and his wife, a Native-American named Sacagawea, who served as the expedition?s interpreter. Together, the group wintered and built a fort in present day North Dakota before continuing on to Montana, where they discovered the source of the Missouri River and laid eyes on the Rocky Mountains. It was only with the help of Sacagawea that Lewis and Clark were able to get through these mountains. She convinced her former tribe, the Shoshone, to sell the expedition horses, with which the Corps of Discovery was able to get down out of the mountains before wintertime.

After passing through the dangerous rapids of the Snake River, Lewis and Clark and the expedition sailed down the Columbia River to its mouth at the Pacific. They were the first white explorers to reach the Pacific from an overland route. The Corps of Discovery spent the winter on the Pacific coast before setting off on a return journey east. On September 23, 1806, two and a half years after they set off, Lewis and Clark returned to St. Louis, bringing with them a vast amount of information about America?s new land.



Also on this day in history:

On This Day - May 14, 1607 ? Just over 100 men and boys filed ashore from the small sailing ships Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery, onto what English adventurers came to call Jamestown Island in Virginia. 104 Englishmen arrived. The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. Established by the Virginia Company of London as ?James Fort? on 14 May, 1607 and considered permanent after brief abandonment in 1610, it followed several earlier failed attempts, including the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

Jamestown served as the capital of the colony for 83 years, from 1616 until 1699. The settlement was located within the country of Tsenacommacah, which was administered by the Powhatan Confederacy, and specifically in that of the Paspahegh tribe. The natives initially welcomed and provided crucial provisions and support for the colonists, who were not agriculturally inclined. Relations with the newcomers soured fairly early on, leading to the total annihilation of the Paspahegh in warfare within 3 years.