Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

Meriwether Lewis was a Virginia-born army officer who served as President Thomas Jefferson's private secretary. After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Jefferson asked him to lead an expedition up the Missouri River to find a route to the Pacific, map the land, study its plants and animals, and meet its native nations. Lewis chose as co-leader his friend William Clark, an experienced officer and mapmaker. Their Corps of Discovery of about thirty-three people, including York, an enslaved man owned by Clark, left the St. Louis area in May 1804. They wintered among the Mandan in present-day North Dakota, where they were joined by the Shoshone woman Sacagawea and her husband. They crossed the Rocky Mountains with Shoshone horses, nearly starved in the Bitterroot Mountains, and reached the Pacific Ocean in November 1805. They returned to St. Louis in September 1806, having lost only one man, to illness. Lewis became governor of the Louisiana Territory and died of gunshot wounds in 1809, probably by his own hand. Clark became an Indian agent and governor of Missouri Territory and died in 1838.

Faith: Faith not well documented. Source: Wikipedia