Two hundred years ago, a small group of men came together under the command of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to embark on an expedition across the largely unknown and uncharted territory west of the Mississippi River in the new nation to fulfill the visionary quest of Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States. Often referred to as the Corps of Discovery, the men had no idea of the wonders they would see and the hardships they would endure before they finally returned home in 1806.
As one journalist has written: "Lewis and Clark saw themselves as Army officers. Their instructions from their Commander in Chief were clear, and the spirit behind them was practical, not poetic: claim the West and its wealth for the United States. With Spain to the south and Britain to the north and everything in the middle up for grabs, the first American space race had begun. The expansion of knowledge was one objective—the mission was furnished with scientific instruments—but the expansion of power was its chief goal."
The Library of Congress exhibition "Rivers, Edens, Empires: Lewis & Clark and the Revealing of America," draws on the Library's rich holdings—especially its unequaled map and atlas collections and the papers of Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers—to tell the story of the exploration of the North American continent that features the Lewis and Clark expedition as the culminating moment in the quest to connect North America by means of a waterway passage. The exhibition opened in the Northwest Gallery and Pavilion of the Thomas Jefferson Building on July 24 and will be on view through Nov. 29. Hours for the exhibition are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Saturday.
The highlight of the exhibition is the display, for the first time at the Library of Congress, of the large 1507 world map by cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, which gave the name "America" to the new lands explored by Columbus, Vespucci and others. The map was the result of an ambitious project in St. Dié, France, in the early years of the 16th century, to update geographic knowledge flowing out of the new discoveries of the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The map is in 12 sections, each measuring 161/2 inches by 231/4 inches, for a total of 36 square feet. The Library has recently purchased the map—the only known extant copy from an original printing of 1,000—which Librarian of Congress James Billington has called "the keystone of the Library's unparalleled collection of maps and atlases."
The Waldseemüller map, and what it shows about geographic knowledge at the beginning of the 16th century, serves as an impressive prequel to the rest of the exhibition. The visitor's understanding is enhanced by a prologue that defines the continent and summarizes geographic knowledge up to the mid-18th century. A digital presentation at the beginning of the exhibition helps to explain graphically how geographic information evolved.
"Rivers, Edens, Empires"
"Rivers, Edens, Empires" shows how the Lewis and Clark journey was shaped by the search for navigable rivers, inspired by the quest for "Edens," and driven by competition for empire. Thomas Jefferson was motivated by these aspirations when he drafted instructions for the expedition, sending them up the Missouri River in search of a passage to the Pacific.
Writing to his friend William Dunbar just a month after Lewis and Clark left Ft. Mandan (in what is now North Dakota) in 1805, Jefferson emphasized the importance of rivers in his plan for Western exploration and national expansion: "We shall delineate with correctness the great arteries of this great country." River highways could take Americans into an "Eden," Jefferson's vision of the West as the "Garden of the World." And those same rivers might be nature's outlines and borders for empire. "Future generations would," so Jefferson told his friend, "fill up the canvas we begin."
Description of the Exhibition: Before Lewis and Clark
The exhibition is divided into four major sections: Prologue (with the display of the Waldseemüller map), Before Lewis and Clark, Lewis and Clark, and After Lewis and Clark. These sections are further subdivided to illustrate and help explain the historical trends that the exhibition covers.
Beyond the Allegheny Mountains examines the Virginia conception of North America and lays the foundation for Jefferson's enduring interest in exploration. From the earliest stages of Chesapeake Tidewater settlement, when mapmakers such as John Farrer depicted the Pacific Ocean lying just west of the Alleghenies, Virginia, like other colonies, had an imperial mentality and vision that encompassed the entire breadth of the continent. Virginians envisioned that by building canals and improving the navigation of the colony's major rivers, they could create vital connections across the mountains to the rest of the continent. A key map in this section that vividly illustrates the British colonial mentality is John Mitchell's 1755 hand-colored, engraved "Map of British and French Dominions in North America."
The Spanish Entrada into the Southwest displays manuscript maps that summarize Spanish knowledge of the continent. The geography of the Southwest remained relatively unknown outside the Spanish Empire, since the maps and accounts of their settlements in parts of what is now California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas were not published. A highlight of this section is a 1769 map by José de Urrútia and Nicolás de Lafora locating Indian villages, Spanish missions and geographic features in amazing detail.
Exploration of the Missouri River examines what was known of the geography of the interior of the continent at the beginning of the 19th century. From the early 17th century to the middle of the 18th century, France claimed and occupied a major portion of the interior of North America. Working in alliance with the Native Americans in exploiting the fur trade, the French explored and mapped much of the continent's interior east of the Rocky Mountains, focusing on the St. Lawrence River, the Great Lakes and the lower Mississippi. On display in this section is the James Mackay–Nicolas de Finiels manuscript map of the Missouri River, covering the area from Saint Charles, Mo., to the Mandan villages of North Dakota. This is the map that Lewis and Clark used in their 1804 expedition up the Missouri River.
