TELLING THE STORY: CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF
THE LEWIS AND CLARK JOURNALS
by
Deborah Malony Dukes
A Thesis
Presented to
The Faculty of Humboldt State University
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts in Social Science
Emphasis: Teaching American History
May 2006
TELLING THE STORY: CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF
THE LEWIS AND CLARK JOURNALS
by
Deborah Malony Dukes
Approved by the Master’s Thesis Committee:
Delores McBroome, Major Professor
Date
Gayle Olson-Raymer, Committee Member
Date
Rodney Sievers, Committee Member
Date
Delores McBroome, Graduate Coordinator
Date
Donna E. Schafer, Dean for Research and Graduate Studies
Date
ABSTRACT
The collective journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition have been objects of
fascination and interpretation ever since the Corps of Discovery’s homecoming in 1806.
Despite President Thomas Jefferson’s direction that Meriwether Lewis prepare the
journals for publication, Lewis’ untimely death in 1809 left the editing of the expedition’s
records – and much of the storytelling – to a series of writers and editors of varying
interests, abilities and degrees of integrity.
Understandably the several major editions and many other versions of the story
have reflected the lives and times of the editors. For instance, ornithologist Elliott Coues
was the first – 89 years after the fact – to acknowledge the expedition’s many scientific
and ethnological observations. For their own purposes, successive generations of
activists have appropriated iconic expedition members, emphasized or even invented
anecdotes, and supposed discoveries.
Scholarly and public interest in the journals has peaked during this bicentennial
period, as often happens around the times of major anniversaries of the expedition. Past
cycles of interest have encouraged more scholarship and occasionally have led to
amazing discoveries of previously lost or forgotten journals, collections of letters and
papers of the principals, and other documents related to the expedition. Most recently
this has culminated in the completion of the edition of the journals generally recognized
as the most complete and accurate to date, Gary E. Moulton’s thirteen-volume Definitive
Nebraska Edition.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My sincere thanks go to the volunteers at the William P. Sherman Library and
Archives in Great Falls, Montana. Lois Baker, Dick Smith and his grandson Tanner,
Ralph Pomnichowski, and Lorna Rivard offered valuable guidance when I showed up at
their facility knowing only that I wanted to research a topic related to Lewis and Clark.
Without exception they made me feel both welcome and much more knowledgeable than
I was at that time. Dick and Tanner (a master photocopier) graciously invited me to a
picnic of the Portage Chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trails Heritage Foundation, where I
met a number of other very helpful local enthusiasts.
The staff and volunteers at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, also in Great
Falls, especially Dick Boss, were delightful as they shared their own interests with me,
suggested areas for further research, and made sure I got to many sites in the area – and
back.
I am sure I am not alone in my gratitude to the late Stephen E. Ambrose, whose
labor of love, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the
Opening of the American West was the only assigned book that I read completely
through, then promptly read again for the pure pleasure of it. He got me hooked.
My thanks go to my Teaching American History instructors, Professors Dee
McBroome, Gayle Olsen-Raymer, and especially my advisor, Rod Sievers, for keeping
me writing when I would much rather have just continued reading and traveling. Their
passion for American history has been contagious.
iv
My fantastic students in Room 5 at South Bay School gave me prompt feedback
about what parts of my lesson plan worked for them – or did not. As they are now the
school experts on Lewis and Clark, I hope they continue their interest continues.
Thanks, too, to the many friends and family who feigned interest as I recounted
with great glee new tidbits about some obscure edition of the journals or what had
occurred along the trail precisely 200 years previously. My sister, Kay Dukes Weeks
(The Smart One), set the example when she earned a doctorate. Randy particularly gets
my gratitude for keeping me proceeding on – and fed.
The Northern Humboldt Teaching American History grant, with Gilder-Lehrman
and its many other partners, made my study financially feasible, and provided me with
opportunities to travel and learn from true masters of the history of this nation.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................. iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS ...............................................................................................vi
TELLING THE STORY: CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF THE LEWIS
AND CLARK JOURNALS .................................................................................1
“The Writingest Explorers”..................................................................................1
“The Work Which I Am Myself Preparing For Publication” ................................3
“Journals Remarkably Open To Interpretation”..................................................13
“A Westering People .........................................................................................16
Serving The Cause: Sacagawea And York ........................................................18
“The Course Of Empire”....................................................................................21
“The Journals Of Black Cat”..............................................................................23
Conclusion: Shared Stories ...............................................................................25
LESSON PLAN PROCEEDING ON ............................................................................28
Introduction .......................................................................................................28
Lesson Content ..................................................................................................30
Prior Content Knowledge and Skills ..................................................................39
Evaluation .........................................................................................................40
APPENDIX A ...............................................................................................................41
Social Studies Standards Addressed ...................................................................41
vi
APPENDIX B ...............................................................................................................43
Assignments ......................................................................................................43
APPENDIX C ...............................................................................................................45
Materials List.....................................................................................................45
APPENDIX D ...............................................................................................................47
Annotated List of Sources Consulted .................................................................47
BIBLIOGRAPHY .........................................................................................................54
vii
TELLING THE STORY: CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF
THE LEWIS AND CLARK JOURNALS
“The Writingest Explorers”1
It should come as no surprise that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark kept
copious journals on their famous expedition. The president who sent them west on their
Voyage of Discovery was mystified by government officials who did not keep notes of
their work, claiming that without records, “history becomes fable instead of facts.”2
When Thomas Jefferson charged Meriwether Lewis regarding recordkeeping on the
expedition, he left no doubt about the importance he attached to the task and its products:
Your observations are to be taken with great pains & accuracy, to be entered
distinctly & intelligibly for others as well as for yourself, to comprehend all the
elements necessary . . . . Several copies of these as well as of your other notes
should be made at leisure times, & put into the care of the most trustworthy of
your attendants, to guard, by multiplying them, against the accidental losses to
which they will be exposed.3
Lewis, William Clark and several literate enlisted men took their president’s commission
to heart. According to Robert B. Betts, the expedition journalists “penned an estimated
1,123,445 words, or 349,699 more words than are to be found in the Bible.” It stands to
reason that the recordkeeping tasks of the expedition were every bit as daunting as its
other trials. He cites Donald Jackson: “They wrote constantly and abundantly, afloat and
1
Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783-1854, 2d
ed., rev., vol. 1. (Urbana, 1978), vii.
2
Donald Jackson, ed., Letters. Quoted in Robert B. Betts, “’The writingest explorers of their time’: New
Estimates of the Number of Words in the Published Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” We
Proceeded On (August 1981), 4.
3
Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804-1806, 8 vols.
(New York, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1904-05), vol. 7, 248, quoted in Paul Russell Cutright, A History of the
Lewis and Clark Journals, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976, 5.
1
2
ashore, legibly and illegibly, and always with an urgent sense of purpose.”4 Historians
ever since have been grateful for President Jefferson’s foresight in demanding a wealth of
written material from the Corps of Discovery.
Gunther Barth suggests “The sheer bulk of the journals has repeatedly lured
writers to act as guides through them or to make excerpts available for new generations
of readers.”5 These guides have included editors and dreamers, activists and scholars,
novelists and charlatans since the expedition’s return to St. Louis in September 1806.
What is it in this journey that has led such a diverse group of storytellers to
recount all or, more often, selected chapters of it? How have the voluminous notes of
these few men been interpreted and reinterpreted in the 200 years since they recorded
their discoveries and experiences along the trail? Which of these retellings have been
most influential in shaping scholarly and popular accounts of Lewis, Clark, the other
members of the Corps of Discovery, the tribes they encountered, and the scientific and
anthropological discoveries they brought to the European-American body of knowledge?
The current bicentennial period provides rich material for a survey of the
successive editions of Corps members’ journals and of the mythology that has sprung up
around the expedition.
A review of the accounts of the expedition reveals several general motivational
themes among writers and editors since 1806: relating (often with high embellishment)
the romance of the adventure; emphasizing either the early potential or later actual
4
Beverly D. Bishop, “’The Writingest Explorers:’ Manuscripts of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,”
Gateway Heritage, The Quarterly Journal of the Missouri Historical Society (Fall 1981), 23, 25.
5
Gunther Barth, “Timeless Journals: Reading Lewis and Clark with Nicholas Biddle’s Help,” Pacific
Historical Review (1994), 500.
3
westward movement that followed in the century after Lewis and Clark; appropriating
certain persons or events to advance a social or political cause; and focusing on the
natural and ethnological knowledge the Corps brought back to European America. As
Kenneth Foote summarizes, “What is accepted as historical truth is often a narrative
shaped and reshaped through time to fit the demands of contemporary society.”6 Not
surprisingly, the perspective of the presenter often corresponds closely to those demands.
“The Work Which I Am Myself Preparing For Publication”7
Fittingly, Thomas Jefferson was the first to circulate written news from the Corps
of Discovery. In November 1804 he received a letter Meriwether Lewis had written
August 19, 1804 from “850 miles up the Missouri” assuring the president that there had
been no accidents (the only fatality of the expedition occurred the day after the letter was
written) and that the Indians they had met had been friendly.8 Within a few months, this
news was printed in at least two newspapers in Boston and as a short entry in the
ambitiously named A Compendious History of the World, published in Philadelphia.9
Another written report from Lewis to Jefferson, sent from winter quarters at Fort Mandan
in present-day North Dakota shortly before the Corps resumed their journey in the spring
6
Kenneth E. Foote. Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1997. Quoted in Kevin S. Blake, “Great Plains Native American
Representations Along the Lewis and Clark Trail,” Great Plains Quarterly 24, no. 4 (2004), 263.
7
Meriwether Lewis, letter to the National Intelligencer, 18 March 1807. Quoted in Paul Russell Cutright,
A History of the Lewis and Clark Journals. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976, 19.
8
Jackson, Letters, vol. 1, 218.
9
Doug Erickson, Jeremy Skinner, and Paul Merchant, “Mathew Carey: First Chronicler of Lewis and
Clark”, We Proceeded On (August 2003), 28-29.
