From the rulebook

p5: Advice to Beginners: During your first games we advise you not to discard your Interpreter and Commander ... without these two cards, and without having recruited the necessary Characters, you would not be able to win the game!

Not shown in the original rulebook - if you decide to let your scout drift downriver and enjoy St. Louis, penalties will be exacted upon you. "Scout is at the first space of the Route during Encampment. The U.S. government is disturbed that the expedition wasted its federally-funded resources in the bars and brothels of New Orleans. In response, funding is cut off and the leaders must return in shame to Saint Louis, to start again with the original Corps."

This fixes a "bug" in the game which allowed expeditions to bulk up in St Louis and amass significant resources.

There are two expedition upgrades available to you, a resource boat or an "Indian" boat. These have two sides with different benefits/penalties. finding the balance between wallowing up the Missouri overloaded with resources and Indians, or traveling lightly but lacking in trade goods and Indians to take needed actions, is a big part of the game. The rulebook suggests the upgrade action is more valuable early in the game.

When spending character cards to power the actions of other cards, be aware that the face down card will not be available till the next time you reset your hand.

The Camp never moves backwards.

Camps can be in the same location, but two scouts cannot be in the same location. Your scout will push further on if he would end his move on another scout.

Tactical Tips

• If a card appears in the recruitment row that helps you to move through mountains without using horses, you should probably try to buy it even if your Scout is still some way from the mountains. This is because you need to use Indians and an action to buy horses, and it is surprising how often you find that you run out of Indians just as you reach the mountains! Or else there is a sudden drought of mountain cards available to buy. The mountain cards will pay their way even on the river, because many of them have strength 2 or 3, which makes them useful for powering up, and as you approach the mountains, they allow your Scout to continue his advance before your next camp even if your Commander has to use all of his activations for river movement.

• If there are several cards in the recruitment row that you think are worth having and you don't want to leave them for your opponents, don't forget that you can use the Farewell space in the village to sweep them away. Obviously there is a risk that the replacement cards will be just as good or better than the ones you discarded, but the Farewell space also allows you to discard 3 cards from your hand, which can be useful if you need to camp, eg. to recover your Interpreter, or to take cards off the table that might help your opponents, or to disrupt the pattern of the camping cycles if you think it is not in your favour. Note that you lose the discarded cards permanently, though, which is not usually particularly helpful, except towards the end of the game, when you need to reduce your hand size so that you can camp two or three times in quick succession in order to make good use of your most efficient movement cards.