Big Bone Lick, KY[1]Because no known record exists of Lewis’s journey between Cincinnati and Big Bone Lick or of his time at the diggings, we can only conjecture that he was at Big Bone Lick on this date. We do … Continue reading On or near this date, Lewis finished loading Thomas Jefferson‘s fossil specimens onto the barge (or other boat) at the Ohio River landing below Big Bone Lick. He is reported to have taken all the larger bones including a large tusk.
Mastodon Herd
Charles R. Knight (1874–1953)
Image is in the public domain.
Many scientists in 1803 expected that live specimens of the animals found in the fossil record would also be found. Extinction was an emerging concept and unproven. See Thoughts on Extinction.
Lewis Takes the Best
Contemporary traveler Thomas Rodney arrived at the Big Bone Lick shortly after Lewis had left. Rodney reports that Lewis got the best specimens:
Captain Lewes [Lewis] had got the long tusk lately found and one or another has carried of[f] the larger bones; but the situation and circumstances of these licks shew that they have been long frequented and much more formerly than latterly. [I also got a small piece that had scaled off from the great tusk that Lewies had taken . . . .
—Thomas Rodney[2]10 October 1803. Dwight L. Smith and Ray Swick, ed., A Journey Through the West: Thomas Rodney’s 1803 Journal from Delaware to the Mississippi Territory (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997), … Continue reading
Notes
| ↑1 | Because no known record exists of Lewis’s journey between Cincinnati and Big Bone Lick or of his time at the diggings, we can only conjecture that he was at Big Bone Lick on this date. We do know he was in Cincinnati on 3 October 1803 and that he had left Big Bone Lick before Thomas Rodney arrived there on 10 October. |
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| ↑2 | 10 October 1803. Dwight L. Smith and Ray Swick, ed., A Journey Through the West: Thomas Rodney’s 1803 Journal from Delaware to the Mississippi Territory (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997), 111–112. |
