President Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the Missouri River and find a stream leading from its headwaters to the Pacific that would provide the best water route for commerce. They set out up the Missouri on May 14, 1804, reached the mouth of the Osage on June 1, passed the mouth of the Nodaway on July 8 and the Nishnabotna on July 14, and began poling and sailing along the southwestern border of Iowa on July 18. On July 29 they encamped on Iowa soil a short distance above the mouth of the Boyer River, and the next day they landed on the Nebraska shore at a place they called Council Bluff to await the Missouri and Oto Indians. When the Indians arrived on August 3, Lewis and Clark told them of their mission up the Missouri, advised them on how they were to conduct themselves, and presented the chiefs with medals, a canister of powder, and a bottle of whiskey. The council on the Missouri above present-day Omaha is remembered in the name of Council Bluffs, Iowa. The expedition set out with 43 men and spent 33 days traveling along Iowa’s western border. Sergeant Charles Floyd, the only man to die on the expedition, became ill on August 19, 1804, and died the next day on Iowa soil. He was buried with the honors of war on top of the bluff one-half mile below a small river that was given his name, near present-day Sioux City. The Sergeant Floyd Monument honors him and was erected in 1900-1901; it was the first Registered Historic Landmark in the United States.