Instructions from Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis

"The commerce which may be carried on with the people inhabiting the line you will pursue, renders a knolege of these people important. You will therefore endeavor to make yourself acquainted, as far as a diligent pursuit of your journey shall admit,

• with the names of the nations & their numbers;
• the extent & limits of their possessions:
• their relations with other tribes or nations;
• their language, traditions, monuments;
• their ordinary occupations in agriculture, fishing, hunting, war, arts, & the implements for these;
• their food, clothing, & domestic accommodations;
• the diseases prevalent among them, & the remedies they use;
• moral and physical circumstance which distinguish them from the tribes they know;
• peculiarities in their laws, customs & dispositions;
• and articles of commerce they may need or furnish & to what extent.

"And considering the interest which every nation has in extending & strengthening the authority of reason & justice among the people around them, it will be useful to acquire what knolege you can of the state of morality, religion & information among them, as it may better enable those who endeavor to civilize & instruct them, to adapt their measures to the existing notions & practises of those on whom they are to operate.
"Other objects worthy of notice will be

• the soil & face of the country, its growth & vegetable productions especially those not of the U. S.
• the animals of the country generally, & especially those not known in the U. S.
• The remains & accounts of any which may be deemed rare or extinct;
• the mineral productions of every kind; but more particularly metals, limestone, pit coal & saltpetre; salines & mineral waters, noting the temperature of the last & such circumstances as may indicate their character; volcanic appearances; climate as characterized by the thermometer, by the proportion of rainy, cloudy & clear days, by lightening, hail, snow, ice, by the access & recess of frost, by the winds, prevailing at different seasons, the dates at which particular plants put forth or lose their flowers, or leaf, times of appearance of particular birds, reptiles or insects.