4
of 1805, was included in a February 1806 message to Congress, then issued as a press
release that stoked public interest in the expedition.10
Immediately upon their return to St. Louis, both Lewis and Clark wrote letters to
President Jefferson and their own family members.11 William Clark’s letter to his
brother – actually written by Lewis for Clark to copy – was widely published, as the
captains intended, to serve as a public announcement of the return of the explorers and
their party.12 The captains settled into a rented room and, according to Clark’s last entry,
“We commenced Wrighting &c.” According to Elliott Coues, Reuben Gold Thwaites,
Ernest Osgood and almost every other scholar until recently, Lewis and Clark apparently
discarded all but two of their field journals after transcribing the notes into red morocco,
gilt-edged books.13
Recent researchers – the redoubtable Gary Moulton among them – have drawn a
different conclusion. After factoring in the limited time the explorers had available amid
the accolades and social whirl that greeted them on their return, letters to and from
Jefferson dating his receipt of some of the morocco notebooks, and internal evidence in
the entries, these historians posit that most of these journals were completed along the
trail. Based on records of the (presumably blank) notebooks having been packed before
the Corps’ departure, and Jefferson’s instructions to seal their records in tin boxes for
10
Deborah W. Bolas, “Books from an Expedition: A Publications History of the Lewis and Clark
Journals,” Gateway Heritage, The Quarterly Journal of the Missouri Historical Society vol. 2, no. 2 (Fall
1981), 31.
11
James P. Ronda, essay review “’The Writingest Explorers’: The Lewis and Clark Expedition in
American Historical Literature”, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History & Biography, vol. CXII, no. 4
(October 1988), 609.
12
James J. Holmberg, “Getting Out the Word,” We Proceeded On (August 2001), 13
13
Bishop, 23.
5
safekeeping, recent historians have concluded that most journal entries were made within
a very short time of the events related. The theory is that there were a few field notes,
later collated and crudely bound, as in Clark’s famous elkskin field notebook, which
served as the basis for the more extensive narratives the men made during times of rest.
Indeed, in an effort to preserve their records, they often discussed the events, and even
copied each other’s entries verbatim before sealing the completed journals in the tin
boxes.14
It was Jefferson’s instruction to Lewis upon their return that the captains
immediately get to work cataloguing the journal entries, scientific observations,
ethnographic and linguistic notes, and maps, and prepare them all for publishing. The
material constituted the entire body of European-American knowledge of the West, and
Jefferson wanted no delay in its dissemination.15 Historians agree that Jefferson intended
for the highly literate Lewis to polish the rough notes into a “full record of their findings
to present to the world as soon as possible in a multivolume work, including a narrative
of the journey and a full exposition of their scientific and geographic discoveries, with
appropriate maps and illustrations.”16 Lewis and Clark, though, had a heady
homecoming as heroes: in their honor toasts were drunk, feasts consumed, plays
produced, elegiac poetry composed, and speeches made. To top off the honors, Lewis
was named governor of the new Territory of Louisiana. The administrative, financial and
14
Gary E. Moulton, ed. The Definitive Journals of Lewis & Clark: From the Ohio to the Vermillion. vol.
2, The Definitive Journals of Lewis & Clark. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986, 835.
15
Ronda, essay review, 607.
16
Gary E. Moulton, DJLC, vol. 2, 85.
6
social requirements of his new life presented very different challenges from those of the
expedition; the appointment was a disastrous matching of skills to job description.
In 1807 Lewis issued a prospectus for publication of the journals in two volumes
of narrative and one of scientific observations. Upon learning of the proposed
publication of the journals of Sergeant Patrick Gass and Private Robert Frazer, Lewis
wrote a scathing letter to a newspaper warning the public about “unauthorized
publications relative to this voyage” by two of his own enlisted men, which might
“depreciate the worth of the work which I am myself preparing for publication”.17
Perhaps in response to these outrages, or perhaps to supplement their own journals, Lewis
and Clark purchased Private John Ordway’s journal for $150.18
Before his death in 1809 (by suicide, according to most historians),19 Lewis’s
progress toward publication could
“ . . . be summed up in the shortness of a sentence. He obtained a publisher,
released a prospectus, engaged artists and naturalists to figure and describe his
animal and plant specimens, persuaded still other draftsmen to make drawings of
Indians and waterfalls, and induced a mathematician to correct navigational
determinations.”20
Despite increasingly impatient letters from Presidents Jefferson and later, James
Madison about the delay in preparing the journals for publication, Lewis appears to have
17
Cutright, 18-20.
Donald Jackson, “The Race to Publish Lewis and Clark” in Voyages of Discovery: Essays on the Lewis
and Clark Expedition, edited by James P. Ronda. Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 210.
19
Murder theorists include Richard Dillon, Meriwether Lewis: A Biography. (New York: CowardMcCann, Inc., 1965) and Vardis Fisher. Suicide or Murder? The Strange Death of Governor Meriwether
Lewis. (Denver: Swallow, 1962). Both are cited in Donald Jackson. Thomas Jefferson & the Stony
Mountains: Exploring the West from Monticello. (Urbana, Chicago, London: University of Illinois Press,
1981), 291n. For an even more complicated perspective on Lewis’ death, see David Leon Chandler. The
Jefferson Conspiracies: A President’s Role in the Assassination of Meriwether Lewis. (New York:
William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1994).
20
Cutright, 48.
18
7
suffered a colossal case of writer’s block the rest of his short life. He eventually stopped
making excuses, and simply ceased responding to his revered friend and mentor’s
increasingly curt demands for progress.21
When the paraphrased version of Sergeant Patrick Gass’s journal came out in
1807, it caused such a sensation that six more editions were published in short order,
including three in Europe. The published version was completely rewritten from the
(subsequently lost) journal by Mathew Carey in Philadelphia. Later editions included six
fanciful illustrations, “exemplifying what a draftsman may accomplish if allowed to
employ unrestrained imagination in portraying subjects about which he knows next to
nothing.”22
The Gass publication inspired a number of apocryphal “journals” that borrowed
liberally from the published memoirs of Jonathan Carver and Alexander Mackenzie,
earlier explorers of western North America. Most of these were copied from an 1809
London publication, The Travels of Capts. Lewis and Clarke . . . From the Official
Communication of Meriwether Lewis.23 William Clark, as the surviving commander and
decidedly less eloquent writer of the two captains, realized he needed some help in
publishing the official journals of the expedition.
21
Cutright, 50.
Donald Jackson, “The Race to Publish Lewis and Clark” in Voyages of Discovery: Essays on the Lewis
and Clark Expedition, edited by James P. Ronda. (Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1998), 31.
23
Bolas, 32.
22
8
Clark contracted with a privileged young Philadelphian, Nicholas Biddle, to
prepare – essentially to ghostwrite – the captains’ journals.24 Biddle spent three weeks
with Clark in early 1810, reading the manuscript journals of Lewis, Clark and Sergeant
Ordway, and grilling Clark for hours about such under-recorded details as Sacagawea’s
tearful reunion with her brother and Indian reactions upon first seeing a black man,
Clark’s slave York, who was an unpaid member of the expedition. Clark saw to it that
Corpsman George Shannon was dispatched to Philadelphia to assist Biddle with facts and
color, and it is logical to presume that Biddle read Patrick Gass’s published account of
the journey. As a result of his interviews of Clark and Private Shannon, Nicholas Biddle
no doubt knew far more about the methods used in keeping the journals than anyone else
not on the expedition, but he did not share any of this knowledge in his writing.25
Biddle condensed the manuscripts into two volumes, collapsing the many voices
of the journalists into a first-person plural narrative that emphasized “the West’s two
great novelties – wild Indians and animals.” Nor was he above including the erotic
details of the Buffalo Dance some Corpsmen observed (and energetically participated in)
at Fort Mandan; the story was related in Latin, presumably to limit access to it by readers
less educated and therefore more susceptible to its libidinous influence than its highly
educated author.26
24
Biddle, in later life, was Andrew Jackson’s “aristocratic” nemesis as the President of the Second Bank of
the United States from 1823 until its demise in 1836. See Arlen J. Large, “History’s Two Nicholas
Biddles,” We Proceeded On (May 1990), 4-13, or Gary B. Nash, et al. The American People: Creating a
Nation and a Society. (New York: Longman, 2003), 351-353.
25
Moulton, “Introduction to the Journals,” DJLC, vol. 2, 9.
26
Large, “History’s Two Nicholas Biddles”, 6-11.
9
Because of the illness and death of Benjamin Smith Barton, the scientist who had
agreed to write it, the promised companion volume of scientific discoveries never
appeared. Biddle, after writing the two narrative volumes, passed responsibility for the
project to an acquaintance, Paul Allen, who is given sole credit on the title page for
having prepared the journals for eventual publication in 1814.27 The edition now known
as the Biddle or Biddle-Allen, reprinted several times, was the only authorized version
for the next 89 years.28
In 1893 Francis P. Harper published the last of the Biddle reprints after enlisting
former Army surgeon and avid ornithologist Elliott Coues to provide annotation. 29
Coues’ scientific background and passion for accuracy and detail led him to track down –
and find! – the original journals that had lain neglected among the holdings of the
American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia since Biddle had returned them in 1818.
He was amazed to read of the enormously significant scientific, cartographic and
ethnological data recorded by Lewis and Clark. Determined to recognize the Captains’
contributions in these areas, Coues researched and annotated relentlessly. Indeed, Paul R.
Cutright writes that the annotations came “close to outrunning the original text.” He
quotes Coues regarding the lack of scientific data in the Biddle edition:
When about to bring out the work, after the death of Governor Lewis, General
Clark made a contract with Benj. S. Barton, of Philadelphia, by the terms of
which the latter was to produce a formal work on the natural history of the
Expedition. In consequence of which, Mr. Biddle, of course, passed over such
points in the codices [original journals, DD]. Dr. Barton soon died, having done
nothing . . . . This is the simple explanation of the meagerness of the History in
27
Large, “History’s Two Nicholas Biddles”, 7.
Cutright, 71.
29
Cutright, 73-95.
