Rivers, Edens, Empires: Lewis & Clark and the Revealing of America
Before Lewis & Clark

Originally published in 1651 by John Farrer, a representative of the Virginia Company, this 1667 edition was issued by Farrer's daughter, Virginia. It perpetuates the notion that the Pacific Ocean lay just across the Allegheny Mountains—separated by a narrow strip of land that could be traveled in only "ten days marche." At this time, the actual distance between the two oceans was unknown, but the intention was to link Sir Francis Drake's 1577 landing in New Albion (Point Reyes, California) with the recently settled Virginia colony, thereby substantiating British claims to the breadth of the continent.

Drawn by surveyors Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson, father of Thomas Jefferson, this map was the pre-eminent cartographic representation of Virginia during the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. The map was commissioned by the Board of Trade in 1748 in order to determine the extent of Virginia's western settlement and possible French encroachment on English claims. It is the first reasonably accurate map of the colony to show the various ranges of the Allegheny Mountains and the potential connections of the James and Potomac Rivers with the westward flowing tributaries of the Ohio.

Attributed to a Native American named "Chegeree" and an anonymous English official, this map and accompanying notes portray the extent of French forces and troop strengths in the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys at the outset of the French and Indian War. Such information, outlining the French presence in the region, was vital to English forces as the two European powers fought for control of the North American interior.

George Washington became an active land speculator, acquiring more than 20,000 acres of land in the Ohio Valley, beyond the Allegheny Mountains. Like many other Virginians, he wanted to capitalize on trade flowing from the Ohio River Valley by routing it through the Tidewater region of Virginia. Shown here is a survey for 2,314 acres of land patented in 1771 by George Washington. The property contained over five miles of valuable contiguous Ohio River frontage currently located in Washington's Bottom, West Virginia.

John Mitchell's 1755 map was published on the eve of the French and Indian War, yet the French claims in the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, as defined by the Treaty of Utrecht (1714), were not recognized. Instead, the colorist showed individual English colonial claims extending west over the Alleghenies to the western margin of the map. A note found near the northwestern edge of the map illustrates the contemporary geographical concept of continental symmetry: "Missouri River is reckoned to run Westward to the Mountains of New Mexico, as far as the Ohio does eastward."

Instruments used by colonial surveyors as well as nineteenth-century explorers include the surveyor's compass for measuring direction and the Gunter chain for measuring distance. Philadelphian Benjamin Rittenhouse and his brother David were well known for making the most accurate surveying compasses, like the one displayed here, during the colonial period. The Gunter chain, introduced in 1620 by English mathematician and astronomer Edmund Gunter introduced a surveyor's chain with 100 links, measuring 66 feet (or 4 poles). With this design, one square chain equals 484 square yards, ten square chains equal an acre, and eighty chains equal a mile.

Copied by a lieutenant of the Spanish Royal Corps of Engineers, this volume includes the diary of the expedition conducted by the Franciscan priests Silvestre Veléz de Escalante and Francisco Dominguez. It records their route that started out from Sante Fe on July 29, 1776, making a circuit through what is now Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. The diary describes geographic features and mentions passing the ancient cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde in Colorado.

President Jefferson sought information on the territory west of the Mississippi River from a wide variety of sources. When Baron Alexander von Humboldt visited Washington in 1804, after his South American tour, Jefferson took the opportunity to gather information about the newly acquired Louisiana territory. In this note to von Humboldt, Jefferson was particularly interested in the population "of white, red, or black people."

Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, an Italian-born Jesuit missionary, explored the area around Tucson from 1687 to 1701, traveling as far as the mouth of the Colorado River. He proved that California was not an island, a myth that had endured for almost a century. Although his cartographic findings first appeared in 1705, a slightly later version of his map was published in a German missionary periodical on display here. This map shows the Gila River flowing into the Colorado directly above its mouth and extensive settlements in northern New Spain.

This detailed map of the Internal Provinces of New Spain (northern Mexico and southwestern United States) reflects the Spanish government's concern during the second half of the eighteenth century about frontier defenses, especially in response to American Indian attacks and the potential movement of European enemies into the region. The 1766–1768 survey involved a two-year, 6,000 mile trek extending from the Gulf of California to the Red River in Louisiana. Since this map was never published, British Americans were not aware of the extent of geographical and ethnological information known about the Spanish frontier.

