The American Indian objects in this room are recreations meant to resemble those that Jefferson once displayed here. Soon after the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, President Jefferson sent the Corps of Discovery, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, on a journey from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean and back. The Corps of Discovery traded, negotiated with, and received aid from more than forty American Indian Nations along the way, assisted in translation by a young Shoshone woman named Sacagawea. Their cultural exchanges resulted in Jefferson’s collection of Native American paintings and objects for the museum in this room, but also foreshadowed the difficult history of westward expansion and American Indian displacement.