Notes on Seaman, Meriwether Lewis' dog

from Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. (New York, Touchstone, 1997)

Lewis purchased the large, black Newfoundland he named Seaman for $20 in Pittsburgh in August of 1803.

Lewis remarked on the dog as active, strong, docile. On Sept. 11, 1803, Seaman entertained Lewis by fetching squirrels enroute along the Ohio river.

November 16, 1803, on the Mississippi approaching St. Louis, Lewis dismissed an offer of three beaver skins from an Indian to buy Seaman.

Seaman was afflicted by needle grass near Three Forks in Montana, July 1805.

The dog impressed the Shoshones at the meeting in August 1805.

In April 1806, Indians from along the Columbia River stole Seaman, nearly prompting a confrontation with the thieves, who released the dog.



References in Ambrose
Cutright, Paul Russell. A History of the Lewis and Clark Journals. Norman: U. of OK Press, 1976.

Ray, Verne. "Lewis and Clark and the Nez Perce Indians." The Great Western Series. No. 10. Washington, D.C.: Westerners.

Ronda, James P. "A Knowledge of Distant Parts: The Shaping of the Lewis and Clark Expedition." Montana: The Magazine of Western History, vol. 41, no. 4 (Autumn 1991).

Schwantee, Carlos, ed. Encounters with a Distant Land: Exploration and the Great Northwest. Moscow: U. of Idaho Pr., 1994. See Gary Moulton on Lewis as a risk-taker: "L&C meeting the challenges of the trail." (105)