After the Corps of Discovery departed Camp Dubois
on 14 May 1804, Sergeant Patrick Gass recorded his
thoughts: “in the evening we encamped on the north
bank six miles up the river. Here we had leisure to reflect
on our situation, and the nature of our engagements:
and, as we had all entered this service as volunteers,
to consider how far we stood pledged for the
success of an expedition. . .”
Camp Dubois sat at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, near present day Hartford,
Illinois. Between December 1804 and May 1805, Camp Dubois housed the men of the newly formed
Corps of Discovery. During those months dedicated to final preparations for the long journey, these
men brawled and drank and disobeyed. And yet as they prepared, the men began the slow process of
becoming a corps, a unit.
William Clark guided this transformation. While Meriwether Lewis wintered in St. Louis, securing
provisions and consulting fur traders’ journals, Clark delegated and disciplined. Courts-martial and
confinement were standards of military discipline. Hard work taught the men to rely on one another and
prepared them for the long voyage. Turning mischief to skill, the men held shooting matches with local
farmers and honed their marksmanship.
Camp Dubois proved to be the Expedition’s first test of cohesiveness. Living and working together
prepared Corps members like Gass to face the trials the journey would bring. Still, on that spring
morning in 1804, it was not without anticipation and trepidation that they “proceeded on under a jentle
brease up the Missouri.”
CAMP DUBOIS