The following pages embrace the substance of the narratives of two distinct expeditions for the discovery of the sources of the Mississippi River, under the authority of the United States. By connecting the incidents of discovery, and of the facts brought to light during a period of twelve years, unity is preserved in the prosecution of an object of considerable importance in the progress of our geography and natural history, at least, from the new impulse which they received after the treaty of Ghent.

Geographers deem that branch of a river as its true source which originates at the remotest distance from its mouth, and, agreeably to this definition, the combined narratives, to which attention is now called, show this celebrated stream to arise in Itasca Lake, the source of the Itasca River.

Owing to the time which has intervened since these expeditions were undertaken, a mere revision of the prior narrations, in the journal form, was deemed inexpedient. A concise summary has, therefore, been made, preserving whatever information it was thought important to be known or remembered, and omitting all matters not partaking of permanent interest.

To this summary, something has been added from the original manuscript journals in his possession. The domestic organization and social habits of the parties may thus be more perfectly understood. The sympathies which bind men together in isolated or trying scenes are sources of interest long after the link is severed, and the progress of science or discovery has passed beyond the particular points at which they then stood. Events pass with so much rapidity at present, in the diffusion of our population over regions where, but lately, the Indian was the only tenant, that we are in danger of having but a confused record of them, if not of losing it altogether. It is some abatement of this fear to know that there is always a portion of the community who take a pleasure in remembering individuals; who have either ventured their lives, or exerted their energies, to promote knowledge or advance discovery. It is in this manner that, however intent an age may be in the plans which engross it, the sober progress and attainments of the period are counted up. An important fact discovered in the physical geography or natural history of the country, if it be placed on record, remains a fact added to the permanent stores of information. A new plant, a crystal, an insect, or the humblest invertebrate object of the zoological chain, is as incontestable an addition to scientific knowledge, as the finding of remains to establish a new species of mastodon. They only differ in interest and importance.

It is not the province of every age to produce a LinnÆus, a Buffon, or a Cuvier; but, such are the almost endless forms of vegetable and animal life and organization—from the infusoria upward—that not a year elapses which may not enlarge the boundaries of science. The record of discovery is perpetually accumulating, and filling the list of discoverers with humbler, yet worthy names. Whoever reads with care the scientific desiderata here offered will find matter of description or comment which has employed the pens of a Torrey, a Mitchell, a Cooper, a Lea, a Barnes, a Houghton, and a Nicollet.

It is from considerations of this nature, that the author has appended to this narrative the original observations, reports, and descriptions made by his companions or himself, while engaged in these exploratory journeys, together with the determinations made on such scientific objects as were referred to other competent hands. These investigations of the physical geography of the West, and the phenomena or resources of the country, constitute, indeed, by far the most important permanent acquisitions of the scrutiny devoted to them. They form the elements of classes of facts which will retain their value, to men of research, when the incidents of the explorations are forgotten, and its actors themselves have passed to their final account.

