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230 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1754–1800

This tragedy propelled Burr
into another secessionist scheme,
this time in the Southwest. When
his term as vice president ended
in 1805, Burr moved west to avoid
prosecution. There, he conspired
with General James Wilkinson,
the military governor of the Loui-
siana Territory, either to seize ter-
ritory in New Spain or to establish
Louisiana as a separate nation. But
Wilkinson, himself a Spanish spy
and incipient traitor, betrayed Burr
and arrested him. In a highly polit-
icized trial presided over by Chief
Justice John Marshall, the jury
acquitted Burr of treason.
The Louisiana Purchase had
increased party conflict and gen-
erated secessionist schemes in both
New England and the Southwest.
A Mandan Village This Mandan settlement in North Dakota, painted by George Catlin around Such sectional differences would
1837, resembled those in which the Lewis and Clark expedition spent the winter of 1804–1805. Note continue, challenging Madison’s
the palisade of logs that surrounds the village, as protection from the Sioux and other marauding Plains argument in “Federalist No. 10”
peoples, and the solidly built mud lodges that provided warm shelter from the bitter cold of winter on that a large and diverse republic
the northern Great Plains. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC/Art Resource, NY.
was more stable than a small one.

Lewis and Clark Meet the Mandans and Sioux A scientist as well as a statesman,
Jefferson wanted information about Louisiana: its physical features, plant and animal
life, and Native peoples. He was also worried about intruders: the British-run Hudson’s
Bay Company and Northwest Company were actively trading for furs on the upper
Missouri River. So in 1804, Jefferson sent his personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to

explore the region with William Clark, an army officer. From St. Louis, Lewis, Clark,
and their party of American soldiers and frontiersmen traveled up the Missouri for
1,000 miles to the fortified, earth-lodge towns of the Mandan and Hidatsa peoples
(near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota), where they spent the winter.
The Mandans lived primarily by horticulture, growing corn, beans, and squash.
They had acquired horses by supplying food to nomadic Plains Indians and secured
guns, iron goods, and textiles by selling buffalo hides and dried meat to European
traders. However, the Mandans (and neighboring Arikaras) had been hit hard by
the smallpox epidemics that swept across the Great Plains in 1779–1781 and 1801–
1802. Now they were threatened by Sioux peoples: Tetons, Yanktonais, and Oglalas.
Originally, the Sioux had lived in the prairie and lake region of northern Minnesota.
As their numbers rose and fish and game grew scarce, the Sioux moved westward,
acquired horses, and hunted buffalo, living as nomads in portable skin tepees. The
Sioux became ferocious fighters who tried to reduce the Mandans and other farming
tribes to subject peoples. According to Lewis and Clark, they were the “pirates of the
Missouri.” Soon the Sioux would dominate the buffalo trade throughout the upper
Missouri region.
In the spring of 1805, Lewis and Clark began an epic 1,300-mile trek into unknown
country. Their party now included Toussaint Charbonneau, a French Canadian fur
trader, and his Shoshone wife, Sacagawea, who served as a guide and translator. After
following the Missouri River to its source on the Idaho-Montana border, they crossed
the Rocky Mountains, and — venturing far beyond the Louisiana Purchase — traveled
down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. Nearly everywhere, Indian peoples
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