Remarks

By The Honorable Gale Norton

Secretary of the Interior

January 18, 2003

Lewis and Clark Bicentennial

Good Afternoon. I bring you a special message from President Bush

(Read one-minute message.)

I want to add my thanks to that of the President for the hard work of our hosts today.

It is fitting that our commemoration of the Lewis and Clark Journey begins here at Monticello. It was here, during the hot days of August 1802, when Thomas jefferson and Meriwether Lewis read an account of the British North West Company’s efforts to discover the route to the Pacific Ocean.

With competitive fires burning and fearing Britain would be the first to discover the Northwest Passage, Lewis told Jefferson, “Anything the British could do, I could do better.”

So began America’s Westward discovery and expansion.

Two hundred years ago today Jefferson sent his message to Congress, requesting an appropriation of $2,500 for, “an intelligent officer with ten or twelve chosen men [to] explore the hole line, even to the Western Ocean.”

In the end, the journey cost almost $40,000. Even then there were cost overruns.

President Jefferson was ahead of his time. He had the foresight to imagine uncharted territory becoming a nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

He gave Lewis and Clark specific instructions on exploring the Native cultures and natural history of the West. Jefferson wanted evidence.

Lewis discovered the evidence. He brought back animal skins, horns, and beaded clothing. Jefferson put them on display here at Monticello in his Indian Hall. The information and documentation that Lewis and Clark brought back to Jefferson fired the imagination of many Americans, luring them to expand westward into a bold, new America.

It is hard to imagine the vastness of the unknown into which Lewis and Clark ventured. When we understand that Thomas Jefferson thought there might still be wandering wooly mammoths in the West, we begin to understand their complete lack of information. Imagine the courage it took to venture into that unknown.

A small band of soldiers brought back a world that few had experienced and changed history for the nation.

Lewis and Clark formed partnerships in preparation for their journey and all along the expedition route–from the Philadelphia scientists who tutored them about the natural world--- to the young Indian woman who served as their guide to the tribes. What was unexplored country to the expedition was a land divided into borders and well traveled by Native Americans.

In fact, a good deal of the enduring fascination Americans have for the Lewis and Clark saga is due to the assistance extended by tribes and individual Indians.

Foremost among those is Sakakawea --meaning “bird woman” in the Hidatsa language--who joined the expedition when it reached the Hidatsa and Mandan nations in North Dakota.

This young Indian woman made every step of the remaining trek with Lewis and Clark–carrying a baby on her back.

But she was not the only Indian to ease the burden for the expedition. Several tribes and tribal leaders saved them from failure and death along the way. If it had not been for the tribes, the expedition would have starved or died of exposure.

Much of the legacy of the Lewis and Clark expedition has come to the Department of the Interior. We deal with tribal relations, conservation of much of our nation’s most treasured lands and wildlife, and the survey and mapping of those lands.

A member of Lewis and Clark’s team, Private John Colter, left the Corps early and went off to discover the areas of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.

Much of the Corps of Discovery’s route passes through lands now administered by the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Reclamation –all part of Interior–as well as the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service.

These agencies will work with states, local governments and tribes to commemorate the journey along the way.

Another way Interior is honoring the expedition is by sponsoring the Corps of Discovery II traveling exhibition now at the Monticello Visitors Center.

Charlottesville is the first stop of an odyssey that will take the exhibit to four hundred cities in the next four years-- from Virginia to the Oregon coast. It is your chance to experience a part of the world as Lewis and Clark saw it.

In addition to the dynamic and educational graphics of this museum on wheels, its most valuable contribution will be making “living history” in the “Tent of Many Voices.”

Along the route of the trail, local communities and tribes can talk about the expedition from many different cultural perspectives.

The exhibit is purposefully titled “Corps of Discovery II: 200 Years to the Future” because it is only by seeing the past from many perspectives and hearing many voices in the present that America can understand our history and build our future.

The Lewis and Clark Bicentennial is a chance for America to think like Thomas Jefferson, to envision what we want our country to become centuries into the future. It’s a journey of many voices that we can take together.