| Summary: | scientific exploration of the land and report on the same to the government. The party consisted of nine young woodsmen from Kentucky, fourteen soldiers who volunteered their services, an interpreter, a hunter, two French watermen and a negro servant. In addition to these, six soldiers and nine watermen, with to corporals, were secured to accompany them a part of the way to aid in protecting the stores. To command the expedition President Jefferson chose Captain William Clark and associated with him Lieutenant Merriwether Lewis, a most fortuitous choice, for the men were not only most congenial, but were the closest of personal friends, and they realized fully the great importance of their work, of which they have given us most valuable and accurate records. Thus formed, the expedition set out from the mouth of Wood river in three boats on the morning of May 14, 1804, and so drifted into our local history. As soon as the reports of the boundless resources of the region as revealed by these explorers began to be made public, certain of the boldest commercial minds of the age recognized at once the opportunity which lay in this new field and began preparations to invade it as thoroughly and systematically as the Hudson Bay Company had invaded the northern part of America. First, and we may say, most important of these, was a Spanish gentleman, Manuel Lisa, who had come to St. Louis in 1790 and since that time had been actively engaged in the fur trade. He was the one man who was best fitted to open up this new country to commerce, for he pos- sessed the dauntless spirit and chivalrous daring of those of his earlier countrymen who made the names of Cortez and Pizzaro synonymous with pioneer achievement. In the words of Major Chittenden, "He was a man of great ability, a masterly judge of men, thoroughly experienced in the Indian trade and native coustoms, intensely interested in his work, yet withal a perfect enigma of character which his con- temporaries were never able to solve." In spite of the fact that he possessed many of the vices of the time and region, still the more we examine into the story of his life, the more we must admire the strength of the man and appreciate the fact that he stood head and shoulders above the traders of his time. It was such a man as this who followed Lewis and Clark up the river in the spring of 1805, and it was this man whom tradition says landed on the river bank one May morning of that year and from the height of Elk Hill beheld the great panorama of river, lake, and plain which stirred the heart of the son of Romance Europe to the exclamation, "La Belle Vue." True, the expression is French and not Spanish, but Manuel Lisa had lived long in St. Louis, where French was the current tongue, and had been long out of contact with Spain or her people. We have no reason to discredit the story, for it is certain that by 1807 this place was known to Indians and traders alike by this name and it is equally certain that Lisa must have been here and recognized the strategic value of the location, although he built his trading post on the site of the better known Council Bluffs, or Fort Calhoun. By 1807 Lisa, with other men of St. Louis, had the Missouri Fur Company thoroughly established and had scattered a chain of posts along the valley of the Mis- (79)
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