A party of ten, led by Franciscan Fathers Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante departed Santa Fe in late July 1776, and returned to that location on January 2, 1777, as part of a failed effort to link Santa Fe with the new Spanish settlements along the Pacific Coast. The expedition did obtain substantially more knowledge of the regions north, northwest, and west of Santa Fe than any previous party, penetrating further into the unknown central Rockies. The manuscript map displayed above, made by expedition cartographer Bernardo Miera y Pacheco, reveals Spain's northernmost efforts to explore the interior of western North America.

Although maps from the Escalante expedition were never published, multiple manuscript copies were prepared and circulated throughout New Spain. The 1777 copy shown here covers only the Colorado, Utah, and Arizona portion of the expedition. A 1778 version, prepared by cartographer Bernardo Miera y Pacheco, provides a fuller reference to the area covered by this ambitious expedition. It is reported that von Humboldt reviewed these manuscript maps as he prepared his atlas of New Spain. It is also probable that Miera and Escalante used LaFora and Urrútia's 1769 map in planning their 1776–1777 expedition.

Baron Alexander von Humboldt, a highly esteemed geographer and man of science, visited Mexico in 1803. In the process of preparing his atlas on Mexico, he received current information on the northern regions of Spain's holdings in what is now the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico. Von Humboldt's general map of Mexico brought knowledge of the geographic relationship of the emerging United States with the American Southwest to a broad reading public. Zebulon Pike may have had access to von Humboldt's work during the German cartographer's visit to Washington in 1804.

During the course of several ventures up the Missouri River as far as the Mandans in the 1780s and 1790s, James Mackay, a Scottish trader and explorer sponsored by the Spanish government, and his assistant, John Thomas Evans, a Welshman, had accumulated vital information about the tribes of the Missouri River valley and even planned their own venture to the Pacific Ocean. While at Camp Dubois in Illinois during the winter of 1803–1804, Lewis and Clark acquired some of this knowledge through talking with Mackay and examining the trader's notes, journal extracts, and maps.

Most likely prepared for the Lewis and Clark expedition on the eve of its departure from St. Louis, this map was part of a collection accumulated by William Clark. Although place names are in French, its Spanish origins are implied by the dramatic, albeit conjectural, bend of the Missouri River towards the south into modern-day New Mexico. The map locates the Missouri's headwaters near Santa Fe presumably in an attempt to validate the Spanish notion that northern Mexico was embraced by both the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. The mid-course of the Missouri River is based on the latest contemporary information obtained from explorer-traders James MacKay and John Evans.

Although several copies of this detailed and influential manuscript map were made, only this copy survives. It was drafted for the use of Lewis and Clark and carried by them on the first leg of their journey up the Missouri River. Based on surveys up to the Mandan-Hidatsa villages by explorer-trader James Mackay with the assistance of John Evans, the map is recognized as a milestone in Great Plains cartography since it was the first to employ extensive astronomical observations and compass readings. It furnished Lewis and Clark with the most detailed cartographic representation of the lower and middle courses of the Missouri River before they reached the area.

Although French General Victor Collot traveled through the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys in 1796, his two-volume account was not published until 1826. During his inspection tour, Collot observed the topography, resources, and people of these American and Spanish-held lands, which he illustrated with regional maps, town plans, and views in an accompanying atlas. His plan of St. Louis displayed the town's military fortifications, which he found sadly lacking. But the image also reveals the town emerging as the gateway for the fledgling Missouri River fur trade.

As early as 1785 in his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson asserted “The Missouri is in fact the principal river, contributing more to the common stream than does the Mississippi, even after its junction with the Illinois.” Jefferson's intense interest in the Missouri River eventually led to his dispatching the Corps of Discovery up the Missouri to search for the water route to the Pacific. This edition of Jefferson's only published book is the first published in the United States. It raced through nineteen editions in five countries before Jefferson's death.

