We don’t know much about Meriwether Lewis’ sense of fashion, nor his eye for color, nor his preference for sleeve shape, but we know this: He had the supply chain business down cold.

Forty-eight Calico Ruffled Shirts, it says, right after 130 Rolls of Tobacco (pigtail) and just before 15 Blankets. The shirts are one of 51 items, most listed with detailed weights, units, and cost, in the “Indian Presents” category of the manifest for Lewis & Clark’s Corps of Discovery. Those shirts cost the Government of the United States $71.04, and on the Indian Presents list this was the big ticket item.

Forty-eight shirts don’t weigh all that much; you could easily carry them from one room to the next. But if you want to carry them over mountains, through forests, and down rapids, you have to think carefully about the importance of shirts. The shirts don’t weigh much compared to, say, the 73 bunches of beads, 11 dozen knives, or two corn mills the Corps also carried. But the shirts will keep indefinitely. They might buy good will through 48 encounters with the Indians. And they could be used for the Corps if necessary. Should we take more than 48? If we did, would we need another horse? How many horses will they buy? How many blankets?

A challenge, indeed, answering such questions, knowing you were answering for yourself, your friends, your hired men, your pack animals, all the people you may encounter in the wilderness, and the president who entrusted you with the mission — as important a business enterprise, perhaps, as any in American history.

If cost is a guide, then Lewis & Clark’s Corps of Discovery placed a premium on forging good relations with the native peoples. “Indian presents” was budgeted at $696 — a figure Lewis managed to undercut by about $26 when he made his purchases — and it was by far the highest expense of the expedition. In Lewis’ 1803 estimate of expenses, the Indian Presents category amounted to about 28 percent of the entire cost of the expedition.

The term “Indian Presents” is a bit misleading. A better label for the category might have been Trade Currency, for Indian presents served more purposes than to simply show kindness from the President of the United States. A key purpose of the gifts was to barter for things the Lewis & Clark expedition would need along the trail. Lewis knew he would need horses, food, clothing, canoes, advice, and, especially, good will. He was more likely to get them by trading items of value than he was by simply asking for them.

The late historian Stephen Ambrose noted also that the gifts were intended to impress the Indians. By carrying along a storehouse of beads, colored powders, pocket mirrors, handkerchiefs, shirts, and corn mills, Lewis intended to dazzle the native peoples with the state of white civilization and technology. The gifts would help to deliver the message that the white Americans were wealthy, accomplished, and generous to their friends.

And “Indian Presents” was just one category in Lewis’s lengthy list of provisions. Sections of his budget and inventory were devoted to camp supplies, mathematical instruments, medicine, pay for guides, contingencies, and other things.

What we would now call his Defense Budget, but which Lewis called “Arms & Accoutrements extraordinary,” was a paltry $81. But maybe that was a matter of weight: 176 pounds of gunpowder in 52 leaden canisters was the equivalent of two or three large people.

This was something to think about. You could carry a lot of lockets, thimbles, and pocket mirrors in the space it would take to haul ‘rifles, knives, gun slings, and whatnot. But their lives were more likely to depend on dry powder than they were on rings, scissors, or calico shirts.

Yet there was a reason Lewis prized calico shirts, pocket mirrors, and other such items so highly. As management guru Peter Drucker has written, “Resources, to produce results, must be allocated to opportunities, rather than problems.” In other words, good planning avoids defensive thinking. It seeks to maximize opportunities. And the opportunities facing the Lewis & Clark expedition were far more significant than the potential threats arrayed against it.