Since the time of Columbus, explorers dreamed of a water passage across the North American continent. President Thomas Jefferson shared this dream. He conceived the Corps of Discovery to travel up the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains and westward along possible river routes to the Pacific Ocean. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led this expedition of 1804?6. Along the way they filled hundreds of notebook pages with observations of the geography, Indian tribes, and natural history of the trans-Mississippi West. This volume includes Lewis's and Clark's journals beginning in August 1803, when Lewis left Pittsburgh to join Clark farther down the Ohio River. The two men and several recruits camped near the mouth of the Missouri River for five months of training, acquiring supplies and equipment, and gathering information from travelers about the trip upriver. They started up the Missouri in May 1804. This volume ends in August, when the Corps of Discovery camped near the Vermillion River in present-day South Dakota.

In twelve remarkable volumes, Gary E. Moulton has edited the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804?6, thus making clear and accessible to all readers the plethora of maps and words with which Meriwether Lewis and William Clark documented one of the greatest ventures of discovery in American history. With the Comprehensive Index, the thirteenth volume, Moulton completes his work?and offers everyone who consults the Journals a complete and detailed means of locating specific passages, references, and particular people or places within the larger work. Throughout the edition, his guiding principles have been clarity and ease of use. Consequently, the notes are indexed more thoroughly here than in most works and include modern place-names, modern denominations for Indian nations, and current popular and scientific names for various cited species. This volume also contains a list of corrections for earlier volumes.

Reproduction of the original: The Journals of Lewis and Clark by Meriwether Lewis, William Clark

Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: 1804-1806; Atlas Volume 8

Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: 1804-1806; Part 1 & 2 Volume 6