[f.Christian]

Seems to me as a "Gestalt" theorist we spin bridges--sail ships over unchartered seas/continents...oh my Clark from the Lewis fame went mad--zonkers. No wonder they missed the Colombia River---"ooreeegon"...the Great NW passage by a few miles and went through the Rocky mountains on foot---no trails. Fifty years before that, one expedition went west and was never heard from. Eternity is an abyss, we should navigate it carefully!

Atheism is throwing map--compass--constellations away. There are no cut offs--shortcuts...lotta broken down wagons--sunken ships--Donner parties!

Plans--methodology matters!

[VadeRetro]

Fifty years before that, one expedition went west and was never heard from.

What expedition vanished into the West in the early 1750s? The French controlled the Ohio Valley, the Mississippi Valley, and Canada at the time. (To be lost a few years later in the French-and-Indian War.)

[VadeRetro]

No wonder they missed the Colombia River---"ooreeegon"...the Great NW passage by a few miles and went through the Rocky mountains on foot---no trails.

They found the Columbia. They missed the South Pass (used by the later Oregon Trail), which would have made for a heck of lot easier trip over the Rockies. But, by going as far as possible up the Missouri to the Bitterroots, they left themselves much too far north to find it.

Your main point is that they had no real way of knowing the best way up front. That's why being the pioneer is a big deal.