Publisher's Synopsis
FEW chapters in the annals of American discovery in the once dark places of the New World Continent are more interesting to the modern-day reader, or more full of venturesome daring and hardy adventure, than the story told in the narrative of the Lewis and Clark Exploring Expedition in the years 1804-06. That notable expedition, fruitful in high and useful achievement, for the first time threw light upon the wilderness region that at that early era stretched from the mouth of the Missouri River to where the waters of the Columbia River enter the Pacific Ocean. The vast region now to be opened to civilization, and then known as the Louisiana Territory, came into the possession of the United States, at the farsighted instigation of President Jefferson, by a rare stroke of American diplomacy. It consisted of nearly a million square miles, and embraced what is now the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, with parts of Colorado, Minnesota, and Idaho, and all of what is now the Territory of Oklahoma. At the period, it was the abode, almost exclusively, of warring Indian tribes, most of whom lived in a state of nature, and were, moreover, hostile to all intruders on their wild domain. The civilized peoples sparsely inhabiting its trackless spaces did not exceed 50,000, chiefly French coureurs de bois, or of French descent, with a sprinkling of Spanish, Germans, English, and Americans, and about 40,000 negro slaves.
