Not Home for the Holidays: Meriwether Lewis's New Year at Fort Clatsop, 1806

The holidays are for family and friends — but what if you can't get home? Today a call, a text or a video chat can bridge the distance. In the past, pen and paper were often the only way.

On New Year's Day 1806, Meriwether Lewis could not even write a letter home. He and the rest of the Corps of Discovery were at newly built Fort Clatsop, on the far side of the continent from almost everyone they knew, and nowhere near a post office. So he did the next best thing and poured his homesickness into his journal:

This morning I was awoke at an early hour by the discharge of a volley of small arms, which were fired by our party in front of our quarters to usher in the new year; this was the only mark of rispect which we had it in our power to pay this celebrated day. our repast of this day tho' better than that of Christmass, consisted principally in the anticipation of the 1st day of January 1807, when in the bosom of our friends we hope to participate in the mirth and hilarity of the day, and when the zest given by the recollection of the present, we shall completely, both mentally and corporally, enjoy the repast which the hand of civilization has prepared for us. at present we were content with eating our boiled Elk and wappetoe, and solacing our thirst with our only beverage pure water. two of our hunters who set out this morning reterned in the evening having killed two bucks elk; they presented Capt. Clark and myself each a marrow-bone and tonge, on which we suped.

His wish came true. On New Year's Day 1807 Lewis did "enjoy the repast which the hand of civilization has prepared" — at the famous table of the Francophile Thomas Jefferson, alongside a fellow guest of honour, the Mandan leader Sheheke-shote. There was surely no boiled elk.

Writing can be an emotional release, and so can daydreaming about the future. Lewis used both to fight homesickness at Fort Clatsop, and people still do, along with the many other ways we now keep in touch at special times of year.

Sources

• National Park Service, Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, "Not Home for the Holidays." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/not-home-for-the-holidays.htm
• The journal entry for January 1, 1806: The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/item/lc.jrn.1806-01-01