British Passage to the Pacific features images from Captain James Cook's Pacific voyage, including those made at Nootka Sound; Commander Joseph Ingraham's diary of his voyage as a trader and explorer; and the 1801 Ac ko mok ki map, "An Indian Map of the Different Tribes, that Inhabit the East and West Side of the Rocky Mountains." The Indian map was a crucial source of geographic information recorded on other maps that Jefferson and Lewis consulted as they planned the journey west.
The Louisiana Purchase, the next subsection of the exhibition, describes the importance of the 1803 treaty with France to acquire Louisiana, which gave the new nation not only access to the important port at New Orleans, but also all the lands west of the Mississippi, thus doubling the size of the United States.
As early as November 1802, Jefferson had asked the Spanish minister whether the Spanish court would "take it badly" if the United States sent a small expedition to "explore the course of the Missouri River," which was within the boundaries of the still-Spanish territory of Louisiana. The reason for the expedition, said Jefferson, was the advancement of commerce. The Spanish minister replied that "an expedition of this nature could not fail to give umbrage to our Government."
On Jan. 18, 1803, however, just days after Jefferson sent James Monroe to France to negotiate American access rights to the Mississippi River (which ultimately resulted in the Louisiana Purchase), the president sent a secret message to Congress asking for funds to support his proposal for a western expedition to explore the possibilities of a commercial trade route west of the Mississippi, and the House and Senate quickly agreed to the appropriation.
As historian Bernard de Voto has observed: "The reason why his message was secret was not that the expedition was to be concealed from the three powers [Great Britain, Spain and France], to all of which it would be fully visible. … Not the expedition but its true purpose was to be concealed. So far as secrecy was possible that purpose had to be concealed, for it had in view the fur trade of Canada, the maritime trade in sea otter and China goods, and the Columbia River." (The original manuscript of Jefferson's secret message is included in the Lewis and Clark section of the exhibition.)
The Senate ratified the treaty approving the Louisiana Purchase late in 1803, and the French turned over the territory to the United States in a ceremony on Dec. 20, 1803. A manuscript of the treaty, from the Library's James Monroe papers, as well as a May 14, 1803, letter from Monroe to James Madison, are on view in the exhibition.
Lewis and Clark
The core of the exhibition is the section on Lewis and Clark. Featured here are many of the maps and manuscript documents from the Library's rich and extensive collections covering this period of the nation's history, including the papers of Thomas Jefferson, augmented with important loans from distinguished collections across the country.
Among the items on view are the Nicholas King 1803 annotated map that the Corps of Discovery took on its journey; Jefferson's instructions to Meriwether Lewis for the journey; Jefferson's secret message to Congress requesting funding for the expedition; the Nicholas King 1805 map "of part of the continent of North America," which was compiled from information sent back to Washington by Lewis halfway through the journey; and an exchange of speeches between Jefferson and a delegation of Indian chiefs (representing the Osages, Missouri, Otos, Panis, Cansas Ayowais and Sioux) on their historic visit to Washington, D.C., in January 1806.
Journals, engravings, botanical and zoological specimens and Indian artifacts on display in this section bring additional vivid detail to the journey of the Corps of Discovery and the country and peoples they encountered. These items also provide insight into the similarities and differences between Euro-American and Indian approaches to diplomacy, geographic definition, dress, and animal and plant life. This section is enhanced by a digital station that animates the source maps that Lewis and Clark used and shows how the geographic information they gathered was added to existing data to produce a new compilation, which then became a source map for future expeditions and maps of the West.
Other Expeditions Across America: After Lewis and Clark
Not only is the Library rich in Lewis and Clark-related material, but it also holds impressive collections of other important Western expeditions, including those led by Zebulon Pike, Stephen Long, Charles Wilkes and John Frémont; exploratory voyages by fur traders and missionaries; and expeditions under the auspices of the Northwest and Mexican Boundary Commissions. These are examined in the third section of the exhibition and place the remarkable trek made by Lewis and Clark in the broad context of a century of exploration of the North American continent. An important contribution of these later journeys is the work of the artists and scientists who accompanied the expeditions, as well as the drawings they produced and specimens they collected along the way. Some of these can be seen in this last section of the exhibition.
The Epilogue of "Rivers, Edens, Empires" focuses on the Pacific Railroad Surveys conducted by the War Department and the Corps of Topographical Engineers. These surveys mapped four possible transcontinental routes and resulted in the 13 volumes of detailed, lavishly illustrated reports as well as the comprehensive map by G. K. Warren that closes the exhibition. Warren's map completed the process of cartographic definition begun a half century earlier by William Clark. In many ways the Pacific Railroad Surveys marked the end of an era—the age in which explorers sought a water route across the continent.
The exhibition's concluding virtual station depicts a compilation of routes from Lewis and Clark through the railroad surveys. The paths of these expeditions are superimposed on a map of the continental United States to demonstrate graphically the fulfillment of Jefferson's vision articulated so long ago to his friend William Dunbar that future generations would indeed "fill up the canvas."
For an online view of the exhibition, visit the Library's Web site at www.loc.gov/exhibits/lewisandclark/.
Prepared by Helen Dalrymple with assistance from exhibition staff.