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Essay on Lewis and Clark Expedition: What was the impact of the Corps of Discovery on the country as a whole?
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark rank high in the pantheon of American folk heroes. Even in the present day, at the 200-year commemoration of their expedition, Lewis and Clark are viewed as brave adventurers who went where no one had gone before and explored and conquered the wilderness for the betterment of America. There is another way, however, to view Lewis and Clark, which is closer to the truth. Lewis and Clark were military officers serving American empire and Manifest Destiny - and were the vanguard of American legal doctrines and policies that ultimately robbed the indigenous peoples of just about everything they possessed. Historian Bernard DeVoto stated that "the dispatch of the Lewis and Clark expedition was an act of imperial policy." This imperialism was directed at the Indians and tribes that inhabited the Pacific Northwest and the Louisiana Territory.
The Lewis and Clark expedition was primarily concerned with Indian affairs from its inception. In January 1803, when President Jefferson sought an appropriation to fund the expedition, he told Congress that the United States could capture from England the lucrative fur trade with the Missouri River tribes and tribes clear to the Pacific Ocean. Then, when launching the expedition in June 1803, President Jefferson instructed Lewis to find the elusive Northwest Passage across the continent to use the route, in cooperation with Indian tribes, to greatly expand the American fur trade.
Second, Jefferson wanted Lewis to establish commercial ties with the Indian nations in the Louisiana Territory. Third, Jefferson ordered Lewis and Clark to perform ethnographic studies of Indians and to gather information concerning tribal life, religion, territory, diplomatic relations and more. Finally, in January 1804, after the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson added a new instruction and ordered Lewis and Clark to extend the United States......
