Lewis and Clark's Expedition: Curriculum Ideas & Education Resources

If Lewis and Clark were making the trip today, their journals would be on a laptop and their Internet map coordinates would be checked using a GPS hand-held unit. Two hundred years ago Jefferson and the nation thought the explorers were lost; today their cell phones would keep them in constant communication with White House operators.

Lewis and Clark, with minimal advance education and training, classified and drew detailed pictures of 300 flora and fauna never before seen by white American citizens living east of the Mississippi River. They practiced anthropology skills by recording details of Indian tribes they met, including basic language structure. They monitored weather patterns, described geological formations and recorded all these data and drew their maps using quill pens that had to be dipped in ink for every other word using notebooks that had to be safely protected from canoe spills. Instead of "select all" and "copy," they often hand-duplicated each other's journal entries as backups in case tragedy befell the original set. And, yes, they really needed Spell Checker, relying instead on phonetics since there was no standardized dictionary readily available at the time.