It would have been desirable that what has here been done should have been done at an earlier period; but it may be sufficient to say that other objects engrossed the attention of the author for no small part of the intervening period, and that he could not earlier control the circumstances which the publication demanded. After his permanent return from the West—where so many years of his life passed—it was his first wish to accomplish a long-cherished desire of visiting England and the Continent, in which America, and its manners and institutions, might be contemplated at a distance, and compared by ocular proofs. And, when he determined on the task of preparing this volume, and began to look around for the companions of his travels, to avail himself of their notes, he found most of them had descended to the tomb. For the narrative parts, indeed, the manuscript journals, kept with great fulness, were still preserved; but the materials for the other division of the work were widely scattered. Some of them remained in the archives of the public offices to which they were originally communicated. Other papers had been given to the pages of scientific journals, and their reprint was inexpedient. The rich body of topographical data, and the elaborately drawn map of this portion of the United States, prepared by Captain Douglass, U. S. A., which would have been received with avidity at the time, had been in a great measure superseded by subsequent discoveries.[1] The only part of this officer's observations employed in this work, are his determinations of the geographical positions. The latter have been extended and perfected by the subsequent observations of Mr. Nicollet. At every point, there have been difficulties to overcome. He has been strenuous to award justice to his deceased companions, to whose memory he is attached by the ties of sympathy and former association. If more time has elapsed in preparing the work than was anticipated, it is owing to the nature of it; and he can only say that still more time and attention would be required to do justice to it. A word may be added respecting the period of these explorations. The year 1820 marked a time of much activity in geographical discovery in the United States. The treaty of Ghent, a few years before, had relieved the frontiers from a most sanguinary Indian war. This event enlarged the region for settlement, and created an intense desire for information respecting the new countries. Government had, indeed, at an earlier period, shown a disposition to aid and encourage discoveries. The feeling on this subject cannot be well understood, without allusion to the name of John Ledyard. This intrepid traveller had accompanied Captain Cook on his last voyage round the world. In 1786, he presented himself to Mr. Jefferson, the American minister at Paris, with a plan of extensive explorations. He proposed to set out from St. Petersburg, and, passing through Russia and Tartary to Behring's Straits, to traverse the north Pacific to Oregon, and thence cross the Rocky Mountains to the Missouri Valley.[A] Mr. Jefferson communicated the matter to the Russian plenipotentiary at Paris—and to the Baron Grimm, the confidential agent of the Empress Catherine—through whose influence he received the required passports. He proceeded on this adventure, and had reached within two hundred miles of Kamschatka, where he was arrested, and taken back, in a close carriage, to Moscow, and thence conducted to the frontiers of Poland. On reaching London, the African Association selected him to make explorations in the direction of the Niger. Reaching Egypt, he proceeded up the Nile to Cairo, where, having completed his preparations for entering the interior of Africa, he sickened and died, in the month of November, 1788.—Life of Ledyard, Sparks's Amer. Biog. vol. xvi.

The suggestion of Ledyard to explore Oregon became the germ of the voyages of Lewis and Clark. It appears that, in 1792, Mr. Jefferson proposed the subject to the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia.[2] It is not known that its action resulted in anything practical. After Mr. Jefferson himself, however, came to the presidency, in 1801, he called the attention of Congress to the matter. Louisiana had been acquired, under his auspices, in 1803, which furnished a strong public reason for its exploration. To conduct it, he selected his private secretary and relative, Merriweather Lewis, of Virginia; Captain William Clark was named as his assistant. Both these gentlemen were commissioned in the army, and the expense thus placed on a public basis. Captain Lewis left the city of Washington, on this enterprise, on the 5th of July, 1803, and was joined by Captain Clark west of the Alleghanies. Having organized the expedition at St. Louis, they began the ascent of the Missouri River on the 14th of May, 1804. They wintered the first year at Fort Mandan, about 1,800 miles up the Missouri, in the country of the Mandans. Crossing the Rocky Mountains the next year, and descending the Columbia to the open shore of the Pacific, they retraced their general course to the waters of the Missouri, in 1806, and returned to St. Louis on the 23d of September of that year. (Lewis and Clark, vol. ii. p. 433.)

