Lewis and Clark

Trace the trip, and describe Sacagawea, York, and the nations who helped.

Warm-up, learn, try it together, practice, then a quick check. About 15 minutes.

What children learn in Level 40

What had Jefferson bought? No one in Washington really knew. He sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to find out, with a team called the Corps of Discovery.
They were to look for a water route to the Pacific, map the land, record plants and animals, and meet the nations there. They left St. Louis in 1804.
They paddled up the Missouri River and spent the winter with the Mandan people. There they met Sacagawea, a young Shoshone woman, who joined them as an interpreter, carrying a baby son.
York, a man enslaved by Clark, did the same hard work as the others and voted with them on a winter camp. When the trip ended, he was still not free.
Crossing the Rockies nearly beat them. Sacagawea's Shoshone relatives gave them horses, and the Nez Perce helped them when they were starving. They followed the Columbia River and reached the Pacific in 1805. There was no water route, but the journey changed how Americans saw the West.

Georgia Standards of Excellence in Social Studies:

SS4H3.c — Describe territorial expansion with emphasis on the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark expedition, and the acquisitions of Texas (the Alamo and independence), Oregon (Oregon Trail), and California (Gold Rush and the development of mining towns).
SS4G1.a — Locate major physical features of the United States: the Atlantic Coastal Plain, the Great Plains, the Continental Divide, the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River, and the Great Lakes.