George Rogers Clark Quotes
Large parties will never answer the purpose. They will alarm the Indian nations they pass through. Three of four young men well qualified for the task might perhaps compleat your wishes at a very trifling expense.
Jefferson had offered the command of the large expedition to General Clark, but instead was persuaded by him to send a smaller force headed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (no relation to the General.)
George Rogers Clark, 1752-1818, General and Frontiersman, Letter to President Thomas Jefferson in support of the concept of what was to be come the Lewis and Clark expedition but arguing for a small party rather than a large expeditionary force that Jefferson had first intended, 1783
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Maury helped organize the Thomas Walker expeditions. These were precursors to the Jefferson organized Lewis and Clark expedition later.
a Shoshone Indian woman who accompanied Lewis and Clark in exploring the Louisiana Territory
This was the beginning of the Jeffersonian effort culminating in the Corps of Discovery and the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Presidential, confidential memoranda to the Congress were more common then than now when they have become a rarity.
The central Indian policy problem for Jefferson’s Administration was the fact that most Indians hunted for subsistence and the amount of land needed to support a hunting society was per capita much greater than an agricultural and especially an industrial one. Jefferson had no personal animosity against the Indians as many in his day did. But he perceived the need to obtain Indian lands for white agricultural use.
He was the first what man to cross the continent. His exploration was (and is) the legal basis for the Canadian claim on the Northwest Territory
before there were railroads in the West
He was wrong and the Boer War resulted
The first Native American to become a General Officer. Appointed by President Grant in 1869
This passage describes the process of readying wagon trains and provides insight to the motivations of the settlers. El Dorado was the city or gold of Spanish legend and California and Oregon were the hope of so many.
The Iroquois were generally recognized, even by the other tribes and nations, and the most advanced and most powerful of the Native Americans. Their example was critical in shaping the policies and behavior of all the Indians. At the time “Western” Indians referred to those in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois and those West of the Eastern seaboard. West Coast and Plains Indians were not known generally known to the colonists and those nations had no knowledge of the Iroquois. Johnson himself married an Iroquois woman.
This was a last attempt to avoid war. Lord Howe met with William Rutledge, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. The discussions were civil and Howe wanted to avoid a conflict but he did not have the authority to accept the American colonists demand for independence.
George Rogers Clark was an American surveyor, soldier, and militia officer from Virginia who became the highest-ranking American patriot military officer on the northwestern frontier during the American Revolutionary War. He served as leader of the militia in Kentucky (then part of Virginia) throughout much of the war. He is best known for his celebrated captures of Kaskaskia (1778) and Vincennes (1779) during the Illinois Campaign, which greatly weakened British influence in the Northwest Territory. The British ceded the entire Northwest Territory to the United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, and Clark has often been hailed as the "Conqueror of the Old Northwest".
