Lewis has reached the Continental Divide, expecting to find a river that will carry the expedition towards the Pacific. Instead, he looks out across mountain range after mountain range.
The route they were sent to find does not exist.
In the second half of the Lewis and Clark story, the Corps of Discovery must find horses, cross the Rocky Mountains before winter and somehow survive as its food begins to disappear.
With help from the Shoshone, Sacagawea is unexpectedly reunited with her brother, and an elderly guide called Old Toby leads the expedition into the Bitterroot Mountains. What follows is one of the most desperate sections of the entire journey. The men become cold, exhausted and dangerously hungry, eventually killing their horses for food.
After reaching the Pacific, they must then turn around and make the entire journey home.
In this episode:
- Sacagawea’s extraordinary reunion with her brother
- Negotiating with the Shoshone for horses
- Following Old Toby into the Bitterroot Mountains
- Starvation, snow and eating horses to survive
- How the Nez Perce helped save the expedition
- Running dangerous rapids towards the Pacific
- The Corps finally reaching the ocean
- The remarkable vote involving Sacagawea and York
- A wet and miserable winter at Fort Clatsop
- The difficult journey back across the continent
- Lewis and Clark splitting the expedition
- The deadly confrontation with the Blackfeet
- Lewis being accidentally shot by one of his own men
- The Corps returning to St Louis after being presumed dead
- What happened to Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea, York and Pomp
- Whether the expedition should really be considered a success
- The complicated legacy it left behind
Lewis and Clark failed to find the water route Thomas Jefferson wanted, but they returned with maps, journals and scientific records from an 8,000-mile expedition across the continent.
It remains an extraordinary story of exploration, survival and adaptation, but also one with consequences that cannot be separated from the expansion that followed.
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