Discovering Lewis and Clark

Click to Enlarge Order a photo Eighth-graders, from left, Dylan Fors, Bryan Lamperat, Stacy Ingrisano and Taylor Fry examine a variety of pelts on display at Fremont Middle School in Roseburg during a Lewis and Clark presentation Wednesday. The Oregon National Guard gave the presentation for the Fremont social studies department at the school's library. JON AUSTRIA / N-R staff photo

TERESA WILLIAMS, twilliams@newsreview.info
February 8, 2007

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Oregon National Guard Capt. Erin Bagley condensed the two years of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s expedition into just over an hour Wednesday morning at Fremont Middle School in Roseburg.

Every time he asked a question, a group of students in the back row shouted out the answer in unison. Bagley dubbed them The Peanut Gallery. They were usually right. The eighth-graders have been studying Lewis and Clark, but Andrew Jepson said about three-quarters of the information was new to him.

“I thought it was pretty cool,” he said as he waited his turn to handle furs, snakeskin samples and a piece of maple.

Bagley, who is from Cottage Grove, told the students the Guard gives the presentations because Lewis and Clark were on a military expedition. He explained the history, including the politics of the day, and then he told the students about Lewis’ training.

Lewis had to learn about botany, animals, ethnography and medicine.

Unfortunately, the medicine he took on the journey was Dr. Rush’s Thunderbolt. The potion was described as a wonder drug at the time. It consisted of calamine, chlorine, mercury and opium derivatives.

Click to Enlarge Order a photo Oregon National Guard Capt. Erin Bagley, left, tells a story with the help of eighth-grader Taylor Fry about the time Meriwether Lewis was mistaken for an elk and accidentally shot by a near-blind man under his command. JON AUSTRIA / N-R staff photo

Despite food poisoning, thick mosquitoes, freezing temperatures, sometimes unfriendly encounters with American Indian tribes and bear attacks, only one of the expedition members lost his life. That was due to appendicitis.

Chayse Jackson said he knew a little about Lewis and Clark, but he learned a lot Wednesday.

“The hardships and the medicine that they didn’t have,” he said, not to mention using a sexton for measurements. “That just seems too difficult compared to today. All the materials that they used were raw.”

Taylor Fry and Dylan King acted out a scene where the one-eyed, nearsighted, fiddle-playing Pierre Cruzatte mistook Lewis for an elk and shot him. Luckily for Lewis, Cruzatte shot him “in the buttocks,” Bagley said. It was one of the few places on the body that could withstand the musket shot without serious damage.

“It was fun,” Fry said of acting out the scene.

King said the most impressive fact was “that they bathed in mud water, which would be pretty gross.”

Bagley said the students participated well, something he doesn’t always find with seventh- and eighth-graders.



• You can reach reporter Teresa Williams at 957-4230 or via e-mail at twilliams@newsreview.info.