28
10
scientific matters with which the codices are replete – to the keenest regret of all
naturalists, and the great loss of credit which was justly due these foremost
explorers of a country whose almost every animal and plant was then unknown to
science. My notes may in some measure throw back upon them a reflection of
what is their just due – but it can never be more than reflected glory, for in the
meantime others have carried off the honors that belong by right to Lewis and
Clark. 30
In anticipation of the centennials of the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and
Clark Expedition, the American Philosophical Society engaged Reuben Gold Thwaites to
supervise the first completely new edition of the journals since 1814.31 Thwaites’ wellindexed eight-volume Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, published in
1904, included complete transcriptions of all the then-known journals of Lewis, Clark,
Sergeant Charles Floyd32 and Private Joseph Whitehouse, some ancillary documents,
maps, and a wide-ranging bibliography.
The Thwaites edition set off a firestorm of interest in the Corps of Discovery and
documents related to it.33 Within approximately 20 years, many items were
rediscovered: the original journals of Sergeants Floyd and Ordway and Private
Whitehouse, a “windfall of letters, maps, and journals” in the possession of William
Clark’s family, and Lewis’s 1803 “Ohio Journal”.34 Cutright sees each new discovery
30
Cutright, 102.
Bolas, 33-34.
32
Floyd and Sergeant John Ordway were the only Corpsmen known to have made daily entries into their
journals. Floyd recorded every day from the official start of the expedition on May 14, 1804 until August
18, 1804, the same day he was “taken verry Sudenly Ill this morning with a collick”. He died two days
later of what modern physicians and historians have concluded was probably acute appendicitis, an
affliction for which there was no effective treatment anywhere at the time.
33
Bolas, 35.
34
Cutright, 128.
31
11
acting as “a high-intensity, intellectual wallop to increase further general interest in the
Expedition.”35
Thwaites’ edition became increasingly a victim of its own success, as more
documents were discovered and published in varying formats. Some condensed versions
of the journals, especially the best-selling “march-of-empire fanfare” written by Bernard
DeVoto in 1953, rekindled popular interest in the journals yet again.36 Though there was
a school of thought that doubted the advisability of supplanting Thwaites and the other
editors and popularizers,37 by 1967 prominent Lewis and Clark scholar Donald Jackson
was calling publicly for a completely new edition of the journals. Citing the dramatically
changed “ground rules for transcribing and interpreting historical documents” and the
many documents discovered since the Thwaites edition, he maintained that, “Anyone
who has had to seek information on Lewis and Clark in all these works, scattered
throughout time and not always readily available, will agree that some kind of standard
edition seems called for.”38
From 1979 to 2001, Gary Moulton of the University of Nebraska and his many
consultant specialists gained access to all known extant journals, letters, maps and other
documents related to the expedition, transcribed and edited them, annotated them, and
published them in thirteen volumes commonly known as the Definitive Nebraska
35
Cutright, 204.
Arlen J. Large, “Bernard DeVoto and His ‘Struggle of Empires,’” We Proceeded On (May 1997), 4.
37
Harry Fritz, review of The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, vol. 3, edited by Gary E. Moulton,
We Proceeded On (November 1987), 30.
38
Gary E. Moulton, “The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: Beginning Again,” We Proceeded
On (November 1980), 14.
36
12
Edition.39 In addition to the captains’ journals (vols. 2-8), and those of Ordway, Floyd,
Gass, and Whitehouse (vols. 9-11), Moulton and his team have compiled an accurate and
beautifully produced large atlas of the expedition (vol. 1), a complete collection of the
natural history materials, including reproductions of the herbarium sheets Lewis gathered
(vol. 12), and a comprehensive index (vol. 13). The reviewers and historians consulted
for this thesis unanimously commend the work for its “modern editorial standards,
annotation and reference, and the coalescence of various sources into a sensible
organizational unity.”40
Students of the “American Epic of Discovery” might well wonder whether Gary
Moulton’s well-received new edition of the journals will spur more discoveries and
research, or act as a generational culmination of interest in the expedition. 41 Judging
from the popular and scholarly interest in the documentary history of the Corps of
Discovery though, Reuben Gold Thwaites’ comment 100 years ago still rings true: “The
story of the records of the transcontinental exploration . . . is almost as romantic as that of
the great discovery itself.”42
39
Gary E. Moulton, ed. The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 13 vols. (Lincoln and London:
The University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001.
40
Fritz, 30.
41
J.I. Merritt, “Moulton’s one-volume ‘American epic’ is a grand introduction to Lewis & Clark”, a review
of The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery, edited by Gary E. Moulton, We
Proceeded On (August 2003), 34.
42
Reuben Gold Thwaites, “The Story of Lewis and Clark’s Journals,” Annual Report of the American
Historical Association for the Year 1903, vol. 1, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904),
107, quoted in Gary E. Moulton, “The Specialized Journals of Lewis and Clark,” Proceedings of the
American Philosophical Society, vol. 127, no. 3 (1983), 200.
13
“Journals Remarkably Open To Interpretation”43
Thomas Jefferson’s vision of his new nation’s possibilities guided the expedition,
Lewis’ education and training, and the diarists’ writings. As a son of the Enlightenment,
Jefferson believed that the world and all it contains could be analyzed and ultimately
understood through dispassionate study. Historians agree that the objects of the
expedition were many and varied: to find the elusive Northwest Passage and thereby
control the lucrative trade with Asia; to proclaim American sovereignty over, and trade
with the Indian peoples; to stake an early enough claim to the Columbia River basin and
its riches to deny England and Spain any more of a foothold than they already had; to
attempt to push the Louisiana Territory’s northern border above the 49th parallel; and not
least, to acquire some politically profitable news to counter the Federalists’ scoffing
about the huge new territory.44
Nevertheless, Jefferson’s philosophy permeated the enterprise: exploration for
the sake of adding to the existing body of knowledge, thereby bringing closer the
Enlightenment ideal of universal rational, harmonious, agrarian, European-based
civilization. At least one scholar argues that “Jefferson conceived the West as a space for
resolving socio-economic problems of the new republic while the Journals are a
pragmatic, functional, empirical account of an adventure than can have happened only
43
Andrew R.L. Cayton, "Looking for America with Lewis and Clark." William and Mary Quarterly 59, no.
3 (2002), 709.
44
Jefferson’s politically astute Attorney General, Levi Lincoln, wanted so many stated objectives for the
expedition that even if one or more failed, Jefferson could still claim it had been successful. See James
Ronda, “’So Vast an Enterprise’: Thoughts on the Lewis and Clark Expedition”, introduction to Voyages
of Discovery: Essays on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, ed. James P. Ronda. (Helena: Montana
Historical Society Press, 1998), 10-11.
14
once.”45 James Ronda counters that the expedition would “advance the cause of a noble
empire, one that promised economic opportunity, political freedom, and cultural
rejuvenation.”46
The Enlightenment, however, was giving way to a new philosophy. According to
Andrew Cayton,
Lewis and Clark had the distinction of working on the cusp of a turn from
rationality into irrationality, from enlightened self-control and discovery to an
acceptance of Romantic notions of racial predestination and emotion, from
secular salvation through the reorganization of internal landscapes through
conversion. It was a movement from Jefferson to Jackson, from Candide to
Heathcliff, from a world in which the cause of America was of all mankind to a
world in which the cause of America was, well, the cause of America, and white
male Americans, at that.47
He proposes that had Lewis, and especially Jefferson, had their way with the publication
of the expedition’s journals, the resulting volumes might have been much more in line
with the fading Enlightenment philosophy. Agreeing with Coues’ assessment of Lewis’
historical reputation, other writers have insisted that Lewis “would today be seen as a
scientist and exemplar of the Enlightenment, rather than an adventurer.”48
Instead, the sensational rewritings of Patrick Gass’ journal and the various
apocryphal versions captured the imagination of a public that was becoming enthralled
with the new ideas represented by Jacksonian democracy. Despite Nicholas Biddle’s
assurance to Clark that the 1814 edition had “sold very well”, Cutright contends that the
45
Waters, Patricia, “Mr. Jefferson’s Literary Pursuit of the West: The Journals of Lewis and Clark” (Ph.D.
diss., University of Tennessee, 1998, abstract.
46
Ronda, “’So Vast an Enterprise’”, 5.
47
Andrew R.L. Cayton, “Telling Stories About Lewis and Clark: Does History Still Matter?” Great Plains
Quarterly (Fall 2004), 287.
48
Michael Mooney. “Foreword”, The Literature of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: A Bibliography and
Essays by Stephen Dow Beckham, et al. (Portland, Oregon: Lewis and Clark College, 2003), 7.
15
book sold poorly, largely due to the time lag in publishing the official version and the
many unofficial accounts that had appeared in the interim. All the prospective 1807
buyers had simply lost interest.49
Eminent Lewis and Clark historical geographer John Allen perhaps more
accurately suggests that this perceived difference be portrayed as between the “literate
elite” representing a “real-world application of the Enlightenment scientific tradition”,
which has evolved somewhat over time, and the “folk image” of the Expedition, which
has changed and been manipulated by opinion-shapers much more dramatically.
Though Thomas Jefferson had been planning an exploratory venture into the West
for many years before he dispatched Lewis and Clark, because of the coincidental
proximity of the Louisiana Purchase and the expedition in the timeline of United States
history, the folk image has maintained from the beginning that Lewis and Clark were sent
into the wilderness explicitly to claim, explore and determine the usefulness of the newly
purchased territory. At the time of the expedition and shortly thereafter, a significant part
of the popular view, aided in no small way by the Federalists who detested Jefferson, was
that the Louisiana Purchase had been a very expensive mistake, and that no further
government resources should be wasted on exploring or developing it.
The disappointment of the literary elite was longer lasting and more profound.
Not only had the dream of a practical water route to the Pacific vanished forever when
Meriwether Lewis crested Lemhi Pass, but the scientific and ethnographic information so
meticulously detailed in the journals was not publicized until the Coues’ edition of 1893,
49
Cutright, 44.
