If Barton did, Lewis ignored him-the journals of both Lewis and Clark refer only to elk. McClung, Lost … Continue reading Barton was one of the scientists who advised Lewis during his pre-expedition visit to Philadelphia in the spring of 1803, but it’s not known whether he urged the explorer to use the term wapiti in his recorded observations. Greer, Bibliography: Wapiti and European Red Deer (Montana Fish and Game Department, Game Management Division, Special Report No. Perhaps to avoid such confusion, in 1806 the naturalist Benjamin Smith Barton gave it the species name wapiti, a term he borrowed from the Shawnees, in whose language it means “light rump.” John B. Waymouth probably applied the name indiscriminately to any big, large-racked member of the deer family. There is no evidence, however, that moose in post-glacial times ever ranged as far south as Virginia. The American elk’s European counterpart and close relation is the red deer, but the animal Europeans call an elk is in fact what Americans call a moose. Ernest Thompson Seton, The Life Histories of Northern Animals (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 41. Bryant and Chris Maser, “Classification and Distribution of North American Elk: Ecology and Management,” Wildlife Management Institute (Harrisburg: Stackpole Books, 1982), 1–60.Īn English sea captain, George Waymouth, reported sighting “Olkes,” or elk, on his voyage to Virginia in 1605. The Corps of Discovery encountered four of the six subspecies-the Eastern, Manitoban (plains), Rocky Mountain, and Roosevelt (Northwest coastal) elk. Peter Matthiessen, Wildlife in America (New York: Viking Press, 1959), 62. In precolonial times this large member of the deer family, although now associated almost exclusively with the Rocky Mountains, was abundant on the plains and ranged as far east as the woodlands of Pennsylvania and New York and south to Georgia. Jack Lyon and Jack Ward Thomas, “Elk: Rocky Mountain Majesty,” Restoring America’s Wildlife (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, 1987), 145–159. Wildlife biologists have estimated that before European settlement the continent may have supported an elk population of 10 million. One of the animals recorded by Lewis and Clark-and which became one of the staples of their mostly carnivorous diet-was the wapiti, or American elk ( Cervus elaphus). As a result, the Lewis and Clark journals contain the first reliable documentation of wildlife in the drainages of the Missouri and Columbia rivers. In his letter of instruction to Meriwether Lewis as he prepared to cross the continent with the Corps of Discovery, Thomas Jefferson told him to observe “the animals of the country generally, and especially those not known in the U.S.” Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Cleveland: Arthur H.
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