On Sunday 11 August 1805, Captain Meriwether Lewis wrote in his journal:
I discovered an Indian on horse back about two miles distant coming down the plain towards us. With my glass I discovered from his dress that he was of a different nation from any that we had yet seen, and was satisfyed of his being a Sosone; his arms were a bow and quiver of arrows, and was mounted on an eligant horse without a saddle, and a small string which was attatched to the under jaw of the horse which answered as a bridle. I was overjoyed at the sight of this stranger and had no doubt of obtaining a friendly introduction to his nation, provided I could get near enough to him to convince him of our being whitemen.
( The rest of the journal entry )
The story of the Lewis and Clark expedition is extraordinary: this miscellaneous group striking off across that huge continent, confidently assuming that a Northwest Passage through the mountains would exist because they required it to, negotiating their way through the territory of tribes who were often at war with each other (and had every reason to be even more hostile to the explorers), reaching the far coast with only one fatality and then realising that they would not, after all, be able to find a ship to carry them home and setting off to walk all the way back again. The organisation of the expedition is unexpected, too: the presence of a Black slave and a Shoshone woman who acted as intepreter is less remarkable than the fact that these two were treated (at times, at least) as full members of the expedition under its dual captaincy.
This stuff is not taught in British schools - or it wasn't in my time - and I first came across the story in a children's book, one of the earliest of the Puffin imprint. And it feels like a story: specifically, it feels like science fiction, the disparate crew on a mission to boldly go... well, you know the rest.
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