Did the Native Americans on the eastern seaboard ever send a "Lewis and Clark" type expedition to discover what was west of their lands over the Appalachians? Were they never curious of what might exist out west? What knowledge, if any, did the Natives have of western lands? Thanks!
/u/eternalkerri posted several trade maps in an older thread, that showed how Native Americans had trade routes from coast to coast, prior to European contact. So tribes clearly had indirect (and some direct) contact with tribes far away, through trade.
One key is that moving to a different area meant massive changes in lifestyle, which is why many tribes suffered terribly when they were placed on reservations far from home.
Would the average Cherokee in the Carolina have known a lot about the West Coast? Probably not, any more than a French peasant in 1300 would have known a lot about the Russian Steppes.
There were extensive trading networks all throughout pre-Columbian North America. The different tribes had varying levels of knowledge and interaction with each other across a wide geographic area.