Legends of the Corp of Discovery Lyrics

Meriwether Lewis

And lieutenant William Clark

With forty three hearty men

Would long ago embark

On four thousand miles of river

To the Pacific sea

And four thousand miles of river

To return to Saint Louie

Lewis braved rough waters

And thick mosquito swarms

And hordes of starving natives

And icy winter storms.

He'd made himself a legend

But he couldn't beat despair

He shot himself in Tennessee

And now he's buried there

Young Sacagawea

Had been kidnapped as a child

And was a teenaged mother

When she joined them in the wild

As the expedition's expert

On languages and land

She became a quiet leader

Within their roving band

For sixteen months she traveled

As a guide to the west sea

Reuniting on the way

With her lost family

She died at twenty-five

And with her children left alone

William Clark adopted both

And raised them as his own

Lieutenant William Clark

Wrote in journals and drew maps

In a time when U.S. knowledge

Was filled with massive gaps

He discovered unknown species

Of animals and plants

And he gave this information

For the money raised in grants

He'd fought natives as a soldier

Before the expedition,

Brought a slave named York along

As a trip provision

And then upon returning

Would not set his slave free

William Clark was later

Governor of Missouri

York was never freer

Than those years he did explore

Through populated unknown lands

Like a Conquistador

The trek made him an equal

In what must be overcome

And despite treacherous obstacles

He did not succumb

Burdened by his sadness

For a young wife left behind

York felt kinship with the natives

Who'd never seen his kind

What made this man a slave

The natives saw as medicine

They viewed with great amazement

The color of his skin

The U.S. had until that time

Hugged the Atlantic coast

Then afterward new settlers

Made endless claims on most

Of the lands that once belonged

To those children of the Earth

Whose lives, homes and religions

Were stripped of all their worth

Thomas Jefferson had dreamed

He could get his country growing

And fought to raise the finances

Without truly knowing

What his country could accomplish

So far from the sea

He named this expedition

The Corp of Discovery

And that's some history

That's some U.S. history

He named this expedition

The Corp of Discovery