Lewis & Clark Memorial, Charlottesville, VA - Philatelic Photographs on Waymarking.com

Early in 1803, U.S. President Thomas Jefferson sought funding for an expedition up the Missouri River into largely unexplored territory. Ostensibly, the purpose of the expedition was to find out what was up there in terms of resources and to obtain scientific and geographic information as well. Jefferson even had someone in mind to lead the expedition: Captain Meriwether Lewis of his home state of Virginia. (Lewis subsequently chose Lieutenant William Clark to serve as a co-leader of the expedition.) The area to be explored was mostly part of the vast Louisiana Territory which extended from the city of New Orleans north to the border with Canada. This area was originally claimed for France by La Salle in 1682 but was currently in the possession of Spain (who had secretly returned it to France in exchange for some territory in Europe).

At about this same time, the United States had sent agents to France to negotiate the purchase of the city of New Orleans in order to keep that port open for U.S. commerce. Due to a variety of circumstances, France decided to offer the whole of the Louisiana Territory including New Orleans for $15 million. The United States jumped at the opportunity and the acquisition became known as the Louisiana Purchase. Now that expedition that President Jefferson had been promoting also became an effort to get a good look at what he had just spent $15 million to acquire.

The expedition (which consisted of around 40 men) officially got under way near St. Louis in the spring of 1804 and followed the Missouri River up to the area of present-day Bismarck, ND where they spent the winter of 1804-05. In the spring of 1805, they continued up the Missouri River, crossed the Rocky Mountains and descended the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. The expedition spent the winter of 1805-06 near the area of present-day Astoria, OR. In the spring of 1806, they made the return trip back to St. Louis largely following the same route.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition went largely uncelebrated in the nineteenth century. It wasn’t until the time of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, which marked the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase, when historians finally started writing extensively about the expedition. Afterwards, statues began to be erected and historical markers placed. The postage stamp wasn’t issued until 1954, the 150th anniversary of the expedition.

One of the aspects of the expedition that has caught the fascination of historians over the years was a young Shoshone woman named Sacagawea, who accompanied the Corps of Discovery (as the expedition was officially known) from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean. Sacagawea was kidnapped by the Hidatsa Indians when she was twelve years old and subsequently sold to a French fur trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau who took her as a wife. When Charbonneau was hired as a translator, the Corps got Sacagawea as part of the bargain. Sacagawea spoke both Shoshone and Hidatsa while her husband spoke Hidatsa and French. The final link in the translation chain was another Corps member, François Labiche, who spoke both French and English.

Adding to Sacagawea’s lore is the fact that she gave birth to a son just two months prior to the expedition’s departure in the spring of 1805 and she brought the infant along with her on the journey. Most depictions of Sacagawea include the child as well but these are all relatively modern as no contemporary image of Sacagawea exists, in fact, no one knows what she actually looked like. And although she was barely mentioned by either Lewis or Clark in their journals, Sacagawea has become a major part of all modern accounts of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. True to form, both the statue and the stamp include images of Sacagawea along with Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. (However, the image of Sacagawea on the stamp is not taken from this statue but rather from another statue on the grounds of the state capitol in Bismarck, North Dakota.)

This statue, officially titled “Their First View of the Pacific,” was designed and sculpted by prolific New York artist Charles Keck. (The statue is historically accurate in this regard since, according to the journals, Sacagawea had importuned to see the “great water.”) In addition to the images of Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea, the stamp shows a keel boat and the Missouri River in the background.

Stamp Issuing Country: United States Date of Issue: 28-Jul-1954 Denomination: 3 cents Color: violet brown Stamp Type: Single Stamp Relevant Web Site: [Web Link]

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