4-5.1

It Is Essential For Students To Know:

• The explorations of Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark, and Zebulon Pike did not bring slavery to the new western lands. However, they opened these lands to further settlement which would eventually raise the issue of expanding slavery into the western territories.
• Students must be able to compare the geographic features of the regions explored such as plains, prairies, rivers, deserts and mountain ranges.
• It is important that students utilize maps to identify routes of explorers, their major expeditions, and the geographic features along those routes.
• Their published reports made the land they explored known to the American people who would follow and settle the areas.
• Daniel Boone crossed the Appalachian Mountains, through the Cumberland Gap to Kentucky creating the Wilderness Trail, which later became the first National Road. Such pioneer trails expanded on the original Native American trails.
• Boone established the first U.S. settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains and eventually purchased much of the land in Kentucky that was taken from the Cherokee.
• Information about Daniel Boon and more links to the Wilderness Trail”
• Lewis and Clark, with the help of Native American guides, documented the land that was included in the Louisiana Purchase. The expedition was commissioned by ThomasJefferson to explore and map the area across the continent to the Pacific Ocean because Americans were still looking for a continuous route connecting east to west.
• The Louisiana Territory stretched from New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi River to present-day Idaho and as far north as Canada.
• During their travels, Lewis and Clark also passed through the Oregon Territory establishing the basis for an American claim to this land.
• The Lewis and Clark expedition brought back information about the Native Americans who lived in these regions and provided scientific information and specimens of the plants and animals they found.
• The Lewis and Clark Trail and much more
• Zebulon Pike located and explored the upper regions of the Mississippi River. Pike made treaties with the Native Americans.
• He mapped and claimed these previously uncharted western lands for the United States that stretched to the Pacific Ocean and up to the Oregon Country.
• Because of his further explorations of the southwest in Spanish territory, Pike’s Peak, in present-day Colorado, is named in his honor.
• This is a link to find maps and other information about Zebulon Pike

It Is Not Essential For Students To Know:

• Students do not need to know the specific explorations of other explorers during this time.
• Students do not need to know the names of the Native American nations that these explorers encountered on their travels, the names of their guides or the details of their hardships.