Benjamin Edwards was a minor figure on the Stephen H. Long Expedition to the Rocky Mountains. His six letters addressed to his father Oliver Edwards briefly mention the expedition, including his attempts to collect pay for his part in the expedition. His letters also discuss his life in Louisiana after the expedition working on the Steamboat Hope and later as overseer of slaves in a sawmill.

The collection consists of two volumes. The first notebook, "Notes of Queries to William Clark, with replies," (917.3.L58.b), contains Lewis' journal of the river trip from Pittsburgh to winter camp, August 30- December 12, 1803.

Journal ("Journal historique concernant l'établisement des français à la Louisianne; tiré des mémoires de Mrs. D'Iberville & de Bienville") from first French contact through failure of settlement at St. Bernard, commanded by La Harpe. Includes brief essays at end, including a summary of various theories of the origins of the American Indians.

This item is Lewis' narrative journal of the river trip from Pittsburgh to the winter camp of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, together with meteorological observations. There are also entries by William Clark. Of the 126 leaves in this journal, 31 contain questions by Nicholas Biddle, with William Clark's replies, dated 1810. Includes parts II and III of Nicholas Biddle, "Notes on Indians...", and list of measurements of bones and other natural history specimens, in Lewis' hand. Also contains some sketches and two small maps.

This collection includes three journals bound into one volume: two by Willima Dunbar and one by Zebulon Pike. Both manuscripts by William Dunbar document the expedition up the Red and Ouachita Rivers to the Hot Springs of Arkansas in 1804-1805. The "Journal... to the Mouth of the Red River" (200p.) is the fullest available record of the activities of the expedition from the time of their departure from St. Catharine's Landing on October 16, 1804, until their return to Natchez, Miss., on January 26, 1805. The "Journal of a geometrical survey" includes a record of course and distances as well as a thermometrical log and other brief notes. The two are bound together in a volume with Zebulon Montgomery Pike's journal of a voyage to the source of the Mississippi, 1805-1806. The Pike journal documents the expedition to explore the geography of the Mississippi River led by Lt. Zebulon Montgomery Pike in 1805-1806, and his attempts to purchase sites from the Dakota Indians for future military posts, and to bring influential chiefs back to St. Louis for talks. Less a literary masterpiece than a straightforward record in terse military prose, the journal provides a day by day account of the journey and the activities of Pike and his small contingent during this early exploration of present day Minnesota. It was printed with variations and omissions in An Account of Expeditions to the Sources of the Mississippi and through the Western Parts of Louisiana... (Philadelphia, 1810), and was edited in Donald Jackson, ed., The Journals of Zebulon Pike: with Letters and Related Documents (Norman, Okla., 1966).

Though less well known than their peers Lewis and Clark, William Dunbar and George Hunter played an important role in the early scientific exploration of the Louisiana Purchase. While the original goal of organizing a southern counterpart to the Corps of Discovery proved overly ambitious, Dunbar and Hunter provided important geographic information for future explorations and gave the first scientific description of the Hot Springs of Arkansas and Ouachita Mountains. The four surviving journals of George Hunter provide engaging accounts of travel in the Ohio and Mississippi Valley in 1796, 1802, and 1809, and include the most interesting record of the expedition to the Hot Springs of Arkansas in 1804-1805, complete with his detailed notes on natural history and meteorology. The volumes also contain various references to relations with the Delaware, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, and Osage Indians. The APS owns a contemporary copy of Hunter's journal ("Journal up the Red and Washita Rivers with William Dunbar"; Mss.917.6.Ex7), from which extracts were printed in Thomas Jefferson, Message... Communicating Discoveries Made in Exploring the Missouri (New York, 1806), and which is described by Isaac J. Cox, "An Early Explorer of the Louisiana Purchase," APS Library Bulletin 1946: 73. The journals were edited by John F. McDermott and published in APS Transactions 53 (1963).

These journals were kept while on the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806).

