Across the Wilderness with Robert Frazer

When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out from Camp Dubois into the unknown on May 14, 1804, they led a bustling caravan of dozens of soldiers, guides, interpreters, hunters and boatmen. One who made the entire round-trip journey was Pvt. Robert Frazer.

Born in Augusta County, Virginia, in 1775, Frazer originally joined the Lewis and Clark expedition as a temporary member to help man the barges as far as what’s now North Dakota. When a member of the permanent party deserted, Frazer was chosen to take his place.

Frazer kept a detailed journal of the expedition, and he had plenty of adventures — and misadventures — to report. He was court martialed. He almost died of illness. He and a handful of comrades held off a large party of Sioux raiders in subzero weather. A falling horse nearly dragged him over a precipice to his death. While hunting ducks, he nearly hit Lewis with an errant shot.

Frazer made a map of the journey, intending to publish it alongside the diary. A prospectus announcing the work was issued to raise funds for printing, but the work never was published. Lewis, it seems, withdrew his permission.

The diary has since disappeared. But Frazer’s hand-drawn map, however, lives on in the Library’s Geography and Map Division — the only remnant of the original publishing project.

Frazer had little knowledge of surveying or natural sciences, and the map he produced is a strange piece of cartography. Rivers are misnamed and mislocated. He traces the expedition’s route accurately but uses outdated views of the Rocky Mountains and Western rivers.

Despite the many inaccuracies, Frazer’s map was one of the first to reveal the course of Lewis and Clark’s expedition and some of its geographic findings — and, today, it stands as a record of one of the brave few who crossed the continent on one of history’s most famous journeys.