The Forgotten Expedition, 1804–1805: The Louisiana Purchase Journals of Dunbar and Hunter (review)

President Thomas Jefferson organized the Hunter-Dunbar Expedition in the spring of 1804 to explore the southern part of the Louisiana Purchase as a parallel effort to that of Lewis and Clark in the north. William Dunbar was a planter living on the Mississippi River just south of Natchez and a highly respected natural scientist, and George Hunter was a Philadelphia businessman with frontier experience and an extensive knowledge of chemistry. The initial plan was for them to ascend the Arkansas River to its source, make their way overland to the Red River (an under-estimated distance to the south), and return by it to the Mississippi River; but news that a band of Osage Indians were committing hostile acts on the Arkansas River led Jefferson to accept Dunbar’s alternate plan for a trip up the Ouachita River to the “boiling” water (p. xxiii) at what is now Hot Springs, Arkansas.

The expedition left Dunbar’s plantation in the middle of October 1804, reached the vicinity of the hot springs on December 7, remained there for a month, and then made a much faster down-river trip home, arriving at the end of January. The area they traveled was wilderness but well known to the colonial French and Spanish. Dunbar and Hunter took navigational observations that would later be the basis for a precise map, and they made extensive notes and observations on the flora, fauna, geography, and geology of the area as well as well as comments on the hunters and isolated settlers that they encountered. Their journals became the basis for a detailed report that Jefferson sent to Congress, which was the first official description of the land acquired from France.

Not unreasonably, the achievements of Hunter and Dunbar have been overshadowed by those of Lewis and Clark. Nonetheless their journals tell an interesting story, and this superbly-edited volume makes it readily accessible. Trey Berry and his fellow editors place the two sets of daily journal entries side by side, creating a single text that makes excellent reading; they provide rich annotations that make it easy to follow the geography of the trip and understand its scientific significance, and give a detailed introduction that puts the expedition within its historical context. This abbreviated but significant journey is no longer “forgotten,” and we are the richer for that.