76 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
LEWIS-CLARK EXPEDITIOIS. 
Prediction of Jim Bridger, Famous Scout , Full filled—Millions of 
People In the Western Division —Room for Many More — 
Brief History of the Expedition—Henry E. Reed. 
In 1866, a conference was held with Indians at Fort Lamarie, 
W yoming, for the purpose of signing a treaty. Sioux, Chey¬ 
ennes and Araphoes to the number of 16,060 assembled to 
meet the representatives of the United States Government, 
and among them were several chiefs who had never before 
spoken to a white man. With the whites who attended 
the council was Jim Bridger, famous in western pioneer 
history, whose trading post, built in Southwestern Wyoming 
in 1843, marked the beginning of the era of immigration 
into the Far West. Spotted Tail was the first to speak for 
the Indians. Half in sign language and half in Sioux, he 
said, referring to the Oregon trail, which the pioneers followed 
to the Pacific Coast: 
“We rented this trail along here to our Great Father at 
Washington for fifty-five years, so his people could travel 
West to the ocean. But they must quit going north into 
our best game country,.or we will rub them all out!” 
Three times the pipe of peace was passed round and there 
was no response. The Indians were becoming impatient, 
and Standing Elk demanded: “Why does not the white 
man answer Spotted Tail?” 
The only answer this time was the steady pattering of 
Jim Bridger’s army brogans against a plank as he measured 
off the tread of a company of infantry. 
Man-Afraid-of-his-Horses now spoke for the Indians: 
“Why does the white man treat us with silent contempt?” 
he asked. “What means the tramp of the foot of that mhn 
who has always been our most inveterate enemy?” 
Bridger rose to his full height and towered above every 
man in the council room except Red Cloud. Waving his 
hand towards the Laramie river, he said: “Indian Chief, 
the pattering of the feet you heard is the tramp of the mil¬ 
lions that are coming, and you can no more stop them than 
you can stop this river flowing past this fort to the sea!” 
EARLY SETTLERS 
Before Jim Bridger, were the trappers, pioneer settlers 
and missionaries who made their way to the Willamette 
Valley and organized at Champoeg, Oregon, in May, 1843, 
the first republican government west of the Rocky Mountains. 
Before these, were the overland Astorians, sent out as part 
of John Jacob Astor’s enterprise to found an American trading 
post on the Pacific Ocean. Before the overland Astorians 
were Lewis and Clark, and before Lewis and Clark was 
Captain Robert Gray, who discovered the Columbia river in 
1792. It is Lewis and Clark, their heroism and achieve¬ 
ments, that this story concerns. 
Long before Captain Gray discovered the Columbia river, 
and indeed before the ink was hardly dry on the treaty which 
made the United States a sovereign nation, Thomas Jefferson 
conceived the idea of an American settlement on the north¬ 
west coast of North America. To George Rogers Clark, 
whose capture of old Vincennes on February 25, 1779, forms 
one of the most brilliant exploits in military history, was 
offered the leadership of such an' expedition. Writing from 
Annapolis on December 4, 1783, Jefferson told Clark that a 
large sum of money had been subscribed in England for 
exploring the West from the Mississippi to California. Noth¬ 
ing, however, came of the offer to George Rogers Clark. 
When Jefferson became President, lie was in position to 
put into execution his long-cherished plan for exploring 
the country between the Mississippi River and the Pacific 
Ocean. An expedition v T as organized in 1803 and placed 
under the command of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, 
a younger brother of George Rogers Clark. The winter of 
1803 was spent on the east side of the Mississippi in Illinois. 
Clark remained in charge of the camp while Lewis recruited 
men for the trip at Cahokia and Kaskaskia, the very points 
where George Rogers Clark gathered his force for his famous 
march on Vincennes, 25 years before. 
THE START. 
All preparations having been made, Lewis and Clark 
started westward, May 14, 1804. Their route lay up the 
Missouri River from St. Louis. The first winter was spent 
at Fort Mandan. In the spring of 1805 the journey was 
resumed to the headwaters of the Missouri in Southwestern 
Montana. Grossing the Continental Divide on August 12, 
1805, the party passed from the Louisiana Territory into 
the Oregon country and, after many days of hazardous trav¬ 
eling, reached the Columbia River and descended it to the 
Pacific Ocean. The winter of 1805 was spent in what is 
now known as Clatsop County in Northwestern Oregon. In 
March, 1S06, the return trip was begun and St. Louis was 
reached in September. 
Such is briefly the history of the Lewis and Clark Expedi¬ 
tion. Its effect has been far reaching, for it inaugurated a 
period of expansion that has not yet ended. It clinched 
the title of the United States to the 307,000 square miles 
comprising the Oregon country, which had previously rested 
solely upon the discovery of the Columbia River by Gray. 
It gave the United States its first footing on the Pacific 
Ocean, and with the subsequent acquisition of California, 
Alaska, Hawaii, the Philippines and Guam, rounded out 
Uncle Sam into the fullness of a world power. One other 
important point in favor of the Oregon exploration should 
be emphasized. The Lewis and Clark expeditions and the 
events that- led up to it were as surely the beginning of all 
American expansion as Jefferson was the first and greatest 
of all American expansionists. 
THE CELEBRATION 
The Lewis and Clark exposition will celebrate the 100th 
anniversary of the exploration of the Oregon country by 
the explorers whose names give it title. It will show the 
material progress of the Great West and the relation of the 
entire country to the constantly increasing trade of Asia 
and Oceanica. It is the Oregon country’s exposition, whether 
considered from the patriotic or the material viewpoint. 
It is as much the exposition of Washington, Montana, Idaho 
and Wyoming as it is of Oregon. The interest of all is iden¬ 
tical, for all in whole or part comprised the geographical 
division, the acquisition of which established the United 
States on the Pacific Ocean and made it a world power. 
