Describing a New Environment: Lewis and Clark and Enlightenment Science in the Columbia River Basin

Abstract

KristenPeterson,photographer (detail),courtesy Missouri Historical Society The Lewis and ClarkNational BicentennialExhibition is currently at the Missouri Historical SocietyinSt.Louis.TheOregonHistorical Society will hosttheexhibit from November 2005 throughMarch 2006 ? its only venue on theWest Coast. WilliamL. Lang Describing a New Environment LewisandHark andEnlightenment ScienceintheColumbia RiverBasin N august 1805, the Corps of Discovery topped the Continental Divide after a laborious journey up theMissouri River ? more than thirty-one hundred miles, byWilliam Clark's later reckon ing, from their departure point at the river'smouth.1 Tracing the Missouri to its sources marked the achievement of a major objective, but the view Meriwether Lewis took in as he looked west from Lemhi Pass startled him. "After refreshing ourselves," Lewis wrote on August 12, "we proceeded on to the top of the dividing ridge from which I discovered immence ranges of high mountains still to the West of us with their tops partially covered with snow." That view dashed the imagined geography Lewis and Clark had carried with them since leaving FortMandan inApril. They had expected thewest side of the divide tomimic the east side and to offer an unencumbered descent to the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean. Looking into the sawtoothed Bitterroot Mountains put Lewis in a position he had endured before when the geography had surprised him and forced new decisions. As they had throughout the expedition, the co-leaders pondered their options, knowing that their destination might be more distant but also knowing that reaching itwas compelling and essential to the success of theirmission.2 The scene is familiar to students of the great exploration led byMeri wether Lewis andWilliam Clark into theAmerican West. It is amoment of adventure and challenge, the essence of the Lewis and Clark story,a saga of exploration that rivals John Wesley Powell's float of theGrand Canyon, JohnGlenn's orbit of the Earth, and Neil Armstrong's walk on themoon. 360 OHQ vol. 105, no. 3 ? 2004 Oregon Historical Society Ewell Sale StewartLibrary, The Academy ofNatural Sciences of Philadelphia ?? BPECOtL^ These specimens o/Mahonia aquifolium ? also known as Berber?s aquifolium, or shiny Oregon grape ? which Lewis collected at theGreat Falls of theColumbia, are part of the Lewis and Clark Herbarium. Lang, Describing a New Environment 361 Most Americans have been told the Lewis and Clark story as an adventure, and ithas been thatway from the first telling of their experiences byNicho lasBiddle in History ofthe ExpeditionunderCaptains Lewis andClark in 1814 to Stephen Ambrose's enormously successful Undaunted Courage in 1996. The expedition has been a story of accomplishment, often setwithin a patriotic context. Itsbackground, proximate causes, and stated objectives, however, are not well known to the general public. Even less known and understood are the exploration's scientific purposes. Although President Thomas Jefferson created the expedition for nationalistic, geopolitical, and economic reasons, he also had science inmind when he sent Lewis and Clark to the West two centuries ago.3 Science in the eighteenth century had developed principally as an in vestigation of natural phenomena and the diversity of life.Enlightenment scientists, historian Donald Worster has argued, pursued the description of nature while they also investigated the apparent harmony resident in the natural world. Lewis and Clark carried these Enlightenment scientific interests and assumptions with them as they explored theColumbia River Basin, and their journals disclose their comprehension of the environment as natural and human ecology. They saw the lands west of the divide, in part, as scientists, and as scientists they documented the relationships between people and environment for the scientific enterprise.4 A case can be made that Jefferson's interest in theAmerican West grew out of his fascination with the natural world and his pursuit of scientific information about regions west of theAppalachian Mountains. He had science on his mind in 1783, just after Britain and theUnited States signed the peace treaty,when he first articulated the idea for a western explora tion and tried to enlist George Rogers Clark as expedition leader. Clark was one of the young nation's most experienced soldiers, a veteran of Revolutionary War campaigns on the western frontier, an exponent of western expansion, and someone interested in scientific discovery. Writing to Clark inDecember...