Seaman helped the Lewis & Clark Expedition
N 41° 27.340 W 096° 00.920
14T E 749292 N 4593643
Seaman was a Newfoundland dog that went with his master on the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Waymark Code: WM2JD9
Location: Nebraska, United States
Date Posted: 11/11/2007
Views: 71
The statue of Seaman is located at the Ft. Atkinson State Historical Park near Fort Calhoun, Nebraska
It’s thought that Lewis probably purchased his Newfoundland dog, Seaman, for $20 in Philadelphia. Seaman is first mentioned in the Expedition journals on September 11, 1803. Lewis was floating down the Ohio River. He wrote in the journal, “I made my dog take as many [squirrels] each day as I had occasion for. They were fat and I thought them when fried a pleasant food. They swim very light on the water and make pretty good speed. My dog was of the Newfoundland breed, very active, strong and docile. He would take the squirrels in the water, kill them, and swimming bring them in his mouth to the boat.”
When the Expedition reached the upper Missouri in the summer of 1805, Seaman was again mentioned in the journal on May 19. The bull [bison] would have run over the tent in which the officers and Charbonneau family slept had Seaman not “caused him to change his course.”
The men and Seaman were tormented by the sharp spines of the prickly pear cactus and the needle and thread grass. ” These barbed seeds penetrate our moccasins and leather leggings and give great pain until they are removed. My poor dog suffers with them excessively. He is constantly biting and scratching himself as if in a rage of pain.”
The last entry concerning Seaman is in Lewis’s journal for July 15, 1806: ”the mosquetoes continue to infest us in such manner that we can scarcely exist; for my own part I am confined by them to my bier at least 3/4th of the time, my dog even howls with the torture he experiences from them.”
It is not known if Seaman was with his master when Lewis died in 1809.
Breed: Newfoundland
Date Built: 1987/01/01
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