Starting at sunrise, the boats are taken nine miles down the Ohio. After lifting the barge over a few riffles, they arrive at Marietta, Ohio. In the evening, Lewis sees a large flock of passenger pigeons, dismisses two hands, and visits with the town’s postmaster.
Reaching Marietta
Muskigum and Ohio Rivers at Marietta
© 2021 by Robert Heacock. Used by permission.
This morning being clare we persued our journey at sunrise and after passing a few riffles over which we had to lift the boat we arrived at Marietta, the mouth of the Muskingum river
—Meriwether Lewis
Marrietta is at the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio and chiefly on the east side of Muskingum . . . . There appears to be several good brick buildings in the town and near it and several very cleaver frame buildings . . . . The streets run parrellel one way with the Ohio and the other way with the Muskingum, crossing at right angles.
—Thomas Rodney, September 23, 1803[1]Dwight L. Smith and Ray Swick, ed., A Journey Through the West: Thomas Rodney’s 1803 Journal from Delaware to the Mississippi Territory (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997), 67-69.
Pigeons and Squirrels
at 7 OClock in the evening observid many pigeons passing over us pursuing a south East course. The squirrels still continue to cross the river
—Meriwether Lewis
Lewis and Reubin Field lunched on a few passenger pigeons at Camp Disappointment on 25 July 1806. That they and our forebears could eat an entire species into extermination, was not conceivable then. For that matter, extinction as a scientific concept was not yet proven either. See Thoughts on Extinction.
Marietta Evening
Marietta is one hundred miles from Wheeling; lay here all night wrote to the President of U.S. dismissed two of my hands . . . . This evening was visited by Colo. Green the Postmaster at this place, he appears to be much of a gentleman and an excelant republican.—
—Meriwether Lewis
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Notes
| ↑1 | Dwight L. Smith and Ray Swick, ed., A Journey Through the West: Thomas Rodney’s 1803 Journal from Delaware to the Mississippi Territory (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997), 67-69. |
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| ↑2 | William Bright, Native American Placenames of the United States (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 304. |
| ↑3 | The Definitive Journals of Lewis & Clark, Gary Moulton, ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 2:81n6. |