16
when those who had hoped for so much in that respect were long dead. 50 To them, the
expedition was “an Enlightenment venture which failed to enlighten.”51
“A Westering People”52
Westward expansion of the United States, of course, has been an overriding theme
among writers addressing the expedition from the beginning. Even as the Corps neared
St. Louis on their return, they met trappers headed upriver to make their fortunes, to
whom the Corpsmen passed along travel hints. Allen dates these encounters as “the
beginning of Lewis’s and Clark’s role as shapers of new American conceptions of
western geography.”53
Arlen Large, more colorfully, labels the conversations as the “jawbone journals.”
He argues that because of the nearly eight-year delay in publishing even the paraphrased
Biddle edition and the century-long lapse before the actual words of the captains’
journals were published, word-of-mouth reports were the primary means of spreading the
news. Large cautions: “By definition, word-of-mouth accounts aren’t documented, but
what was said can often be surmised from the later recorded actions of the listeners.”
Letters, diaries, and newspaper reports of the time document great excitement among
westward-oriented adventurers.54
50
John L. Allen. “’Of This Enterprize’: The American Images of the Lewis and Clark Expedition”
Voyages of Discovery: Essays on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by James P. Ronda. (Helena:
Montana Historical Society Press, 1998), 258.
51
Allen “’Of This Enterprize’”, 268.
52
Allen, “’Of This Enterprize’”, 270.
53
John Logan Allen. Passage Through the Garden: Lewis and Clark and the Image of the American
Northwest. (Urbana, Chicago, London: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 364.
54
Arlen J. Large, “Expedition Aftermath: The Jawbone Journals,” We Proceeded On (February 1991), 1225.
17
Once the initial excitement subsided, the story of the Corps of Discovery lay
largely forgotten for more than 20 years, until Oregon surfaced as a settlement locale for
Americans. The first blatant misuse of the journals for a specific agenda reared its ugly
head. In “’Of This Enterprize’”, John Allen sums up the tawdry propaganda of an
Oregon booster named Hall Jackson Kelley who quoted very selectively from the Biddle
edition regarding this Eden: “In their journals Lewis and Clark had entered precious few
comments favorable to the Oregon country. But Kelley seems to have found them all.”
The expedition accounts were also used to “prove” the opposite viewpoint – the
inhospitable nature of Oregon. One William Joseph Snelling wrote that
’Lewis and Clark say that they often found the natives in extreme want, if not
actually starving, and their own party, though provided with fishing tackle and
guns, which they well knew how to use, were glad to buy a few small dogs
wherewith to quiet the cravings of nature.’
After stating the obvious – that the Kelley view of the Oregon Territory prevailed
over the Snelling view – Allen purports that the West
was settled at least partially on the strength of the supposedly favorable nature of
the great captains’ reports on the territory between the Rockies and the Pacific.
This process is not only an interesting commentary on the character of the
American image of the expedition in the middle of the nineteenth century – it is
also a commentary on the very real role played by that image in conditioning the
behavior of a westering people.55
If, as Ronda argues, Jefferson and his explorers “could not escape both the desire
for territory and the passion for wealth” represented by the West, “Jefferson believed the
republican ideals of simplicity, frugality, and rural living could somehow purify such
passions, keeping Americans from the horrors of violence and conquest” such as had
55
Allen, “’Of This Enterprize’”, 268-70.
18
accompanied the Spanish in the Americas.56 Subsequent history of the westward
movement of European Americans – and of the Indians they pushed ahead of them – was
to prove Mr. Jefferson wrong.
Serving The Cause: Sacagawea And York
After the flurry of interest in the story of Lewis and Clark at the time of the
opening of the Oregon Territory, it was largely forgotten again. By 1893, when
Frederick Jackson Turner proclaimed the closing of the continental frontier and Elliott
Coues brought forth the last of the Biddle editions, numerous events, including the
California Gold Rush, the Civil War, the Homestead Act of 1862, and the completion of
the transcontinental railroad in 1869 had led to such dramatic changes in the old
Louisiana Territory that the Corps of Discovery would not have recognized much of the
landscape, nor would the Indians whose descendants had been driven onto reservations
limited to land no one else wanted. According to Cayton, “By the centennial of the
Lewis and Clark expedition, American soldiers, developers, and families had wiped out
buffalo herds, dammed rivers, drilled for oil and gas, built factories and cities, and
covered the earth with railroad tracks.”57
Coues’ highly opinionated annotations, coupled with the ascendancy of populists,
social reformers, and women’s rights advocates around the turn of the 20th century,
56
Ronda, “’So Vast an Enterprise’”, 4.
Cayton, Andrew R. L., “Looking for America with Lewis and Clark”, Review of Out West: A Journey
Through Lewis and Clark’s America, by Dayton Duncan; The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,
13 vols., edited by Gary Moulton; and Finding the West: Exploration with Lewis and Clark, by James P.
Ronda, The William and Mary Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2002), 700.
57
19
prompted Lewis, Clark, and the half-forgotten members of the Corps of Discovery back
onto the American scene as mythical heroes, with one heroine to guide them all.
The young Shoshone woman who carried her infant to the Pacific and back,
accompanying her interpreter husband and the rest of the Corps, is mentioned only
occasionally in the original journals. That dearth of facts did not stop the romantics,
feminists, Indian rights advocates, and even anti-miscegenationists from appropriating
the few known facts of her life and manipulating them to fit their various agendas. In his
annotations and page headings, Elliott Coues’ openly showed his fondness of and
admiration for the young woman. In 1902, Eva Emery Dye’s The Conquest: The True
Story of Lewis and Clark started Sacagawea on her way from a kidnapped child
purchased by a French frontiersman as his second “wife”, to her new role as a noble
Indian princess who immediately recognized the superiority of the white Americans’
culture and gladly embraced it.58 Twenty years later, a thoroughly discredited but widely
read account even lengthened Sacagawea’s life by about 75 years and made her a
conscious “apologist of native assimilation”.59
The other individual member of the Corps who has been mangled almost beyond
recognition is York, William Clark’s slave from their early childhoods. At approximately
the same time as the popular view of Sacagawea promoted her to royalty, it demoted
York to little more than a minstrel show stock character. He provided entertainment,
58
Eva Emery Dye. The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark. (Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1902).
Cited in Donna J. Kessler. The Making of Sacagawea: A Euro-American Legend. (Tuscaloosa and
London: The University of Alabama Press, 1996), 81-90.
59
Grace Raymond Hebard. Sacajawea: A guide and interpreter of the Lewis and Clark expedition, with an
account of the travels of Toussaint Charbonneau and of Jean Baptiste, the expedition papoose. (Glendale,
California: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1933). Reprinted by Clark, 1957. Cited in Kessler, 100-102.
20
shirked his duties (or conversely, exhibited his superior physical prowess in dramatic
rescues), was so virile that Indian women across the continent vied for his favors, and did
“a fancy clog dance on the stern of the boat” for the small crowd who had come to Camp
Wood to see the expedition off in 1804.60 Historians who discuss York point out that the
journal entries mentioning him show no racial bias at all. Yet most of what has been
written about him for more than one hundred years is filled with prejudice.61
According to the journals, York and Sacagawea were valuable, contributing
members of the expedition; each of them is credited at least once for having saved the
rest of the group from harm by their very differences in race or gender. While the diarists
wrote rather unflatteringly about some of the other members of the party, not one word in
any extant entries suggests in any way that either the Indian woman or the black slave did
less than a full share of the work or was not respected by their comrades. The racial
mores of the late nineteenth century have been perpetuated in too many popular accounts
of the Voyage of Discovery; the Sacagawea and York of the journals have become
distorted to the point of being racial stereotypes.
It is not shocking, therefore, to discover that both popular and scholarly accounts
of these two human beings occasionally have gone overboard in attempting to achieve
balance. Indians often vilify Sacagawea as a traitor to her people, as if she had much
choice about accompanying the expedition, or more foreknowledge than any other of her
60
Polos, Nicholas C., “Explorer With Lewis and Clark,” Negro History Bulletin 45 (October, November,
December 1982): 90, 96. Cited in Robert B. Betts. In Search of York: The Slave Who Went to the Pacific
with Lewis and Clark. (n.p.: University Press of Colorado and the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage
Foundation, 1985, 2000), 79-80.
61
Robert B. Betts. In Search of York, 5.
21
people about their coming fate.62 Betts excoriates modern revisionists for equal neglect
of primary sources in decreeing that York was the group’s guide and other such
“nonsense”. He summarizes:
(York) has been variously portrayed as a giant of superb physique and stamina; a
buffoon who contributed nothing more than comic relief to the expedition; a man
whose blackness so appealed to the Indian women that he left a trail of kinkyhaired children across the West; a fluent speaker of both French and Sioux; a
slave whose relationship with his master was always one of blissful harmony;
and, finally, a free man who either died of cholera in Tennessee or, in the
strangest story of all, somehow lived on to spend his waning years in the Rocky
Mountains as an honored member of the Crow Indian tribe.63
“The Course Of Empire”64
In a classic case of post hoc ergo propter hoc, because the Voyage of Discovery
immediately preceded the opening of the American West to white exploration and
settlement, as well as to the concomitant tragedies suffered by Indian tribes who had the
misfortune to be in the way, Lewis and Clark have been interpreted by writers of many
backgrounds as the proximate cause of the westward migration.
As mentioned above, fictional or heavily edited excerpts from the journals were
used to promote (or more rarely, to discourage) the unrelenting move to the West in the
19th century. The World Wars and Cold War that colored American perspectives
throughout most of the 20th century, though, brought different interpretations of the
journals. Bernard DeVoto is a case in point. Though he was pre-empted by his colleague
62
Kevin S. Blake, “Great Plains Native American Representations Along the Lewis and Clark Trail,” Great
Plains Quarterly 24, no. 4 (2004): 263-282, and Timothy Egan, “Two Centuries Later, a Moment for
Indians to Retell the Past,” New York Times, 15 June 2003, quoted in Kevin S. Blake, 275.
63
Betts, In Search of York, 5.
64
Bernard DeVoto. The Course of Empire. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1952; Mariner
Books, 1998), title page.
