jan 18, 1803 - Confidential Message to Congress requesting a $2,500 appropriation to support exploration of commerce with Indian tribes. Calls for encouraging tribes to abandon hunting and take up agriculture; encouraging trading with Indians. “An intelligent officer, with ten or twelve chosen men, fit for the enterprise and willing to undertake it, might explore the whole line, even to the Western Ocean. . . “ This becomes the Lewis and Clark expedition
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Date:
jan 18, 1803
Now
~ 223 years ago