Hello and welcome to the Lewis and Clark
State Historic Site. My name is Ben
Pollard and I'm one of the site
interpreters here at the site. I want to
welcome you to our Interpretive Center, I
plan to show you around today and get a
sense of what we offer within the
galleries and we can expect to find when
you come to visit. The Lewis and Clark
State Historic Site is here in Hartford,
Illinois. We are a State Historic Site
through the Illinois Department of
Natural Resources. We're one of the many
sites throughout the state that
celebrate Illinois history. Our
focus in particular is kind of the early
part of Illinois history, when there's a
number of settlers coming into this
lower southern Illinois region and
particularly when Lewis and Clark
came here to Camp River Dubois in
December of 1803 to set up their camp as
and prepare for their expedition. The
Lewis and Clark Expedition would cover
all of the continent going all the way out
to the Pacific Ocean and back. These were
some of the first people to document and
map this journey that they were going on
they were exploring the Louisiana
Purchase that Thomas Jefferson had
purchased from France and they didn't
exactly know what they were going to
encounter, what they should bring, what to
expect along the way; so their time here
in Illinois
Camp River Dubois was spent preparing,
trying to fix all of those problems: find
out as much as they could about the trip,
find out what people and what skills
they might need, and make sure that those
people were coming along on the trip. So
if you'll follow me inside we'll take a
look at the galleries in the Interpretative Center.
We're now in the lobby of the Lewis &
Clark State Historic Site
Interpretative Center. Our Lobby is also
our first gallery- Across This Continent.  So
whenever you come in from the parking
lot, you'll be welcomed by not just our
volunteers at the volunteer desk and our Store
of Discovery, you're also gonna be
immediately immersed in the Lewis and
Clark story. We get you going right away
by looking at this portrait of Thomas
Jefferson. And we have him up here
because he was the third President of
the United States at the time of
Louisiana Purchase but he's been
dreaming for years about sending an
expedition west to chart this area and
hopefully find a route out to the
Pacific Ocean. And so we have to start
with Thomas Jefferson if we're gonna
talk about the Lewis and Clark
Expedition. Included on the wall is a
sample from his letter. He had a
four-page letter he gave to Meriwether
Lewis, the man he tasked with leading
this expedition, and in it he documents
all the various things he's hoping to
learn from this expedition: what minerals
are out there, what's the weather like,
who are the people that are living out
there, what plants and animals are out
there  (and could they be useful to us)?
There are many many things that he is
asking for, but we can break it down into
four main categories. First and foremost
is find that water route to the Pacific
Ocean. They're trying to find a way to
move commerce and trade up the Missouri
River all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
Jefferson knows if they can seal that
they can rethink trade with all other
countries because now they can go through
the United States to Asia rather than
going around the world from the East
Coast.
The second main goal is going to be
charting all of this.
They need to create
a map, there's no map yet that covers
everything that we're yet talking about.
You'll see here on our lobby wall that
that map has a huge question mark on it
and that's because there's so much
unknown about the Western two-thirds of
the continent. The other two things that
are going to break down include the
plants and animals that they're going to
encounter along the way. Thomas Jefferson
is a naturalist as well as a politician
and everything else and so he's hoping
to learn about all these different
species there
to find along the way and if they could
be useful in the future. So Lewis and
Clark in their journals are gonna
document over about 300 different
species for the first time.
The final point, the final goal is to contact the
different American Indian tribes along
the way. These are different nations,
different cultures and peoples. And
Thomas Jefferson and the captains are
very interested in finding out more
about them. So they're not just going to
make contact and wave and pass on along
the way. They want to stop and make
diplomatic contact. They want to come
peacefully and hopefully set up some
trade contacts as well. Within their
journals, Lewis is actually going to keep some
ethnographies where he's charting the
languages, customs, and cultures, and
the different societal hierarchies
within each of these nations that
they're encountering. So these are the
four main goals and this is going to
require a lot of documenting and a lot
of writing. So Lewis and Clark will
become one of the best documented
expeditions in American military history
because both captains are keeping the
journals as well as every sergeant on
this trip and a few of the enlisted men
as well. We think there was probably nine
journals being kept on this journey.
And so we're going to move on to our next
gallery. We're going to get a sense of
the unknowns of the expedition. So follow
me.
We're now in the second gallery
called- Visions. This is visions for the
expedition, visions of the unknown,
visions for what could become of this
new attempt at an American Empire.
