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How the Ouachita River Expedition came to be
 Two months and a day after the U.S. flag was raised over the Post of Concord (Vidalia) following the Louisiana Purchase, President Thomas Jefferson wrote to his Natchez friend William Dunbar.
In the March 1804 letter, the President outlined his tentative plans for the exploration of the vast new territory. He reported that Captain Meriweather Lewis "is now hutted opposite the mouth of the Missouri ready to enter it on the opening of the season. He will be at least two years on the expedition."
The Lewis and Clark Expedition and the Ouachita River Expediton were two of the four Congress authorized to explore and map the Louisiana Territory. The other two included the Red River exploration of Thomas Freeman and Peter Custis in 1806, and Zebulon Pike's journey into the Rocky Mountains and the southwest from 1806 to 1807.
In fact, the exploration of the Ouachita would not have happened without Dunbar. Before the Louisiana Purchase was finalized, Jefferson initially envisioned expeditions westward from the Mississippi along three tributaries -- the Red, the Arkansas and the Missouri. While Lewis & Clark waited for the spring waters to recede along the Missouri and her tributaries, Jefferson looked to Dunbar to help plan one of the journeys along the lower part of the Mississippi.
One exploration party, said the President, might go up "the Arcansa to its source, thence along the highlands to the source of the Red river, and down that to its mouth..." All of the expeditions "will enable us to prepare a map of Louisiana, which in its contour and main waters will be perfectly correct, and will give us a skeleton to be filled up with details hereafter."
"As you live so near to the point of departure of the lowest expedition," Jefferson wrote Dunbar, "and possess and can acquire so much better the information which may direct that to the best advantage, I have thought if Congress should authorize the enterprise to propose to you the unprofitable trouble of directing it. The party would consist of 10 or 12 picked soldiers, volunteers with an officer, under the guidance of one or two persons qualified to survey and correct by observations of latitude and longitude...and as well informed as we can get them in the departments of botany, natural history and mineralogy."For the full story, subscribe to the The Concordia Sentinel's NEW E-Edition! |
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