Lewis and Clark
10 things you may not have known
Fact number 1
The spanish sent soldiers to arrest the expedition.
Fact number 2
Clark adopted Sacagawea's children
Fact 3
The members of the expedition found it hard to say Sacagawea so they just called her jenny.
Fact 4
On the expedition they brought the largest arsenal ever to go west of the Mississippi.
Fact 5
By the time they crossed the Bitterroot Mountains, extreme circumstances forced them to eat dog meat. Lewis learned to like it. Clark did not
Fact 6
After Jefferson received all the precious artifacts from the expedition in Washington, he attempted to transport them to Richmond. The ship was stranded and almost the entire cargo was lost. To the Pacific and back, but 100 miles of Virginia was too much.
Fact 7
As a show of hospitality, Native tribes would often send women to the Corps at night. Thus the vast majority of the men in the Lewis and Clark Expedition were suffering from venereal diseases.
Fact 8
In the last year of his life, Lewis was taking opium regularly to help with malarial attacks. and in 1809 that autumn he committed suicide
Fact 9
methods for treating illness was the administration of tablets laced with mercury. Mercury—which is fatally poisonous. Today scholars can even trace certain routes the expedition took because of mercury.
Fact 10
Before Lewis departed, Jefferson gave him a letter of credit allowing him to draw on any section of the U.S. government for any reason.