On December 25, 1861, while wintering at Fort Owen in Montana, Lieutenant John Mullan delivered a lengthy address about the Lewis and Clark Expedition before what the published text calls the “Historical and Geographical Society at Fort Owen.”

This was not merely a passing mention. The surviving address is extensive and covers:

• Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase
• The expedition’s organization and departure
• Fort Mandan and the upper Missouri
• Great Falls and Three Forks
• Sacagawea and the Shoshone
• The Bitterroot Mountains and Lolo Trail
• Their arrival at the Pacific
• The historical importance of the expedition

Nine years after he delivered it, his speech was printed in 1870 in three separate installments in the Deer Lodge newspaper New North-West, apparently from Mullan’s original manuscript.

To view the first part of Mullan's speech, which appeared April 8th, 1870.