The Corps of Discovery
About forty-five men set out up the Missouri in May 1804. After the first winter some went home, and thirty-three people went on to the Pacific and back: the permanent party. With them went Lewis’s dog, Seaman.
How many people were on the expedition?
About forty-five set out in May 1804: soldiers, French boatmen hired to row as far as the Mandan villages, and a small crew of soldiers who took the keelboat back down the river in April 1805. The permanent party that crossed to the Pacific and came home was thirty-three people: two captains, three sergeants, twenty-three privates, two interpreters, York, Sacagawea and her baby son. (Chapter 9)
The captains
- Meriwether Lewis (1774–1809)
- Army captain and President Jefferson’s secretary; the expedition’s commander, naturalist and doctor. He became governor of the Louisiana Territory, and died at Grinder’s Stand, Tennessee, in October 1809, probably by his own hand. (Chapter 31)
- William Clark (1770–1838)
- Lewis’s old commanding officer, who shared the command as an equal although the army made him only a lieutenant. The expedition’s mapmaker and best boatman. He later ran the government’s dealings with the nations of the West and was governor of the Missouri Territory. He died in St. Louis in 1838. (Chapter 31)
The sergeants
- John Ordway
- The senior sergeant, in charge of the camp and the men’s duties, and one of the expedition’s journal-keepers.
- Nathaniel Pryor
- A cousin of Charles Floyd. On the way home in 1806 he led a small party taking horses overland; when the horses were stolen, his men floated down the Yellowstone in round boats of buffalo hide.
- Patrick Gass
- A carpenter from Pennsylvania, chosen as sergeant by the privates’ vote after Floyd died. His journal, published in 1807, was the first account of the expedition in print. He was the last member of the Corps to die, in 1870. (Chapter 5)
- Charles Floyd
- Died on 20 August 1804, probably of a burst appendix: the only member of the Corps to die on the journey. Floyd’s Bluff, in Sioux City, Iowa, is named after him. (Chapter 4)
The privates
- William Bratton
- A hunter, chased by a wounded grizzly in May 1805. (Chapter 10)
- John Collins
- A hunter.
- John Colter
- A hunter who left the Corps in August 1806 to trap beaver, and became the first known European American to see the geysers of Yellowstone. (Chapter 29)
- Pierre Cruzatte
- Boatman and fiddler, blind in one eye, who shot Lewis by mistake while they hunted elk in August 1806. (Chapter 28)
- Joseph Field and Reubin Field
- Brothers from Kentucky and two of the best hunters. Both rode with Lewis to the Marias in 1806, where Reubin stabbed a Piegan man who had taken his gun. (Chapter 27)
- Robert Frazer
- Kept a journal that has never been found.
- George Gibson
- A hunter.
- Silas Goodrich
- The Corps’ best fisherman.
- Hugh Hall
- A private in the permanent party.
- Thomas Proctor Howard
- A private in the permanent party.
- François Labiche
- A boatman who spoke French and English, and a link in the chain of interpreters with the Shoshone. (Chapter 16)
- Jean Baptiste Lepage
- Joined at Fort Mandan in the place of a soldier sent home.
- Hugh McNeal
- The first of the Corps to stand astride the source of the Missouri, in August 1805. (Chapter 15)
- John Potts
- A private in the permanent party.
- George Shannon
- At nineteen the youngest soldier, lost for sixteen days on the Great Plains in 1804. He later became a lawyer and politician. (Chapter 5)
- John Shields
- The blacksmith and gunsmith who kept the Corps’ guns working, and one of the three men who went ahead with Lewis to find the Shoshone.
- John B. Thompson
- A private in the permanent party.
- Peter Weiser
- A private in the permanent party.
- William Werner
- A private in the permanent party.
- Joseph Whitehouse
- Kept a journal, quoted in this book.
- Alexander Willard
- A blacksmith.
- Richard Windsor
- A hunter.
The interpreters and the family
- George Drouillard
- A hunter and sign-language interpreter whose mother was Shawnee, and probably the best hunter on the expedition. He was killed by Blackfeet in 1810 while trapping near the Three Forks. (Chapter 2)
- Toussaint Charbonneau
- A French-Canadian trader living among the Hidatsa, hired as an interpreter in November 1804. He was paid about five hundred dollars. (Chapter 7)
- Sacagawea
- A Lemhi Shoshone woman, captured as a girl by the Hidatsa, who interpreted with the Shoshone and carried her baby to the Pacific and back. She probably died in 1812. (Her story)
- Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, “Pomp”
- Sacagawea’s son, born at Fort Mandan on 11 February 1805, the youngest member of the Corps. Clark paid for his schooling in St. Louis; he travelled in Europe with a German prince and became a guide and mountain man in the West. (Chapter 31)
York
York was enslaved by William Clark. A big, strong man, he hunted, scouted and voted with the rest of the Corps, and he amazed the nations who had never seen a Black man before. After the journey Clark refused for about ten years to free him; what became of York after that is not certain. (Chapter 21 and Chapter 31)
Seaman
Lewis’s big Newfoundland dog went all the way to the Pacific and back. He caught squirrels and geese, was badly bitten by a beaver, and was stolen on the Columbia in April 1806 and got back. (Chapter 24)
Those who did not go all the way
Corporal Richard Warfington led the crew that took the keelboat back down the Missouri from Fort Mandan in April 1805, with the captains’ reports and specimens for Jefferson. Private Moses Reed deserted in August 1804, was brought back by Drouillard, made to run the gauntlet and thrown out of the permanent party. Private John Newman was expelled for mutinous talk in October 1804 and went home with the keelboat. The French boatmen who rowed the boats up the Missouri stayed at the Mandan villages or went back downriver. (Chapter 3 and Chapter 9)
More about the expedition: Summary, chapter by chapter · Timeline · The route · Sacagawea · What they discovered