There's a lot of these visions going on,
not a lot of known facts, so when you
come into the visions exhibit you're
gonna see various panels describing some
of these different elements. Visions of
who's out there, so that'll cover the
different nations out in the West, the
different American Indians living on the
plains, the groups up living up along the
Rocky Mountains, and many of these are
the tribes that were not quite yet known. We'll talk about some of those cultures
and customs
of traveling through their territory and
then we're also going to look at visions
of Empire. We're gonna look at the
British, the French, and the Spanish and
how they've been shaping the North
American continent for hundreds of years
already. And seeing how America is
starting to play a very different role
than they used to in these struggles
between empires. We're also going to look
at visions of what could be out there.
The different experts that Thomas
Jefferson was good friends with
predicted all sorts of things that could
be there out west. They thought there
might be these massive salt towers. They had heard rumors of a Welsh Indian tribe, a
group of people that had come from Wales
many many years ago and become their own
American Indian Nation. They even had
Thomas Jefferson asking for evidence of
mastodons further out west. He knew that
they were extinct on the eastern part of
the United States. He was hoping they'd be
further out west,
just like the bison. The other thing
you're going to see in visions is
finally we're gonna get a chance to look
at the captains themselves-
Captain William Clark and Captain
Meriwether Lewis. This here is Captain
Clark. He is really itching to make a
name for himself. He's the youngest in
his family of Clark'sm including a number
of them that were generals and war
heroes during the Revolutionary War. So
while he's had his own army career and
he's a pretty savvy guy, this is finally
a chance for him to prove himself and
make his own mark. The other, of course, is
Captain Meriwether Lewis. That's Thomas
Jefferson's private secretary who in
many ways has been groomed for a job
like this. He's spent a lot of his life
in the army traveling around. He's used
to some of the rougher, harder conditions
and he's also pretty observant.
While he's not schooled as formally as
say Thomas Jefferson or some of the
other intellectual leaders of the United
States at the time, he's always very
interested in stuff. And being in the
same household as Thomas Jefferson, he's
eager to learn and Jefferson is
eager to share these
things as well. So you should think of
Lewis as kind of a jack-of-all-trades
when it comes to some of these
intellectual pursuits. He's the guy that
is gonna be identifying a lot of the
plants and animals on their way. He's the one
doing most of the ethnographies on this
trip. He's also going to be tasked with
being the medic or medical officer on
this expedition. So he's kind of a do-it-all,
And he was placed perfectly to be
the leader of this expedition. Within the
rest of this section of visions, we're
also going to get a look at some of the
different frontier forts where many of
these recruits were coming from for the
expedition. This expedition goes from
being Lewis and maybe about a dozen men
to two captains and almost 50 people
when they leave Camp River Dubois. Those
are soldiers, interpreters, and French
engages- these boatman they're
gonna travel upriver with for a
portion of this trip. And so here in
visions you're gonna see where a number
of the Corps members are going to be
coming from. Now our Journey's Edge Theater
is not going to be something I can show
you today, but it's well worth the visit.
It's about 15 minutes long and it's a
great film about Lewis and Clark
particularly here at Camp River Dubois
as they're preparing for their journey.
If you follow me next, we're gonna move
on to the main gallery.
This is the main
gallery and it's our most exciting part
of the entire Interpretive Center
because inside of it we have our replica
of the keel boat that Lewis and Clark
would have taken on their expedition.The
main gallery will also serve to talk
about Camp River Dubois, which is the
name you've kept hear me saying during
this tour. And that is the first winter
encampment for the expedition. So we're
going to talk about the men that are
selected here, building a camp from
scratch when you have to winter over on
the Illinois side of the Mississippi
River. We're also going to take a look,
here in the main gallery, at the keel
boat and how you pack it. How do you
gather all the supplies that you need
for a trip where you don't really know
how long you're gonna be gone? So when
people first walk into this gallery
they're gonna be taken away by the full
scale of the replica, and then they're
gonna start seeing the other stuff
around here that they can start enjoying
as well. We have a panel with a wall
describing the men of the expedition, and
it will break down where they're from,
what their skills were, and what value
they were bringing to the trip. We have
other areas that are gonna break down
the different tools that you need to
build a winter encampment like
Camp River Dubois. When they got here on
December 12th of 1803, they were welcomed
with a hailstorm and they had nothing to
start with. They had to cut down trees, shape
logs into buildings, stack them, mud them,
and caulk them so that they were
windproof to where they could finally be
out of the elements.
So they could spend their next five
months here in camp focusing on the
expedition. So I'm gonna take you around
and show you some other cool features of
the main gallery, if you'll follow me
we'll take a look at the other side of
the keel boat.
