Who was Private Jean Baptiste Lepage?

Answer 1

Jean Baptiste LePage was a French-Canadian fur trader who was living among the Hidatsa and Mandan natives (near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota) when the explorers arrived there, October 27, 1804. Lewis, by his January 15, 1807 letter to the Secretary of War, Henry Dearborn, transmitted a "Roll of the men who accompanyed Captains Lewis and Clark on their late tour to the Pacific Ocean...with some remarks on their rispective merits and services." Here, LePage is rated as "Entitled to no peculiar merit." He was enlisted at Fort Mandan, two days before Sacagawea and Toussaint Charbonneau, on November 2, 1804 in order to replace the discharged John Newman. With the expedition, he made it to the Pacific Ocean and returned to St. Louis.