by Daniel B. Botkin, originally published by Perigee Books, a division of Penguin/Putnam, 1999.

This book, originally published as “Passage of Discovery“, is an ecologist’s guide to the first half of the Lewis and Clark trail, their travels up the Missouri River from St. Louis to Three Forks, MT.  I have decided to share this book with the readers of my website, and I am going to present the entire book here, one chapter at a time, with a new chapter appearing each week.  There are more than 40 chapters.  If you follow along and read all of them, you will learn about the entire Missouri River as seen by Lewis and Clark at the beginning of the 19th century, and as I visited it during the 1990s to see what they had seen, and to learn how the countryside had changed.  Comparing what Lewis and Clark saw with what we see today is one of the best insights we can get of how nature and environment in American has changed since European settlement.   I hope you enjoy it and find it rewarding.

- Daniel B. Botkin

All of the chapters published thus far can be found in the Passage of Discovery category. Please note that they are listed in reverse order of date posted.

More books by Daniel Botkin are available for purchase from the Center For the Study Of the Environment bookstore.

18. Fort Atkinson: The Badger and Discovery of New Species

See previous entry for directions.

On July 30, 1804, when the expedition was near Fort Calhoun, the location Lewis and Clark were to call Council Bluffs, Joseph Fields, a member of the expedition who often hunted, killed a badger and brought it back to the camp.  The animal was new to western science; it had never been described and was little known.  Neither Lewis nor Clark had seen one before.  Following the charge given to them by President Jefferson, Lewis and Clark wrote a description of  this animal, providing the first written, scientific description.  Clark noted that the animal “burrows in the ground and feeds on Flesh (Prarie Dogs), Bugs & vigatables.”  He described the badger as having the size and shape of a beaver, a “head mouth & c.” like a dog “with Short ears,” hair and a tail like a ground hog, intestines like a pig.  Thus he described the different parts of the strange animals in terms of others that he knew.   This description sounds peculiar to us. But all the Clark was doing was describing something new in terms of things he and others were familiar with.  This is the way we always describe something new.

Lewis wrote a somewhat more detailed and scientific description, noting first that it was a “singular animal not common to any part of the United States,” was carnivorous, had “one long and sharp canine tooth on both sides of the upper jaw,” that its eyes were “small black and piercing” and it weighed sixteen pounds.

This badger was the first animal that Lewis and Clark preserved, skinned, stuffed and later sent back to President Jefferson with the soldiers who accompanied the expedition as far as Fort Mandan.  Along the way they would identify many new species of animals and plants.  They were the first to describe the mule deer, the pronghorn, the prairie dog, and the black footed ferret.  They found the rattlesnake, garter-snake, the horned lizard, and various snails. Many of their new discoveries are shown on the accompanying map.

Lewis and Clark were outdoorsmen, familiar with wildlife and with the preparation of skins.  Both were excellent naturalists, with curiosity about their surroundings and abilities to see what was new and different.  To fulfill Jefferson’s charge to them, they did elsewhere as they did with the badger: Shot or otherwise caught an individual of each species of wildlife, and measured and described the specimen.   They collected sample plants and pressed them and sent these back also with the returning soldiers. Their plant collection still exists at the Philadelphia Academy of Science, with most of the material intact and available on microfilm.

Most familiar with wildlife, their descriptions of mammals, birds, and snakes are generally accurate and homey.  Lewis, with his crash course in Philadelphia before the expedition, learned how to provide a formal description of plants and to press them for preservation.  Their observations are therefore helpful to us in considering one of the environmental issues that receives the greatest attention in the media today – conservation of endangered species, and the more general term, conservation of biological diversity.