22
at Harvard, John Bakeless, in his planned biography of Lewis and Clark65, DeVoto wrote
a best-selling trilogy of the West, followed by his version of the story. In a popular retelling of the Thwaites edition of the journals, supplemented by some of the “juicier
details” from Biddle, he highlighted the best adventure stories while omitting entirely the
many less riveting accounts of mundane events. According to Large, DeVoto also
“flavor(ed the abridgement) with 20th century governmental wartime terms . . . . Iroquois
warriors became ‘commandos,’ whose enemies attacked them in ‘birchbark troopcarriers.’” He even mentioned “such receding terms as ‘G-2 stuff.’”66 Large theorizes
that DeVoto portrayed Lewis and Clark as “sea-to-sea jingoes” partly as a proclamation
of his patriotism after attracting the unwanted attention of Senator Joseph McCarthy and
other rabid Red-baiters.67
At least one modern historian sees a direct connection to DeVoto’s philosophy
when he dismisses the latest passion for Lewis and Clark as “. . . largely, although not
exclusively, the preserve of white men, many of them natives of the northeastern United
States (who enjoy) roughing it in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt.” He claims that the
expedition “has all the elements of an adolescent male adventure” and then quotes a
former student of Stephen Ambrose who accuses his mentor’s best-selling Undaunted
Courage as being “laced with post-Vietnam War sadness about the decline of patriotism
and ‘pride’ in our heritage.” At the same time, Cayton argues that “Lewis and Clark
aficionados are more than caricatures of masculinity and patriotism . . . . (but also)
65
Bakeless, John. Lewis and Clark: Partners in Discovery. (New York: William Morrow & Company,
1947).
66
Arlen J. Large, “Bernard DeVoto and His ‘Struggle of Empires,’” We Proceeded On (May 1997), 7.
67
Large, “DeVoto”, 8.
23
reflect an alienated patriotism, a romance of the past that celebrates less what the United
States may be than what it might have been.”68
“The Journals Of Black Cat”69
Bernard DeVoto was the first European-American Lewis and Clark historian to
express the need for more complete Indian interpretations of the expedition.70
Recalling Jefferson’s statement that without records, “history becomes fable
instead of facts”, Ronda calls on as many primary documents as possible to tell the story
of the expedition from the Native American perspective. He acknowledges the rich oral
tradition of the tribes encountering the Corps of Discovery, but nevertheless admits, as a
trained historian, “There is no scholarly edition of documents and maps called The
Journal of Black Cat.”71
Historians are increasingly researching and recording tribal stories, notably Ronda
in his Lewis and Clark Among the Indians, but often the Native version boils down to “an
epic about Indians bailing out whites, showing them where to go, what to eat, whom to
avoid along the way, and how to get back home in one piece.”72
Ronda mentions the captains’ solution when they were forced to explain a concept
Indians did not have:
68
Andrew R. L. Cayton, “Looking for America with Lewis and Clark”, 699, 701.
Ronda. “Exploring the Explorers” in Voyages of Discovery: Essays on the Lewis and Clark Expedition,
ed. James P. Ronda. (Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1998), 197.
70
Ronda, preface to Voyages of Discovery, xiii-xiv.
71
Black Cat was a Mandan chief whom Lewis credited with “integrety, firmness, inteligence and
perspicuety of mind” in his journal (DNLC 3:289). Black Cat showed just as much curiosity about his
winter visitors as they showed about him and his people.
72
Egan, 275.
69
24
. . . the linguistic category employed to describe a large-scale expedition not for
war, not for trade, not for hunting, simply did not exist. . . . Exploration apart
from these activities was a pursuit utterly foreign to native peoples. Eventually
Lewis and Clark hit upon an identity explanation that more completely fit the
native universe of experience. Indians were told that the party was in search of
distant, long-lost relatives.73
Meanwhile, Amy Mossett, a 21st century Mandan-Hidatsa, points out the lack of
understanding of her ancestors on the part of the newcomers: “Jefferson wanted to make
Indians into farmers and traders. But we were already doing all of that. The difference
is: we were doing it without slave labor.”74
Just as it is difficult for members of the dominant culture to interpret the journals
except through the filters of their own history and experience, so Indians see the Corps of
Discovery through the lens of later events. One Indian reviewer, R. Littlebear, avoided
reading the journals for years because of what they “foreshadowed for (his or her) people
– the American holocaust euphemistically referred to as ‘Manifest Destiny’ . . . .” Only
the claims of editorial objectivity and cultural sensitivity in the Definitive Nebraska
Edition persuaded this historian to read the primary documents of the conquerors’ Epic of
Discovery.75
A recent development in telling the native version of the Voyage of Discovery is
revising interpretive language at sites along the trails, to frame the expedition in Indian
terms, such as that at the Atka Lakota Museum:
The Lakota met Lewis and Clark in 1804. Subsequently, increasing contact with
the white world included traders, explorers, missionaries, the U.S. Army, Indian
73
Ronda, “Exploring the Explorers”, 192.
Egan, 275.
75
R. Littlebear, review of The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery, edited by Gary
E. Moulton, Great Plains Quarterly 24, part 1 (2004), 44.
74
25
Agents, miners, and settlers, bringing sweeping changes to the Great Plains.
Thousands of Indians died from diseases, setting off a struggle for the people to
retain what was theirs amid the seemingly endless tide of the wasicu (white man).
Eighty years after the encounter with Lewis and Clark the buffalo were gone,
forever changing the Lakota way of life.76
To further complicate Indian accounts, some tribes have very different stories of
the same event or person, i.e., Sacajawea as a Lemhi Shoshone, kidnapped by the
Hidatsa, with her birth name meaning “Boat Launcher”; and Sacakawea as a Hidatsa,
kidnapped by the Shoshone and later escaping to her birth tribe, with a name meaning
“Bird Woman”.
Conclusion: Shared Stories
Whether the tellers of the tales recorded in the official records and the “jawbone
journals” interpret the transition Stephen Ambrose calls “the Opening of the American
West”77 as Manifest Destiny or genocide, Lewis and Clark have been given much more
credit – or blame – than they actually deserve. The very fact that Thomas Jefferson was
determined to establish United States influence in the Columbia River area testifies that
the movement of the new culture was already under way. The trappers the expedition
met on the return trip had not waited for the Corps’ news before heading up the Missouri.
Writers consulted for this thesis agree that, with the exception of the Shoshone, Salish,
and Nez Perce people, at least one member of the more than 50 tribes the Corps
encountered had some familiarity with Caucasians (though decidedly not with black
76
Kevin S. Blake, “Great Plains Native American Representations Along the Lewis and Clark Trail,” Great
Plains Quarterly 24, no. 4 (2004), 278.
77
Ambrose, Stephen E. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of
the American West. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1996; Touchstone, 1997, title.
26
people).78 Indeed, “considering the earlier efforts of the Spanish, French and British, the
Lewis and Clark expedition was one of the last such excursions” as far west as the Fort
Mandan area.79
Cayton argues that the Voyage of Discovery “. . . was hardly a turning point: if
Lewis and Clark had never ventured up the Missouri River in 1804 or reached the Pacific
Ocean in 1805, the history of this continent would not have been markedly different.”80
James Ronda, “perhaps the most thoughtful contemporary historian of the
expedition,”81 cautions that
In recent years some have attempted to reconstruct the Lewis and Clark journey
as a national epic with places, words, and roles for all Americans. Nations need
shared stories but telling the Lewis and Clark journey as a single narrative
promising common ground for all ignores the profound historical, cultural and
ethnic differences in this and all other exploration experiences. Denying such
differences only widens the cultural divide, producing a national history that
speaks in one master voice and allows only one predetermined conclusion.82
Though the many voices of the expedition certainly deserve to be told, the
concentration of this thesis is on the documentary record, for the reason that “(u)nlike
oral tradition, books can communicate through a skip of generations.” 83 At
approximately 50-year intervals over the past 200 years interest in the Lewis and Clark
expedition has peaked, then waned, leaving the journals Jefferson dictated should be
78
Judy BlueHorse-Skelton, “Lewis & Clark: Through Native American Eyes,” Teaching Supplement for
Grades 4-12. Portland, Oregon: Title VII Indian Education Project of Portland Public Schools, 2003-2004,
16.
79
Ken Olsen, “Discovering Lewis & Clark,” Teaching Tolerance, no. 29 (Spring 2006), 43.
80
Cayton, “Telling Stories”, 283.
81
Cayton, “Looking for America”, 702.
82
Ronda, Finding the West: Explorations With Lewis and Clark. Histories of the American Frontier, ed.
Ray Allen Billington. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001), xvii.
83
Stephen Dow Beckham, “Introduction”, in Stephen Dow Beckham, Doug Erickson, Jeremy Skinner, and
Paul Merchant. The Literature of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: A Bibliography and Essays. (Portland,
Oregon: Lewis and Clark College, 2003), 22.
27
preserved “against the accidental losses to which they will be exposed” instead to
languish forgotten and unread in attics, basements, bookstores, and places perhaps yet
undiscovered. Much of the canon now organized so successfully by Moulton and his
team in the Definitive Nebraska Edition – and made accessible to the casual reader in his
one-volume abridgement – was unknown to one or more previous generations. We can
never know all the stories associated with the Corps of Discovery, but like the expedition
itself, the published journals’ history inspires anticipation and enthusiasm for whatever
marvels lie just around the next bend in the river of documentary discovery.
LESSON PLAN
PROCEEDING ON
Introduction
The adventure of the Lewis and Clark Expedition is generally the most appealing
aspect of it for children. By fanning their interest in the adventure, it becomes easier to
introduce them to some of the other, perhaps less immediately dramatic facets: the
continual observation of the land, flora, fauna, Native peoples, geography, and the rivers
that were their routes to and from the Pacific Ocean; the tedium and sheer physical labor
involved in the trip; recording their observations and experiences; and the constant
preparation for whatever lay ahead.
A phrase that was used repeatedly in the collective journals of the expedition was
“We proceeded on.” Those three words so well represent the sheer determination and
perseverance that drove the Corps of Discovery that scholars and enthusiasts often use
them in written material about the voyage, and the journal of the Lewis and Clark Trail
Heritage Foundation is titled We Proceeded On.
