In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned captains William Clark and Meriwether Lewis to explore the uncharted American West. Their 28-month, 8,000-mile journey along the Missouri River, over the Rocky Mountains and out to the Pacific Coast is one of our nation's great adventure stories, an epic tale deeply embedded in the collective American psyche.

Yet strikingly different legal, commercial and financial paths awaited the adventurers upon their return in 1806, as newly discovered St. Louis Circuit Court records demonstrate.

View the full version page 1 | page 2. Here are two pages, recently posted online, from the St. Louis Circuit Court archives that detail an 1810 lawsuit by John Colter -- who had received early release from the Corps of Discovery --against the estate of Meriwether Lewis for $559 in back pay.

The records -- recently published online by the American Culture Studies Program in Arts & Sciences, the Missouri State Archives and the St. Louis Circuit Court Clerk's office -- are available to both professional and amateur historians and come just as states across the nation prepare for the Lewis & Clark bicentennial (2003-06).

The collection -- which can be viewed online at stlcourtrecords. wustl.edu -- includes approximately 1,500 documents relating to 81 court cases filed between 1809 and 1833, all involving Lewis, Clark or other members of their Corps of Discovery.

Also present are such figures as St. Louis founder Auguste Chouteau; Thomas Hart Benton, Missouri's most influential 19th century U.S. Senator; and fur-trade entrepreneur Manual Lisa. Materials range from promissory notes and petitions filed by attorneys to affidavits, summonses, depositions, wills, orders of sale, instructions to juries, jury verdicts and appeals.

"Everything people care about -- all the issues of living and dying -- are present in the pages of this archive," said Wayne Fields, Ph.D., the Lynne Cooper Harvey Distinguished Professor of English in Arts & Sciences and co-director of American Culture Studies. "More than facts, there is a city and a state represented here, along with a diverse collection of individuals who tried to find their places in those communities. The challenge of their urban experiment, and the trials of the individuals who came here, find voice in this remarkable collection of materials.

"Here are stories that can inspire young people to think more deeply about the meaning of citizenship, that put flesh and bone on the facts of our history," Fields added.

Early St. Louis was a litigious place, records reveal, though the 46 cases pertaining to Clark mostly chronicle a long and successful post-expedition career. Clark, who was appointed territorial governor, commander of the territorial militia and superintendent of Indian affairs, among other public offices, also became a noted business entrepreneur, with ventures including lead roles in the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company and the Bank of Missouri. He generally emerges as the plaintiff in these records, attempting to collect on debts owed.

By contrast, the nine cases involving Lewis tell a sad tale of mounting financial pressures. Though appointed governor of the Louisiana Territory in 1807, Lewis -- who committed suicide in 1809 while traveling from St. Louis to Washington, D.C., to defend some of his financial activities -- was approximately $3,000 in debt at the time of his death, mostly for land purchases and a mining venture.

Of particular interest is a case involving John Colter, who had received early discharge from the Corps of Discovery and thus was not present -- and not paid -- at the end of the expedition. In 1810, Colter was forced to sue Lewis' estate for $559 in wages that the War Department had paid to Lewis on his behalf.

The digitization team of American Culture Studies and Missouri state archivists spent months scanning and posting the handwritten, and often fragile, papers. Recent American Culture Studies graduate Jessica Herczeg-Konecny completed much of the scanning, while Brian Hamman and Fritz Vandover, a master's candidate in history in Arts & Sciences, led the digitization team and built the online site and its database, which is searchable by year, plaintiff, defendant and other criteria. Loren Lee, a graduate in American Culture Studies and illustration, designed the site's visual interface.

Missouri Secretary of State Matt Blunt and St. Louis Circuit Clerk Mariano Favazza unveiled the Web site during a July 3 news conference at the St. Louis Circuit Court archives downtown.

"I am excited that, with this digitized collection of Lewis & Clark court records, historians and scholars can begin their own 'voyage of discovery' into the lives of these famous explorers," Blunt said. "The Lewis & Clark expedition sparked the American imagination. Missouri, the place they settled afterward, quickly became the gateway to the Western frontier. We hope this collection of records will spark the imagination of those interested in Lewis & Clark and their lives in St. Louis."

"Not just academics are looking at these records," Favazza added, noting that a previously posted group of 170 pages chronicling Dred and Harriet Scott's unsuccessful fight to gain freedom from slavery has received close to 1 million page views since going online in January 2001 (library.wustl.edu/vlib/dredscott). "Putting a human face on (American history) -- the value of that can't be measured by dollars or words… but by the experience people have accessing information and learning something more about ourselves."

Favazza also noted that the next series of records, which the American Culture Studies digitization team and its students have begun to scan, is believed to be the nation's largest archive pertaining to slave freedom suits. The approximately 280 case files -- some of which contain as many as 300 pages -- come from Missouri as well as Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky.

Launched in September 1999, the St. Louis Circuit Court Historic Records Project aims to preserve and make accessible some 4 million documents dating from the court's inception in 1804 through 1875, the year a new state constitution made St. Louis an independent city within the state. (The 1875 date also roughly corresponds with the end of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period.)