To explore the Missouri to its source, and leave the remote summits of the Mississippi untouched, would seem to have ill-accorded with Mr. Jefferson's conceptions. It does not appear, however, from published data, that he selected the person to perform the latter service, leaving it to the military commandant of the district. (Life of Pike, Sparks's Amer. Biog. vol. xv. pp. 220, 281.) General Wilkinson, who had been directed to occupy Louisiana, appears to have made the selection. He designated Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike. This officer left Bellefontaine, Missouri, on the 9th of August, 1805, with a total force of twenty men, at least four months too late in the season to reach even the central part of his destination, without an aid in the command, without a scientific observer of any description, and without even an interpreter to communicate with the Indians. That he should have accomplished what he did, is altogether owing to his activity, vigilance, and enterprise, his knowledge of hunting and forest life, and his well-established habits of mental and military discipline. Winter overtook him, on the 16th of October, in his ascent, when he was about one hundred and twenty miles (as now ascertained) above the Falls of St. Anthony.[3] Severe cold, snow, and ice, rendered it impossible to push his boats further. Devoting twelve days in erecting a blockhouse, and leaving his heavy stores and disabled men in charge of a non commissioned officer, he proceeded onwards, on snow shoes, with small hand-sledges, and, by great energy and perseverance, reached, at successive periods, Sandy Lake, Leach Lake, and Upper Red Cedar Lake, on the third great plateau at the sources of the Mississippi. On the opening of the river, he began his descent, and returned to his starting-point, at Bellefontaine, on the 30th of April, 1806, having been absent a little less than nine months. On his visiting the country above the point where the climate arrested his advance, the whole region was found to be clothed in a mantle of snow. On his journey, the deer, elk, buffalo, and wolf, were found on the prairies—the waters were inhabited by wild fowl; as he acted the part of hunter, and, to some extent, guide, these furnished abundant employ for his efficient sportsman-like propensities. Of its distinctive zoology, minerals, plants, and other physical desiderata, it was not in his power, had he been ever so well prepared, to make observations. Even for the topography, above the latitude of about 46°, he was dependent, essentially, on the information furnished by the factors of the Northwest British Fur Company, who, at that period, occupied the country.[4] This information was readily given, and enabled him, with general accuracy, to present the maps and descriptions which accompany his account of the region. He was, however, misled in placing the source of the river in Turtle Lake, and in the topography of the region south and west of that point.

Pike's account of his expedition did not issue from the press till 1810. The narrative of the expedition of Lewis and Clark was still longer delayed—owing to the melancholy death of Lewis—and was not given till 1814; a period of political commotion by no means favorable to literary matters. It was, however, at once hailed as a valuable and standard accession to geographical science. Public opinion had for years been called to this daring enterprise.

Such was the state of geographical discovery in the United States in 1816. The war with Great Britain had had an exhausting effect upon the resources and fiscal condition of the country. But, owing to the information gained by the operation of armies in the ample area west of the Alleghanies, it opened a new world for enterprise in that quarter. The treaty of 1814 with Great Britain, which affirmed the original boundaries of 1783, by terminating, at the same time, the war and the fallacious hopes of sovereignty set up for the Indian tribes, truly opened the Mississippi Valley to settlement.

All eyes were turned to the general climate of the West, and its capacities of growth and expansion. The universal ardor which then arose and was spread, of its fertility, extent, and resources, has, from that era, filled the public mind, and fixed the liveliest hopes of the extension of the Union.

The accession of Mr. Monroe to the presidency, 4th March, 1817, formed the opening of this new epoch of industrial empire and progress in the West. This period brought into the administration a man of great grasp of intellect and energy of character in Mr. Calhoun. By placing the army in a series of self-sustaining posts on the frontiers, in advance of the settlements, he gave them efficient protection against the still feverish tribes, who hovered—feeble and dejected from the results of the war, but in broken, discordant, and hostile masses—around the long and still dangerous line of the frontiers, from Florida to Detroit and the Falls of St. Anthony. He encouraged every means of acquiring true information of its geography and resources. In 1819, the military line was extended to Council Bluffs, on the Missouri, and to the Falls of St. Anthony, on the Mississippi. Major S. H. Long, of the Topographical Engineers, was directed to ascend the Missouri, for the purpose of exploring the region west to the Rocky Mountains. During the same year, he approved a plan for exploring the sources of the Mississippi, submitted by General Cass, who occupied the northwestern frontiers.

The author having then returned from the exploration of the Ozark Highlands, and the mine country of Missouri and Arkansas,[5] received from Mr. Calhoun the appointment of geologist and mineralogist on this expedition; and having, at a subsequent period, been selected, as the leader of the expedition of 1832, to resume and complete the discoveries under the same authority, commenced in 1820, it is to the journals and notes kept on these separate occasions, that he is indebted for the data of the narratives and for the body of information now submitted.

Washington, D. C., October 24, 1854.