With that phrase in mind, the objectives of this lesson plan follow:
1. The students will demonstrate an introductory-level understanding of the study,
preparation, and physical labor that went into the 28-month expedition.
2. Using substitute materials where necessary, the students will plan and carry out a
voyage of discovery around an undeveloped area near the school.
29
3. By way of daily journal entries and sketches, the students will reflect on their
observations and conclusions regarding their voyage of discovery.
4. Optional: Using metacognitive prompts provided by the teacher (such as those
associated with Philosophy for Children), the students will discuss the Lewis and
Clark expedition as a metaphor for life: how to prepare for the unknown future
they face.
This lesson plan is developed for five or six one-hour classes at 5th grade level. A
teacher in a self-contained class may integrate the lesson easily into subjects other than
social studies, especially math (measurement), language arts (spelling, writing personal
letters and journals), science (observation, classification) and art (representational
drawing) classes. For convenience, only national and California state social studies
standards that are directly met by the lesson plan are included in Appendix 1. Many
other subject area standards are also addressed.
30
Lesson Content
Day One:
As a hook, explain that the class will be making an exploration and
portage around the field (or a local undeveloped area near the school). They will be
pretending they have never seen this land before, and that they have no idea what lies
beyond their portage. Furthermore, they will have to take with them almost everything
they will need. Reassure them that there will be more information on that tomorrow.
As was true of the Corps of Discovery, there will be two captains, three sergeants
and the corpsmen divided into three “companies.” The teacher (with an aide or parent
volunteer if possible) will be the captain(s). You, as the captain, will assign the students
to Companies A, B or C, considering each child’s relative strengths and weaknesses in
order to have fairly well-balanced, functional cooperative learning groups. Depending on
the students and the time available for the lesson, you may want to assign a few specific
roles, such as Sacagawea, George Shannon (the youngest Corpsman), or Pierre Cruzatte
(the one-eyed fiddler). Even though the civilians on the expedition were not formally
attached to any military company in the Corps of Discovery, for the purposes of this
lesson, everyone will be assigned to one.
Let them know they have five minutes to elect a sergeant.
After the sergeants are elected, have the students wash their hands in preparation
for baking “biscuits” to take on the expedition. Also known as sea biscuits and hardtack,
these hard, bland flatbreads provided portable, indestructible sources of nourishment to
the original Corps. Have the students look at your bag of flour, and lift it to get a concept
31
the weight represented by it. Ask them to think about why weight and size might be
important when they pack their “canoes” on Day Three.
Recipes for biscuits or hardtack are available in many of the resources cited at the
end of the lesson plan, and on line. The recipe in Appendix B, adapted from a number of
very similar ones from many sources, made 18 three-inch biscuits and worked well in my
classroom with a toaster oven.
While the biscuits are baking, show the 20-min. DVD, Confluence of Time and
Courage: Portage at the Great Falls, as an introduction to the unit.
Day Two:
Today you make up your inventory and pack it in your “canoe(s).”
Explain to the children that, as you do not have the time and money Meriwether
Lewis was provided for supplies, each company will make a list – or inventory – of all
the items they will need. Because these lists will be cut into slips for “packing,” have the
children double-space their lists.
Remind them to think very carefully about the difference between wants and
needs, and about what services and utilities will be available along the way. Circulate,
being sure that each company understands that there will be no store to buy new shoes or
batteries, no computers or electricity to power them, no motels, fast food restaurants,
grocery stores, etc. If you have the time and can discuss relative sizes and weights, have
them assign a size and weight to each item.
Make certain the students do not take for granted how long they will be gone, or
how far they are going. They may assume only that there will always be animals to hunt
32
and edible fish in the rivers, wood or grass for fires, and occasional roots and berries to
eat.
When the lists are complete, the students should cut them into individual items for
“packing” for the journey.
It is now time to bring in the canoe. By having previously sawed a cardboard
carpet roll in half lengthwise, you will have two “canoes.” Though you may borrow a
modern aluminum or fiberglass canoe or small rowboat, be sure the students understand
the burning and scraping associated with making a dugout canoe. (If time permits, and if
you and your students are so inclined, this would be a good time to help them learn about
“The Experiment,” Lewis’ collapsible iron-framed boat. Pictures of it are available from
many sources on line. It was designed, engineered, and carried all the way to the Great
Falls specifically to be assembled upstream of the falls. However, none of the men from
the pine-forested East had considered that no pines would be available to provide sap for
sealing the seams of the skin-covered boat. Therefore it could not stay afloat, and Lewis
had to abandon his pet project.)
Ask the students to begin packing their canoe by putting in their slips of paper,
each representing some item of inventory.
Distribute the compasses to each company and review how to use them to
determine directions. If your students are proficient at that basic level, have them figure
which direction they are facing in the classroom and how to decide which direction to
travel. Ask them to discuss in their companies why they, as explorers, would need to be
able to read a compass and have other orientation skills on the expedition.
33
Day Three:
Cue the beautifully scenic clip from the DVD Lewis & Clark:
Great Journey West (Scene 1, counter 0:29 – 2:02), where an actor reads from John
Ordway’s letter home to his “honored parents” to let them know of his assignment (the
letter is reproduced in Appendix C). Tell the children that President Jefferson has
commanded that each member of the expedition who can write is to keep a journal of
observations and events along the trail. Therefore, individually they are to prepare their
journals for their expedition by writing their names on their small composition books or
other “journals” and taking 10 minutes to write a letter home to their parents explaining
where they are going, why, and what reward they expect at the completion of their trip.
In this case, the “reward” may be as mundane as a good grade, though you should strive
to have them think of benefits – perhaps a greater understanding of the logistics of
exploration, or learning how to draw a flower. Do not grade or otherwise judge the
reasoning in their letters, but circulate to see what they expect from the lesson, and what
you might want to emphasize during the rest of the week.
As a substitute for the intensive tutoring Lewis had with the greatest naturalists of
his time, you might find the following pages from The Lewis & Clark Expedition and the
Louisiana Purchase, by Robert W. Smith, from Teacher Created Materials particularly
useful: “Keeping a Science and Discovery Journal,” “Studying Leaves,” and “Flower
Power.”
At least you will ask the students to brainstorm about how to describe plants,
animals, land forms, weather, etc. that the children might encounter. Have them gather
into their companies and ask them to think of appropriate descriptive words to put in a
34
Corps word bank for the voyage. Explain that the goal is to come up with precise,
accurate terms rather than such words as “cute,” “nice,” “big” or “little.” What qualities
make an animal “cute?” How big is “big”? How little is “little?” Be sure each company
has access to a dictionary and thesaurus. After 15 – 20 minutes, post the collective word
bank on chart paper so it can be consulted and supplemented during the week.
Show the children pictures of Lewis and Clark’s actual journals (available in
many printed and online sources listed in Appendix D), particularly the pages that have
sketches on them. Mention the aphorism, “One picture is worth a thousand words,” then
ask them why a sketch might be a good way to record a new plant or animal. Have them
discuss in their companies what characteristics to feature in black-and-white sketches and
what would be better described in words. For instance, color and relative size would not
come across in a journal sketch, but shapes and patterns might be better portrayed in a
drawing. Let the children know that the original Corps members took samples of plants,
animals, etc. back to their camps to sketch or describe later. Assuming you are not
planning your expedition in an area with endangered or protected species, let your
students know that you expect them to collect a specimen or two. It would be prudent for
you to survey the plant life ahead of time in order to avoid thorns, poison oak, and similar
plants that could cause unpleasantness.
If the prickly pear is not native to your area, this could be a good time to explain
about the pain and shredded moccasins it caused the Corpsmen. Checking any online
search engine’s images will turn up good pictures of the plant.
35
Day Four:
Today is the first (and only) day of your expedition. Take
the canoe(s), journals, pencils, and compasses to the portage site. Remind the children
that they must be careful not to spill the precious contents of their canoe, that the
sergeants must see that everyone takes turns carrying the canoe, and that everyone – even
those on canoe duty – observes and notes the flora, fauna, weather and land forms as
closely as if they had never seen this country before. Tell them they will have to work
hard today, but will have a day of “leisure” tomorrow to catch up on their journals and
make new moccasins to replace the ones they are supposedly wearing out today.
If you have three canoes, be sure that everyone in each company takes a turn. If
you have just one canoe, see that each company has approximately one-third of the
period to carry it.
Circulate constantly, being certain that the portage is going smoothly, that
everyone is participating, that the “supplies” are not blowing out of the canoes, and that
everyone is making some sort of notes or observations to transfer to his or her journal
tomorrow.
Allow time to get back to the classroom and “cache” the canoe and supplies.
Day Five:
This is a day of the sort President Jefferson described as
one of “leisure.” The companies will alternate making moccasins, writing in their
journals, and making sketches of some of the plant samples they collected yesterday. If
you can enlist two other adults to supervise the moccasin and drawing activities, it will
free you to oversee the journaling. If not, well, it is a day of leisure!
36
With two other adults in the classroom, I was able to keep the activities to
approximately 20 minutes each, therefore allowing every child a chance to do all three.
To avoid boredom or the “What do I do next?” syndrome, I made up packets of
material copied from a variety of printed and online sources. Many of these are listed in
Appendix D. Check each source to see that permission is granted to reproduce the
material for classroom use. Because the packets are part of the leisure day and will not
be graded, try to include a variety of different activities so every child will find appealing
things to do. Of the sources listed in Appendix D, West with Lewis and Clark, by
William E. Hill and Jan Hill, was particularly good for blackline masters. The Teacher
Created Materials book had a multitude of activities, though many of them were designed
for more than one child or quite a bit of class time. I cannot recommend highly enough
Rod Gragg’s Lewis and Clark: On the Trail of Discovery: A Museum in a Book, which
is filled with facsimiles of actual documents and beautiful, historically accurate pictures.
Day Six (or a Language Arts period during one of the previous days):
My
students loved doing a reader’s theater dramatization of one of the more exciting episodes
during the expedition. Several scripts are available, or you may write your own. The
Teacher Created Material book has a well-done script, “Homecoming,” depicting one of
the most amazing and fortunate coincidences in history, Sacagawea’s reunion with her
brother, the Shoshone chief who had to decide whether to provide horses the Corps had to
have in order to cross the mountains before winter.