This chart records the explorations of British Naval Captain George Vancouver along the Pacific Northwest Coast and into the entrance of the Columbia River, as far as present-day Portland, in the early 1790s. Vancouver was directed by the British government to collect information about the fur trade and search for a possible northwest passage. Using Vancouver's charts, Aaron Arrowsmith recorded this information on his 1802 map of North America. Meriwether Lewis also studied and traced Vancouver's chart of the Columbia reinforcing Jefferson's notion about a potential link between the Columbia and Missouri Rivers.

Massachusetts-born Jonathan Carver, one of the first English colonists to venture west beyond the upper Mississippi River, explored several northern tributaries of the Mississippi, attempting to find a river passage to the west coast. His map of North America depicts the hypothetical “River of the West,” promoting the misconception that the Pacific could be reached directly from the Mississippi River. The map also demonstrates Carver's belief in the concept of a “pyramidal height-of land” in the western interior, from which the continent's principal rivers.

Carver's account of his geographical discoveries and observations about various Indian tribes stimulated widespread interest in seeking a passage to the Pacific. His Travels through the Interior Parts of North America was published in London in 1778 and became an instant best seller, issued in more than thirty editions and translated into several languages. While Carver's account was heavily re-written and sometimes exaggerated, scholars now recognize its ethnographic and geographic importance.

Sailing under the British flag with the intention of locating the western gateway to the fabled Northwest Passage, Captain James Cook devoted his third and final voyage to exploring the Pacific Basin and the northwest coast of North America from Oregon to Alaska. His account of the voyage included illustrations like this view of the native “habitations” of Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island in present-day British Columbia. Like expeditions to follow, Cook was instructed to observe the flora, fauna, and geology he encountered and “. . .to describe them as minutely, and to make as accurate drawings of them, as you can . . .”

Joseph Ingraham was a trader and an explorer who commanded the brigantine Hope on a trading venture from Boston to the northwest coast of North America and China in 1790–1792. The venture was a commercial failure, but Ingraham chronicled the journey, by way of South America's Cape Horn, in a four-volume journal that includes written descriptions of native peoples, local flora and fauna, as well as numerous illustrations. He writes in his journal, “I shall likewise present a drawing of a canoe of Nootka Sound,” which is shown above.

Peter Pond, an American fur trader from Connecticut working for the British North West Company, drew on first-hand experience and information gathered from Indians to create an influential image of the northwestern portion of North America. Reflecting the geographic wisdom of the time, he sketched the Rocky Mountains as a single, narrow range close to the Pacific Ocean and suggested that the headwaters of the Missouri River might be close to the source of a western river in the country of the Flathead Indians. Much of Pond's concept of western geography was conjectural, but it nonetheless guided future voyages of western discovery.

In 1793 North West Company trader Alexander Mackenzie became the first European explorer to cross the American continent north of Mexico, following a route through northern Canada. His published journal includes several Indian vocabularies as well as an early history of the fur trade. It was reprinted in twenty-six editions in four languages. After reading Voyages from Montreal in the summer of 1802, Thomas Jefferson accelerated plans for what became the Lewis and Clark Expedition. P. Conde's frontispiece engraving is based on the only known authentic portrait of Mackenzie.

Peter Fidler, a surveyor, explorer, and cartographer for the Hudson's Bay Company, drew this highly stylized map in 1801 from one provided to him by Ac ko mok ki, a Blackfeet Indian chief. This Indian map illustrates the headwaters of the Missouri and Saskatchewan River systems flowing eastward from the Rocky Mountains. It provided the best depiction of the area at that time for advancing fur trappers. Fidler's copy of Ac ko mok ki's map was forwarded to the Hudson's Bay Company in London, where Aaron Arrowsmith incorporated selected elements into the 1802 edition of his North American map.

Aaron Arrowsmith's 1802 map was the most current and accurate cartographic representation of the American West available to Lewis on the eve of the journey. Lewis studied this edition closely during the summer of 1803 and even carried a copy on the first leg of the expedition. Among Arrowsmith's sources were Indian maps, reports and manuscript maps from the British fur trade, and British Navy exploration reports and charts of the Pacific Coast. But various elements in the map reinforced Jefferson's misconceptions of western geography, among these were depictions of the Rocky Mountains as a single long chain and the headwaters of the upper Missouri River at the eastern edge of the Rockies, suggesting those mountains were readily portaged.

