An Absent Presence
Thomas Jefferson never set foot on the expedition trail, yet his shadow falls across the journals from St. Louis to the Pacific and back. As the president who commissioned the Corps of Discovery, dispatched its instructions, and waited in Washington for its specimens and reports, Jefferson is invoked by Lewis and Clark in three principal ways: as the recipient of scientific and political dispatches, as the namesake of geographic features and the image on diplomatic medals, and as the rhetorical “great father” through whom the captains addressed Native nations. The journals reveal a man whose authority structured the enterprise even at a distance of thousands of miles.
Recipient of Reports and Specimens
The clearest documentary evidence of Jefferson’s role appears at Fort Mandan in the spring of 1805, when Lewis and Clark prepared the keelboat to return downriver with the expedition’s first major shipment east. Clark’s entries on April 2 and 3, 1805 enumerate the contents at length:
I conclude to Send my journal to the President of the United States in its original State for his own perusial, untill I call for it or Some friend if I should not return, an this journal is from the 13th of May 1804 untill the 3rd of April 1805. (Clark, April 2, 1805)
The next day Clark continued packing items destined for Jefferson personally:
we are all day ingaged packing up Sundery articles to be Sent to the President of the U. S. … No. 11 a Martin Skin, Containing the tail of a Mule Deer, a weasel and three Squirels from the Rockey mountains… Box No. 2, contains 4 Buffalow Robes, and a ear of Mandan Corn. The large Trunk Contains a male & female Brarow and female’s Skeliton. (Clark, April 3, 1805)
The shipment included live prairie dogs, magpies, Native artifacts, mineral samples, and Clark’s original journal — an extraordinary act of trust placed in Corporal Warfington’s returning party. As an unattributed editorial entry for April 7, 1805 records, the keelboat carried back “the expedition’s first shipment of specimens, maps, and reports to President Jefferson” while the permanent party of 33 turned upriver into country “on which the foot of civilized man had never trodden.”
Namesake of the Great Southern Fork
Among the most enduring of Jefferson’s marks on the journey is the river that bears his name. When the Corps reached the Three Forks of the Missouri in late July 1805, the captains named the southwest fork Jefferson’s River. The journals then trace the party’s painful ascent of it for weeks. Lewis on July 30, 1805 writes simply, “we reloaded our canoes and set out, ascending Jeffersons river,” then logs the bends, beaver dams, and rapids that followed. On August 7, Clark observes:
The Lattitude of the Mouth of Wisdom River is 45° 2′ 21.6″ North, we proceeded up the Main Middle or S. E. fork… The river Jefferson above Wisdom is gentle Crooked and about 40 yards wide. (Clark, August 7, 1805)
Lewis’s parallel entry that day notes that as supplies dwindled they cached a canoe and “the party proceeded with Capt. Clark up Jefferson’s river.” The Jefferson became the highway by which the expedition approached the Continental Divide; Sacagawea recognized her homeland along its banks (Lewis, July 30, 1805), and it was up this river that Clark led the main party while Lewis pressed ahead to find the Shoshone.
Even on the return, Jefferson’s name marked geography. On July 8, 1806, Clark reached the canoe cache on the upper river: “we proceeded on down the forke which is here but Small 9 Miles to our encampment of 17 Augt. at which place we Sunk our Canoes & buried Some articles.” Two days later, on July 10, 1806, he descended “Down Jeffersons river on the East Side through Sarviss Vally and rattle snake mountain.” In Clark’s February 14, 1806 retrospective summary at Fort Clatsop, the river anchors his master map: “the Missouri Jefferson’s river the S. E. branch of the Columbia or Lewis’s river, Koos-koos-ke and Columbia… are laid down by celestial observations and Survey.”
A second feature also bore the president’s name. On April 22, 1806, descending the Columbia, Clark wrote: “I also discovered the top of Mt. Jefferson which is Covered with Snow and is S to W.”