37
Because the negotiations between the Captains and the Shoshone chief required
translations from English to French to Hidatsa to Shoshone, then back again, a great
adjunct to this activity is to play a version of “Telephone.” The students will get an idea
of how difficult it might be to use multiple translations in order to conduct business or
otherwise communicate. Have the children whisper an unfamiliar phrase from the
journals, passing it down the line of students until the last student recites what he or she
heard. My class used Lewis’ description of the Shoshones’ reception of the explorers
after Sacagawea recognized her brother: “These men then embraced me very
affectionately in their way. . . .”
If there is time, and you and your students are so inclined, closure for this lesson
could include a discussion of the Lewis and Clark Expedition as a metaphor for life. For
instance, you could prompt them to discuss how they can prepare themselves for the
many unknowns that lie ahead in their own lives (listen to or read the experiences of
people who have already been there); what tools they might need (education, flexibility,
adaptability, social skills); why they might want to record their experiences and
observations (to organize their thoughts, remind themselves later of what happened,
teach the next generation).
After the formal lesson:
By posting and referring to Fifer’s Day-by-Day calendar
(see Appendix D), I was able to keep interest in the expedition alive. The students
wanted to know what happened on each day, though some days were not very fascinating
to fifth-graders.
38
Also, my students suggested involving other fifth grade classes by inviting them
along on the portage, making oral or art presentations to them, or, in the immortal words
of that one child in every class: “Make them all eat ‘biscuits’!”
39
Prior Content Knowledge and Skills
Before beginning this lesson, the students should
1.
Understand basic military discipline (chain of command, unquestioning
obedience, etc.) and the relative ranks of the captains, sergeants, and other
enlisted men.
2.
Understand the concept of exploration, particularly as it applies to the
early explorers, trappers, mountain men, and settlers of the American
West.
3.
Be familiar with the genres of writing journals and personal letters.
4.
Be able to use precise and accurate terms to describe animals, plants, land
formations, etc. they will describe in their journals.
5.
Be able to function in a cooperative learning or team environment.
6.
Be able to use tools of measurement: measuring cup, ruler, scale,
thermometer, and compass.
40
Evaluation
1.
Each child will read at least one nonfiction book related to the Lewis and
Clark expedition, Indian tribes they encountered, early American
exploration of the West, crafts of the period, or a related subject you have
approved. Assuming your school has a subscription to Accelerated
Reader (see Appendix 5 Materials Consulted), the student will take the
computerized quiz on the book and turn in the certificate or other proof of
having completed the assignment. If you do not have access to
Accelerated Reader, you may assign a standard written or oral book report
or other product that represents the child’s reading. To ensure the children
have a general basic understanding of the time period, this assignment
should be made before the lesson begins.
2.
Perhaps the primary reason for the success of the Lewis and Clark
expedition was the extraordinary teamwork of the Corps. Because you
considered each child’s abilities in assigning “companies,” circulate
during company activities to be sure that every child is participating
appropriately and is a productive member of your class Corps.
3.
Evaluate each child’s journal for precision of descriptive language, and
inclusion of at least one drawing of a plant, animal or track.
41
APPENDIX A
Social Studies Standards Addressed
National Standards for Grade 5: Standard 1
Era 4: United States territorial expansion between 1801 and 1861, and how it
affected relations with external powers and Native Americans.
Standard 1A: The student understands the international background and
consequences of the Louisiana Purchase, the War of 1812, and the Monroe
Doctrine.
Therefore, the student is able to
Analyze Napoleon's reasons for selling Louisiana to the United States.
[Draw upon the data in historical maps]
Standard 1C: The student understands the ideology of Manifest Destiny, the
nation's expansion to the Northwest, and the Mexican-American War.
Therefore, the student is able to
Explain the economic, political, racial, and religious roots of Manifest
Destiny and analyze how the concept influenced the westward expansion
of the nation. [Examine the influence of ideas]
Standard 2E: The student understands the settlement of the West.
Therefore, the student is able to
Explore the lure of the West and the reality of life on the frontier.
[Examine the influence of ideas]
Standard 4C: The student understands changing gender roles and the ideas and
activities of women reformers.
Therefore, the student is able to
Analyze the activities of women of different racial and social groups in the
reform movements for education, abolition, temperance, and women's
suffrage. [Examine the importance of the individual]
42
California Standards: 5.8 Students trace the colonization, immigration, and settlement
patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s, with emphasis on the role
of economic incentives, effects of the physical and political geography, and
transportation systems.
1.
Discuss the waves of immigrants from Europe between 1789 and
1850 and their modes of transportation into the Ohio and Mississippi
Valleys and through the Cumberland Gap (e.g., overland wagons, canals,
flatboats, steamboats)
3.
Demonstrate knowledge of the explorations of the transMississippi West following the Louisiana Purchase (e.g., Meriwether
Lewis and William Clark, Zebulon Pike, John Fremont).
43
APPENDIX B
Assignments
Prior to the week of the lesson:
Each child will read and produce proof of
understanding of an ability-level book about early American exploration of the
West. See “Evaluation” for the complete assignment and examples of proof.
Day One:
As a class, or as “companies”, bake enough “biscuits” to sustain
your Corps members. (It won’t take many; these are so hard and tasteless that
your students will love cafeteria food for weeks!)
Biscuits, Sea Biscuits, or Hardtack
6 cups flour (a well-mixed combination of unbleached and whole wheat is
reasonably authentic)
1 1/2 cups water, approximately
Knead the mixture until it’s smooth. Roll the dough into a rectangle about 1/4
inch thick. Use a 3” cookie/biscuit cutter to make round biscuits, or cut into
approximately 3” squares. With a toothpick, poke 10 – 15 holes in each biscuit to
keep them from puffing up and becoming more fragile.
Bake on ungreased
cookie sheet 35 min., then turn them over and bake another 30 min. They should
be light brown. Allow to cool completely, then pack them for the journey.
Day Two:
Each child will participate in discussing and listing the inventory.
44
Day Three:
Each child will write a letter to his or her “honored parents,”
following the John Ordway’s example.
Day Four:
Each child will participate to the best of his or her ability in the
portage, making observations and notes, and generally acting as a contributing
member of his or her “company.”
Day Five:
•
Each child will
participate appropriately in the moccasin-making activity, producing a pair of
moccasins,
•
write and/or draw in the journal regarding the expedition yesterday,
•
behave as a member of the Corps, keeping occupied with the packets and
allowing others to complete their moccasins, drawings and journals.
Day Six:
Each child will participate appropriately in the reader’s theater and
any game or discussion that follows.
45
APPENDIX C
Materials List
•
Ingredients and tools for “biscuits:” six cups of flour (unbleached, whole wheat,
or a combination of the two would be more authentic), water to moisten,
measuring cup, toothpicks, cookie sheets, access to oven.
•
A journal for each child, such as a composition book
•
A canoe (or three) for the portage. This can be made from the core of a carpet roll
sliced lengthwise, or can be a borrowed canoe or rowboat. It need not be
particularly sturdy, as it will hold only slips of paper representing everything the
“explorers” will need upriver, but it should be rigid enough for the children to
carry it on their portage.
•
A compass for each company.
•
Materials for paper moccasins: Paper grocery sacks or brown kraft paper,
scissors. tape or stapler, or whatever supplies are required by the pattern you use.
Remember to keep this activity simple.
•
A variety of blackline masters or individual activities to make “what do I do
now?” packets.
•
(Optional) A readers theater script for Day Six.
46
•
Letter from Sergeant John Ordway to his parents, to be used in assignment for the
students to write their parents before leaving on their “expedition.” Note the
variant spellings.
(Addressed to)
Mr. Stephen Ordway Hebron New Hampshire divert this to
Concord Post Office it being older than Plymouth Post office or Hanover Post
Office.
Camp River Dubois April the 8th 1804
Honored Parents I now embrace this opportunity of writing to you once more to
let you know where I am and where I am going. I am well thank God and in high
spirits. I am now on an expedition to the westward with Capt. Lewis and Capt.
Clark, who are appointed by the President of the United States to go on an
expedition through the interior parts of North America. We are to ascend the
Missouri River with a boat as far as it is navigatable and then to go by land to the
western ocean, if nothing prevents, &c. The party consists of 25 picked men of
the army & country . . . and I am so happy as to be one of them picked men from
the army, and I and all the party are, if all live to return, to receive our Discharge
when ever we return again to the United States if we chuse it. This place is on the
Mississippi River opposite the mouth of the Missouri River and we are to start in
ten days up the Missouri River, this has been our winter quarters. We expect to be
gone 18 months or two years. We are to receive a great reward for this expedition
when we return. I am to receive 15 dollars per month and at least 400 ackers of
first rate land and if we make great discoveries as we expect, the United States has
promised to make the great rewards more than we are promised. For fear of
accidents I wish to inform you that I left 200 dollars in cash at (unreadable) put it
on interest with a Substantial man by the name of Charles Smith & Co Partnership
which were the more Substantial men binding with him and Capt. Clark is bound
to see me paid at the time and place where I receive my Discharge, and if I should
not live to return my heirs can by applying to the Seat of Government. I have red
no letters since Betsey’s yet but will write next winter if I have a chance. Yours
John Ordway
47
APPENDIX D
Annotated List of Sources Consulted
In addition to many of the published works listed in the Bibliography of this
thesis, I found the following resources useful in preparing the lesson plan. Except as
stated, they are appropriate for fifth-grade level students.
Ankney, Kindra. Lewis and Clark: Songs of the Journey, Bobby Horton, (Yakima,
Washington: Edge-of-the-World Publishing, 2001), audio CD.
Catchy, generally historically accurate original songs about the expedition.
Ankney, Kindra. Lewis and Clark: Songs of the Journey Companion. Yakima,
Washington: Edge-of-the-World Publishing, 2003.