This volume is a finished manuscript copy, probably earlier than the "Westover Manuscripts," from which this varies slightly. Byrd interpolated into the narrative of his tour remarks on Indian customs, religion, warfare, and trade, in addition to observations on his Saponi guides. Several pages were added in 1817 in the hand of Nicholas Trist.

Kept during the Lewis and Clark Expedition, this diary notes distances covered and a draft of suggestions for routes for the fur trade.

This diary is a journal of a trip from Philadelphia by stage to Pittsburgh, then afoot through Franklin, LeBoeuf, and Erie to the Huron River; thence by boat to Detroit, where he remained 26-29 July, when he set out by canoe for Michilimackinac. Included are descriptions of Detroit, plants, animals, springs, Indian mounds, and notes on goitre.

This volume is the only known copy of a manuscript probably earlier than "The History of the Dividing Line Between Virginia and North Carolina." Contains fewer Indian references and lacks interpolated information, but describes contact with Saponi and Nottoway Indians in 1728.

This item is a detailed description of the geography, population, natural resources, and agriculture of the Ouachita River area of the Louisiana Territory. Describes mounds; mentions Cataoulou Indians; also gives figures as to numbers of white and Indian hunters. These pages are a record of travel on a road built between Choctaw and Chickasaw country, with comments on the condition of Indian-white relations, the increase in white population, and Wilson's stay, at Muscle Shoals, with Cherokee chiefs Doublehead and Skiowska. Wilson finds the Indians have good farms, furnishings, fences, and stock, and one Indian runs an inn.

The most stellar member of a stellar family, Elisha Kent Kane was among the most popular American explorers of the mid-nineteenth century, a hero in the tragic mode. Born in Philadelphia in 1820, the son of John Kintzing Kane and Jane Duval Leiper, Kane studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania before earning a commission as a naval surgeon. While in the Navy, Kane embarked on the succession of voyages to exotic locales that became the basis for his extraordinary fame. In 1843, he attended Caleb Cushing's first diplomatic mission to China as ship's physician, and subsequently traveled to the Philippines and Western Africa. Distinguishing himself in the Mexican War, Kane's greatest fame came from two expeditions to the arctic, aiming to locate the lost explorer, Sir John Franklin and to explore for evidence of the open polar sea. Kane died in 1857 while attempting to organize a third arctic voyage. Part of the Kane Family Collection, the Papers of Elisha Kent Kane contain a mix of personal and family correspondence with correspondence relating to all of Kane's explorations. Intelligent, articulate and very much a romantic, Kane's letters are expressive and passionate. The collection provides fine documentation of youth, his relationship with the Spiritualist Margaret Fox, and of course his travels to China and off the coast of Africa in 1846. Kane's two expeditions to the arctic are particularly well documented, with correspondence, notes, logbooks, diaries, and sketches, as well as Kane's post-expedition notes, writings, and lectures recounting his experiences.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were explorers. This collection contains the manuscript journals kept by Lewis and Clark on their travels to the source of the Missouri River and across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. There are interlineations throughout by Nicholas Biddle, who published his narrative "History of the Expedition of Captains Lewis and Clark" (1814).

Through his craniometic studies of human races, the Philadelphia physician Samuel George Morton (1799-1851) exerted a profound influence on the development of physical anthropology in antebellum America, and made substantial contributions to mineralogy, paleontology, and natural history. Relating primarily to Morton's scientific interests, the Morton Papers include insights into Morton's perspectives on education, medical practice, geology and mineralogy, craniology, paleontology, the Wilkes Exploring Expedition (also known as the United States Exploring Expedition 1838-1842), and his two major monographs, the Crania Americana and Crania Aegyptiaca. Several of the letters were written by Morton in his capacity as corresponding secretary of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Also included in this collection are Morton's "Some Remarks on the Infrequency of Mixed Offspring Between the European and Australian Races" (1850), Joseph Barclay Pentland's notes on the aborigines of Peru (ca. 1840?), and newspaper clippings on Morton's death; a diary of Morton's trip to the West Indies, 1834, a set of craniological sketches for use in Crania Americana, and a microfilm of letters in private hands, written to Morton, 1838-1844