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ON MARCH 13, 1804, PRESIDENT THOMAS JEFFERSON penned a letter to William Dunbar of Natchez, Mississippi, a man who shared his passion for science, his convictions about the superiority of agricultural life, and his intellectual curiosity. Jefferson wrote:
Congress will probably authorize me to explore the greater waters on the Western side of Mississippi and Missouri, to their sources in case I should propose to send . . . another party up the Arcansa to its source, thence that to its mouth . . . . These several surveys will enable us to prepare a map of Louisiana . . . as you live near the point of departure of the lowest expedition and can acquire so much better the information . . . . I have thought if Congress should authorize the enterprize to propose to you the unprofitable trouble of directing it.1
Jefferson thereby charged the Scottish immigrant planter with the task of assembling and conducting the first American scientific expedition into the lower Louisiana Purchase. The American team ultimately had to settle for a shorter journey than Jefferson had originally envisioned, but it provided the earliest scientific study of the Ouachita River and the springs at present-day Hot Springs, Arkansas, and offered a pioneering description of the environs of early Arkansas and Louisiana.
The Dunbar-Hunter expedition represents one of four ventures into the Louisiana Purchase territory commissioned or approved by Jefferson. In addition to dispatching Dunbar and George Hunter to explore "the Washita" and "the hot springs," President Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark into the northern regions of the purchase. Zebulon Pike explored the Rocky Mountains and southwestern areas of the purchase. A shorter foray, led by Thomas Freeman and Peter Custis, proceeded up the Red River.2 A complete understanding of Louisiana Purchase exploration cannot be achieved without the examination of all of these expeditions into the new American hinterland.
While the Ouachita River expedition was not as vast, and did not provide as expansive geographic and environmental information, as that collected by Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery, the exploration of Dunbar and Hunter remains significant for several reasons. First, it provided Americans with the first scientific study and first extensive description in English of the varied landscapes, as...