1800-1860: Science and Medicine: Chronology

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1800-1860

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1800-1860

1801

• A smallpox pandemic begins to ravage Indian peoples in Central and Northwestern regions, particularly along the Missouri River.

1802

• Sept. Thomas Jefferson initiates plans for an American expedition to the Pacific Ocean.

1804

• 14 May The U.S. Corps of Discovery, headed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, leaves St. Louis.

1805

• 8 Nov. Lewis and Clark reach the Pacific Ocean.

1806

• Cartographer John Cary publishes a map of the Pacific coastline.
• 15 July Zebulon Pike starts an exploratory expedition west of the Mississippi River into northern New Spain and eventually crosses the Great Plains.
• 23 Sept. Lewis and Clark return to St. Louis after exploring the Upper Missouri River and the northwestern region of the present-day United States.

1807

• The North West Company explorers spend the next four years on the Upper Columbia River searching for a route to the Pacific.
• John Colter journeys through the Bighorn Basin into present-day Yellowstone National Park.
• Mar. Manuel Lisa’s fur-trading party begins to explore tributaries of the Upper Missouri River.

1811

• A second American overland expedition, financed by John Jacob Astor, travels through the Northwest and reaches the Pacific Ocean by April 1813.

1814

• The journals of Lewis and Clark’s expedition are published.

1819

• Stephen Long’s expedition crosses the plains to the Rocky Mountains and explores the Mississippi and Missouri River valleys.

1820

• Henry Schoolcraft’s party locates the source of the Mississippi River.

1824

• Over the course of the next six years the Hudson’s Bay Company explorers travel through present-day Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, and California.
• A party of trappers employed by the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, among them James Bridger, become the first Euro-Americans to reach the Great Salt Lake.

1826

• Henry Schoolcraft’s map of the Upper Mississippi River is published.
• Albert Gallatin publishes A Table of Indian Languages of the United States.

1831

• Henry Schoolcraft leads a second expedition to the mouth of the Mississippi River.

1832

• Artist George Catlin journeys up the Missouri River.

1836

• Albert Gallatin compiles a map of the Great Basin and the Colorado River.
• A smallpox epidemic begins to sweep the Northern Plains tribes and by 1840 kills thousands of Blackfeet, Pawnees, Mandans, and others.

1837

• A map drawn by Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville depicts the major river systems west of the Rocky Mountains.

1838

• The U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers begins to conduct the first geological explorations of the Trans-Mississippi West.

1842

• Albert Gallatin and others begin the American Ethnological Society.

1843

• Apr.-Aug. John James Audubon travels to the mouth of the Yellowstone River, examining natural flora and fauna along the way.
• 16 June John C. Fremont leads an expedition from Independence, Missouri, along the Kansas River, over the Rocky Mountains, and eventually to the Columbia River and California.

1845

• John C. Fremont’s account of his expedition to the Rockies, Oregon, and California is published.

1847

• Henry Schoolcraft receives a government commission to assemble information on history and culture of North American Indians.

1849

• Native American and Anglo travelers along the overland trails suffer from cholera epidemics.
• July The U.S. Topographical Corps begins its survey of the Rio Grande.

1851

• Lewis Henry Morgan’s study of the Iroquois is published.

1852

• Audubon begins publishing The Vivaparous Quadrupeds of North America.

1853

• The Pacific Railroad and the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers conduct a series of expeditionary surveys in the Northwest until 1855.

1854

• G. K. Warren compiles all known geographic information into a map of the United States from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean.
• June-Dec. John Boardman Trask’s geological report on the agricultural and mineral resources of the coastal mountains is presented to the state legislature of California.