My historical research is from the Internet. I got to this site by surfing the web. I decided to look up the famous Lewis and Clark expedition. In doing so I found a site called "Lewis and Clark National Historic trail home page". You can find this site at http://www.nps.gov/lecl/. .
Their web page is nicely decorated with a black and white National Park service banner across the top of their web page. They have a nice size map which shows where the trail started and ended in between 1804 and 1806. They also have a map that shows you the trail but it has all the present states on the map so you can figure out exactly where the trail took place. There are two beautiful old portraits of William Clark and Meriwether Lewis. The picture of William Clark shows him looking straightforward, with an old fashion, black, high neck coat, with a fancy white ruffle shirt on underneath.
Meriwether Lewis portrait is almost the same as Clark's, except he is facing towards the side, but not exactly a profile picture. His coat is just like Clark's but underneath he is wearing something that looks like a white turtleneck shirt. There are other sites on the net to find out more information on Lewis and Clark. The Death of Meriwether Lewis and Sakakawea and the Fur Traders are some of the sites you can find.
When you hit General Description on their web page it gives you a lot of information about Lewis and Clark. I will summarize it for you. In 1804-1806, The President Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to lead an expedition to explore the waters of the Missouri River and find a land route to the Pacific Ocean by following the Columbia River. They left Camp DuBois near Wood River, Illinois, on May 14,1804 and went up the Missouri River using a keelboat and two "pirogues". On the way they had an unfortunate death of Sergeant Floyd after run-ins with Indian tribes. They reached Knife River Indian Villages; they built Fort Mandan and spent a good winter there gathering lot of information about Indian tribes and the lands of the west.