So now on this side of the keel boat, you
can enjoy the surprise that it has been cut
away, and then you can actually see into
it as it's being loaded by the men of
the Corps of Discovery. This is  great
here in the main gallery because we're
able to get the full scale of the keel
boat- 55 foot long, 8 foot wide - in
full sail here in the gallery while also
getting to enjoy all the difficulties of
packing all the equipment needed on this
trip. This expedition will take a little
less than two and a half years - for two
years, four months, ten days. And this trip
will require food for all the soldiers,
as well as the scientific equipment to
get the measurements they'll need for map-making. I like to think of this as if I
was packing for my own roadtrip. I'm
gonna take some clothes. I'm gonna take
maybe some tools packed in my car so I
could fix it along the way, just like
they'll need to fix the keel boat at different times.
I might pack in some instructions or
directions which they're picking up from
the different American Indian tribes
along the way. On top of that, you might
bring some gifts for the people you're
gonna be staying with, so a lot of the
gifts that they're gonna give at
different councils with the different
chiefs on this trip are also going to be
bundled up and packed away on the boat.
This is not the only boat going on the
expedition. It is the largest. They've got
two other pirogues that combined are
going to carry about the same weight as
this. In total, we're looking at them
packing and moving about 30 tons of
equipment when they leave Camp River
Dubois in May of 1804. I mentioned that
the American Indian gifts that they're
going to need for the different various
councils. We're going to take a look at
those next. So a lot of what's being
packed up on the keel boat here in our
main gallery is some of those gifts. And
some of them are actually tucked away in
boxes. So in here we have some of our
beads that have been packed away, some other
brooches and rings and jewelry. These are
going to be given as gifts, often to chiefs' wives,
to show that they were recognizing the
status of those families within the
tribe. Over here are some finished trade
goods, some factory-made trade goods:
knives and tomahawks.
There's even more tomahawks down
here in the case. These are gonna be
useful tools. These are a way of showing
that the Americans are coming with
quality trade goods, so giving these away
as gifts and trading these away for
supplies they'll need on the trip will
go a long way in raising the American
reputation there in the West. Finally,
over here, we do have some of the other
things that will make for great trading
with the American Indian tribes and that
is trade cloth.
They've got vermillion and different
cottons. They even took extra officers
coats as gifts that they could trade
away and give away on this expedition.
There's a lot of great stuff to explore
here in the main gallery, a lot of things
to see here in the keelboat and some of
the other displays here, and I don't want
to give too much away because when you
do get a chance to come to Lewis and
Clark State Historic Site and see it for
yourself- you're gonna enjoy a lot of the
different interactive panels and
little surprises hidden throughout the
gallery.
So I would invite you to come and visit
us. We're gonna finish out going through
the last two galleries, because their
time at Camp River Dubois is just the
start of this expedition. And so the next
two sections will be about that journey
and about kind of the aftermath of it.
If you'll follow me, we'll take a
look over there.
Epic journey is our next gallery and
this takes a look at what happens after
Lewis and Clark leave Camp River Dubois.
This is not the end of the story, it's
just the beginning. Our site is the Point
of Departure, and so they've got an
entire journey that we will have to
document and talk about here at the
Interpretive Center. So what you'll see
in Epic Journey is a series of pictures
and quotations from the journals of the
men of the expedition. We even have
samples that have been written out in
letter form for you to look and enjoy. We
are going to talk about some of the more
lighthearted elements: the joy of
discovering a new species of bird or
plants, the unique peoples they are meeting on
this trip. We're also going to talk about
some of the more treacherous and
dangerous parts of this journey: when
boats capsize, when animals attack.
These are all things that were written
about and experienced by the men on this
expedition, and so we're gonna address
that here in Epic Journey. Our last
gallery is Rediscovering the Corps. We
call it that because this expedition is
famously called the Corps of Discovery.
And a lot of their information was lost
for a time. The field notes for Camp
River Dubois were lost and not
rediscovered until 1953, and in fact the
journals were published so long after
the journey was completed that many
in the public forgot about the
expedition or some of the some of the
more fascinating elements of it. And so
it's not until the centennial
celebration about a hundred years later,
that people are really starting to look
at these journals again, pick through
them again, and kind of relearn about the
journey. So as we're relearning and
rediscovering, we talk about some of
the myths of the expedition and how
they've been treated in media. We also
talked about the changes that have been
made on the rivers and the other natural
sites that they explored and wrote about
in their journals. So we'll see not only
the impact of the expedition on today, we
also see today's impact on the area they
were discovering over 200 years ago. I
want to thank you for coming along
through my interpretive tour throughout
our galleries. I really hope that you'll
have a chance to come visit us in the
future.
And if you have more questions, please
visit us at CampDubois.com or on our
Facebook page. You can also follow our
YouTube account for other videos with
more information on the Corps, Camp River
Dubois, and that time period. Thank you!