This British military map illustrates the Mississippi River as the boundary separating the Spanish and English empires in North America, by terms of the 1763 treaty ending the French and Indian War. Spanish lands are shaded blue, and the British are shown in yellow. By the treaty, Great Britain gained the right to navigate the river, thus providing it with an opportunity to exploit the Mississippi Valley fur trade, although the river's major port New Orleans was under Spanish control. Following the American Revolution, the United States acquired these British lands, except for the Floridas, and the right of free navigation on the Mississippi.

In his letter to James Madison, James Monroe, U.S. special envoy, explains why he and Robert R. Livingston, America's minister to France, were obliged to purchase "the whole" of Louisiana. Monroe and Livingston later quarreled over who deserved credit for the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory. Monroe complained to Madison in this letter that the “most difficult vexations and embarrassing part of my labors has been with my associate.” Monroe's role in the acquisition propelled him into contention for the presidency in 1808.

After the Revolutionary War, the U.S. acquired British lands up to the Mississippi River. But the Spanish, who obtained the lands west of the Mississippi from France, barred American access to the river and the port of New Orleans. Only in 1795, by the Pinckney Treaty, did Spain allow American farmers and merchants the right to deposit and export goods on the Mississippi. This arrangement was jeopardized by France's secret acquisition of Louisiana. On learning that Napoleon, threatened by wars in Haiti and elsewhere, might sell Louisiana, Jefferson sent his emissaries to France to conclude the purchase. Above is James Monroe's copy of the treaty he negotiated for the United States.

President Jefferson sought detailed information from knowledgeable men living in Louisiana regarding its geography, population, settlements, government, laws, and trade, in an effort to expedite Congress's ratification of the treaty of the Louisiana Purchase. He presented a compilation of their responses to Congress in November 1803 that included valuable information from John Sibley (1757–1837)—a Massachusetts-born physician and Indian language expert, residing in Natchitoches, Louisiana. This first reporting included extensive facts and useful charts, as well as some myth and rumor, that stimulated a public thirst for knowledge about the newly acquired land.

Prepared in 1804 for inclusion in a general reference atlas by London publisher Aaron Arrowsmith, this map, more than any other, embodied how Jefferson and his contemporaries envisioned the West. River systems promised a quick passage across the continent and the single ridge of the Rockies proved no barrier to that passage. The central mission of the Lewis and Clark Expedition—“to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by it's course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean”—was based on the geographic conceptions made visible in this map.

James Wilkinson, ranking general in the U. S. Army and charged by President Jefferson to oversee the military aspects of the new territory of Louisiana, issued these General Orders on December 20, 1803, for the formal transfer of power over Louisiana. After the United States acquired Louisiana from France, the transfer of control occurred without any serious incidents. This was remarkable since many Spanish and French officers had overlapping authority, and there were many conflicting territorial claims.

On July 4, 1803, the National Intelligencer and Washington Advertiser carried the first official public announcement that France had sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States. The Intelligencer was published in Washington, D.C., by Samuel Harrison Smith (1772–1845), a political ally of President Thomas Jefferson. It was considered the "official" newspaper of Jefferson's administration and the Jeffersonian Republican political party.

Thomas Jefferson's plan in 1805 to build on the Louisiana Purchase by buying West Florida from Spain is lampooned here by cartoonist James Akin. Induced by the sting of the hornet Napoleon, Jefferson vomits gold coins before a dancing Spanish representative holding maps of East and West Florida and carrying French Minister Talleyrand's instructions in his pocket. By the end of the War of 1812, the U.S. had gained possession of most of West Florida. The remainder of West Florida and East Florida were acquired by Treaty in 1819 during James Monroe's administration.

Although Meriwether Lewis already knew of the purchase of Louisiana, he received this written confirmation from President Jefferson while in Pittsburgh securing supplies and equipment for the western journey ahead. Of more interest to Lewis was the inclusion of British Lieutenant Broughton's description of the location of “the source of the Missouri . . . in the Stony mountains” and his calculations on the short distance between Mount Hood in Oregon and the range of the Stony Mountains.