Image on the Peace Medals
Jefferson traveled the continent in another form: stamped on the silver “Indian peace medals” the captains distributed at councils. These appear repeatedly in the diplomatic record. At the Mandan villages on October 29, 1804, Clark recorded a council in which speeches and presents were exchanged. Most explicitly, in Lewis’s May 11, 1806 entry among the Chopunnish (Nez Perce), the captain notes giving a medal to the chief Yoom-park’-kar-tim:
to this man we gave a medal of the smal kind. those with the likeness of Mr. Jefferson have all been disposed of except one of the largest size which we reserve for some great Cheif on the Yellow rock river. (Lewis, May 11, 1806)
The medals — and through them Jefferson’s face — were the physical tokens of an asserted political relationship reaching from the Missouri to the Columbia.
The “Great Father” in Diplomacy
In council oratory, Jefferson is rendered as the “great father” whose words the captains carry. The clearest example comes from Clark’s August 15, 1806 speech at the Mandan villages on the homeward journey:
I informed them that I Still Spoke the Same words which we had Spoken to them when we first arived in their Country in the fall of 1804. we then envited them to visit their great father the president of the U. States and to hear his own Councils and receive his Gifts from his own hands. (Clark, August 15, 1806)
A week later, on August 22, 1806, Clark recorded the Mandan chiefs’ refusal to descend the Missouri because of Sioux dangers, frustrating the president’s hope of receiving a delegation. Earlier, on June 4, 1806, among the Nez Perce, the captains “repeeted the promisces we had formerly made them and envited them to the Missouri with us, they declined going untill the latter end of the Summer.” The president’s wish to bring western chiefs east was a recurring, and only partly successful, diplomatic theme.
The Returning Diplomatic Threads
On the descent of the Missouri in September 1806, the captains encountered evidence of Jefferson’s continuing reach. On September 12, 1806, Clark met the trader Joseph Gravelines, dispatched by the president himself:
we found Mr. Jo. Gravelin the Ricaras enterpreter whome we had Sent down with a Ricaras Chief in the Spring of 1805 and old Mr. Durion the Sieux enterpreter, we examined the instructions of those interpreters and found that Gravelin was ordered to the Ricaras with a Speach from the president of the U. States to that nation and some presents which had been given the Ricara Cheif who had visited the U. States. (Clark, September 12, 1806)
The Arikara chief sent to Washington in 1805 had died, and Gravelines was now bearing Jefferson’s condolences and gifts back upriver — a poignant illustration of the human costs and continuing administrative work of the president’s Indian policy. Days later, on September 17, 1806, meeting Captain McClellan ascending the Missouri, Clark learned that “the President of the U. States had yet hopes of us” even as the rest of the country had nearly given the expedition up for lost.
Lewis’s Personal Bond
Lewis’s relationship to Jefferson was the most intimate, having served as the president’s private secretary. On August 9, 1805, preparing to leave the canoes and strike overland to find the Shoshone, Lewis paused to write — partly, he confessed, from a sense of duty to his patron:
I acquired leasure to accomplish some wrightings which I conceived from the nature of my instructions necessary lest any accedent should befall me on the long and reather hazardous rout I was now about to take. (Lewis, August 9, 1805)
The phrase “the nature of my instructions” gestures unmistakably toward Jefferson’s famous June 1803 letter of orders, the document that defined the expedition’s scientific, geographic, and diplomatic missions.
Conclusion: A Government Man’s Geography
Across more than fifty entries, Jefferson is named as president, patron, geographer, and rhetorical father. He never speaks in his own voice in the journals — every appearance is filtered through Lewis’s and Clark’s pens — but the journals show with unusual clarity how a single distant figure structured an exploration. The shipments at Fort Mandan, the river bearing his name, the medals stamped with his likeness, the speeches invoking him in Hidatsa, Shoshone, Nez Perce, and Mandan councils, and the trader Gravelines bearing his condolences upriver: all are traces of a presidency reaching across a continent it had never seen.
