Unit 5: Lewis and Clark

President Jefferson wanted to explore the new land. He created the Corps of Discovery to go on an expedition to the west.



A Corps is a group of people that have the same job.

Expedition -- a journey for a specific reason


Lewis and Clark went on their expedition to find out about the land that was bought in the Louisiana Purchase.

It took 3 and a half months to get across the Rocky Mountains.

Finally, they came across the Colombia River and followed it until it reached the Pacific Ocean!

Success of the Expedition

Lewis and Clark's team mapped uncharted land, rivers, and mountains. They brought back journals filled with details about Native American tribes and scientific notes about plants and animals they'd never seen before. They also brought back stories—tales that made other Americans dream about heading west.

A teenager named Sacagawea served as an interpreter for the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the western United States. She was a Lemhi Shoshone Indian. She traveled thousands of miles through the wilderness with the explorers, from the Dakotas to the Pacific Ocean and back again.

When Sacagawea was ten years old, she was captured and taken far away from her home by the Hidatsa, a Native American people. 

Sacagawea married Charbonneau, a French Canadian. Together, they hunted animals and traded furs. When they met Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, they joined the Corps. 

Sacagawea carried her baby on a cradleboard (also called a papoose). The baby would be swaddled tightly in a blanket and tied to the board. The board could be carried in one’s arms or on one’s back, like a backpack. 

One day, both Lewis and Clark walked along the edge of the river. A sudden wind struck the canoe that carried all their papers, books, tools, medicines, and everything else they owned.

Charbonneau was in the canoe, but he didn’t know how to swim. He accidentally turned the canoe over on its side, dumping everything into the river. Sacagawea jumped into the river and saved all the things that had washed overboard. 

If the Corps’s things were destroyed in the water, the expedition would have had a harder time traveling and might have had to wait to get more supplies or turn around and go back home. 

Lewis and Clark wrote that Sacagawea was brave and strong. When the Corps began to walk across the Rocky Mountains, Sacagawea knew she was back home in the land of her people, the Shoshone. She noticed that tree bark had been removed to make

food and medicine. This was a sign

that the Shoshone were nearby. 

The Corps needed horses to carry all their belongings across the Rocky Mountains. The explorers needed to trade some of the things they had brought for horses. When they met the Shoshone chief, Sacagawea gasped. 

The chief was her long-lost brother! She had found her family again. Her brother agreed to trade horses to Lewis and Clark and to send guides to show them the way across the mountains. 

Sacagawea also helped the Corps cross the dangerous, snow- covered Rocky Mountains. When the Corps ran low on food, she knew which berries and roots to eat. Sacagawea helped keep the men alive. Without her, it is unlikely that Lewis and Clark would have made it to the Pacific Ocean. 

Sacagawea was a strong, brave woman. We have named mountains and rivers after

her. There are statues of her

all over our country.

Two hundred years later, people still remember her. The United States has made a dollar coin that shows her picture. 

 Native Americans lived on this land, and had done so for hundreds of years!