Creative activities perhaps more suited to older students or adults, such as
making quill pens or “portable soup.” Index, bibliography of how-to craft
books, list of places to visit, and interesting list of resources for such realia
as buffalo meat and reproduction trade items.
Bakeless, John. The Adventures of Lewis and Clark. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company and Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Riverside Press, 1962. Reprint,
Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2002.
Chapter book by the author of one of the most popular mid-20th century
adult retellings of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Indexed.
Bergantino, Robert N. “The Portage of Lewis and Clark, 1805-1806” and “Survey of the
Great Falls of the Missouri and the Portage”, maps. Great Falls, Montana:
Portage Route Chapter, Lewis and Clark Trails Heritage Foundation, 1984.
Beautifully drawn and lettered map and reproduction of Clark’s survey
notes, with passages from the journals.
BlueHorse-Skelton, Judy, “Lewis & Clark: Through Native American Eyes,” Teaching
Supplement for Grades 4-12. Portland, Oregon: Title VII Indian Education
Project of Portland Public Schools, 2003-2004.
Short summaries of how the Indians lived in their lands, including uses of
plants and animals; and a powerful “Voices of the People” section telling
of the impact the coming of the white Americans had on the natives.
48
Copeland, Peter F. The Lewis and Clark Expedition Coloring Book. Mineola, New York:
Dover Publications, Inc., 1983.
Straightforward account, with blackline illustrations done from famous
paintings of the expedition.
________. The Story of Sacajawea Coloring Book. Mineola, New York: Dover
Publications, Inc., 2002.
Romanticized, highly fictionalized biography, assigning her a birth year of
1789 and perpetuating the long-discredited story that she lived until 1884
in Wyoming. With care, some of the blackline illustrations might be
usable.
Fifer, Barbara. Going Along With Lewis & Clark. Helena, Montana: American & World
Geographic Publishing/Montana Magazine; Far Country Press, 2000.
Kid-friendly collection of short articles about different aspects of the
expedition. Good illustrations and references.
________. Day-By-Day with the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Helena, Montana:
Farcountry Press, 2002.
Grid calendar of the entire official expedition, from May 14, 1804 to
Clark’s famous last entry on September 26, 1806: “We commenced
wrighting &tc.” Photographs of artifacts, drawings of plants and animals,
and a lot of supplemental information. Great for checking the daily
progress of the Corps.
Gragg, Rod. Lewis and Clark: On the Trail of Discovery: A Museum in a Book.
Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, A Division of Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2003.
Outstanding hands-on resources: facsimile copies of journal entries,
maps, letters, ledgers, etc., with photographs of artifacts, a variety of
artwork illustrating episodes in the journey, and sidebars providing
historical background or color. Excellent endnotes with full
documentation and explanations. No index, but easy to search.
Hamilton, John. Lewis & Clark. 6 vols. (The Corps of Discovery, The Missouri River,
Uncharted Lands, The Mountains, To the Pacific, The Journey Home). Edina,
Minnesota: ABDO Publishing Company, 2003.
Slightly higher reading level, historically accurate. Some repetitive
content from book to book. Good variety of excellent illustrations.
Glossary, index, and publisher’s website with regularly updated links to
Lewis and Clark websites.
49
Hartinger, Patricia B., “Lewis and Clark”, packet of activities and primary document
transcriptions from workshop presented at the 44th annual meeting of the
California Council for the Social Studies, Burlingame, California, 5 March 2005.
Some good activities for older or more advanced students. Document
transcriptions are easier to read than the originals, available on line and in
many other sources.
Herbert, Janis. Lewis and Clark for Kids: Their Journey of Discovery with 21 Activities.
Chicago: Chicago Review Press, Inc., 2000.
Creative multidisciplinary activities for children, based on the well-written
account of the journey and using readily available modern substitutes for
materials used at the time. Interesting sidebars explaining everything from
Indian names to Mount St. Helen’s to Linnean classification. Glossary,
index, and lists of related organizations, events, and web sites.
Hightower, Elaine, illustrations by Kathleen McKeehen, “Lewis & Clark Exploration
Card Game,” Stamford, Connecticut: U.S. Games Systems, Inc., 2003.
Rummy-type game with illustrated facts on each card, excellent
categories, good map and stickers. From The History Channel.
Hill, William E. and Jan C. Hill. West with Lewis and Clark: The Story of the Corps of
Discovery: An Activity Book for Children. Centereach, New York: HillHouse,
2003.
Good selection of activities for younger or below-grade-level readers.
Lots of blackline masters for supplemental material.
Hoobler, Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler. The Young Voyageur. New York and
Farmington: McGraw-Hill School Division, n.d.
Fact-based fictional picture book of the French who traded with Indians
for furs. Good background regarding the engages of the expedition.
Johmann, Carol A. The Lewis & Clark Expedition: Join the Corps of Discovery to
Explore Uncharted Territory. A Kaleidoscope Kids book. Charlotte, Vermont:
Williamson Publishing, 2003.
Amusing cartoons accompany fairly accurate narrative. Good activities
and some really great sidebars. A “Think About It” activity entitled “Who
Owns the Earth?” is a one-paragraph summary of different concepts of
land ownership and the resulting millennia of wars. Index, list of
resources, free teachers’ download of additional material.
50
Karwoski, Gail Langer. Seaman: The Dog Who Explored the West with Lewis & Clark.
Atlanta: Peachtree Publishers, Ltd., 1999, reprinted 2002.
Well-researched (both re the expedition and Newfoundlands) historical
fiction chapter book about Meriwether Lewis’ real-life dog.
Kimmel, Elizabeth Cody. As Far As the Eye Can Reach: Lewis and Clark’s Westward
Quest, Landmark Books. New York: Random House Children’s Books, 2003.
Straightforward, chapter book of the expedition. Illustrations are often
misleading and inaccurately captioned. Index and bibliography.
Kroll, Steven. Lewis and Clark: Explorers of the American West. New York: Holiday
House, 1994.
Picture book in the heroic vein. Index.
“The Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804-1806”, Cobblestone: The History Magazine for
Young People. Peterborough, New Hampshire: Cobblestone Publishing, Inc.,
September 1980.
Somewhat dated, opinionated versions of the story in magazine format.
“The Lewis and Clark Expedition and the Louisiana Purchase”, TCM 4427, Teacher
Created Materials, Inc., n.d.
Large, easily legible maps, with good survey-level activities in
accompanying booklet.
Lourie, Peter. On the Trail of Lewis and Clark: A Journey up the Missouri River.
Honesdale, Pennsylvania: Boyds Mill Press, Inc., 2002.
Travelogue with some impressive photographs of the Missouri River and
too many of the author and his traveling companions. Good explanations
of changes to river since 1806.
Muench, David (photography) and Dan Murphy (text). Lewis and Clark: Voyage of
Discovery. The Story Behind the Scenery series. Las Vegas: KC Publications,
2003.
Large, breathtaking photos of sites, plants, and animals along the trail,
supplemented by appropriate quotations from the journals and small maps
pinpointing the location of the site. Text is a routine retelling of the
adventure.
51
Olsen, Ken, “Discovering Lewis & Clark,” Teaching Tolerance, no. 29 (Spring 2006):
38-43.
Presents modern Native American perspectives on the expedition.
“On the Trail with Lewis and Clark”, AppleSeeds 5, no. 3. Peterborough, New
Hampshire: Cobblestone Publishing Company (November 2002).
Good short articles about many facets of the expedition.
Patzman, Barbara J. Would You Have Gone with Lewis and Clark? The Story of the
Corps of Discovery for Young People. Bismarck, North Dakota: United Printing
and Mailing, Inc., 2000.
Straightforward retelling of the journey, featuring some blackline activity
masters suitable for younger or below-grade-level students. Poorly
reproduced illustrations.
Petersen, David and Mark Coburn. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark: Soldiers,
Explorers, and Partners in History. Chicago: Children’s Press, 1988.
Poorly researched chapter book “history” that perpetuates such myths as
Sacagawea as the expedition guide, and the ridiculous illustrations
published in later editions of Gass’ journal as having been done by him on
the trail. Imaginative motives for such non-events as Sacagawea leaving
Touissant. Prime example of what not to teach.
Smith, Robert W., The Lewis and Clark Expedition and the Louisiana Purchase.
Spotlight on America series, Grades 4-8, TCM 3233, Teacher Created Materials,
Inc., 2003, reprinted 2004.
Best teacher’s activity guide consulted for teaching across the curriculum,
including map work, reading comprehension, botany, and writing prompts.
Annotated bibliography, glossary, and answer key to quizzes.
Stickney-Markgraf, Joy. Lewis and Clark: An American Odyssey. Bend, Oregon:
Maverick Publications, Inc., 2000.
Retelling based on dated journal entries, with simple coloring book style
line drawings, and list of places to visit.
Sullivan, George. Lewis and Clark: In Their Own Words. New York: Scholastic, Inc.,
1999.
Objective non-fiction chapter book below grade reading level. Frequent
quotations from the journals, some maps and illustrations. Indexed.
52
Thomasma, Kenneth. The Truth about Sacajawea. Jackson, Wyoming: Grandview
Publishing Company, 1997, reprinted 2003.
Well-researched chapter book biography of Sacagawea based on the
Definitive Nebraska Edition of the journals, with commentary by members
of the Lemhi Shoshone tribe of her birth. List of entries mentioning her is
cross-referenced to the journals.
Van Steenwyk, Elizabeth. My Name is York. Flagstaff: Rising Moon, 1997, reprinted
1999.
Beautifully illustrated fiction picture book of the expedition focusing on
York’s presumed dream of freedom, which the author accurately states
was never granted.
The following websites were current as of March 2006:
Accelerated Reader. Renaissance Learning, Inc.
PO Box 8036
Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin 54495-8036
Incentive-based program to encourage reading offers computerized
comprehension quizzes on thousands of fiction and nonfiction books for
all ages and interests, including many on subjects related to Lewis and
Clark, exploration in general, and the westward movement of EuropeanAmericans.
http://www.renlearn.com/aboutus.htm
Library of Congress. Fill up the Canvas . . . Rivers of Words: Exploring with Lewis and
Clark
Well-produced website with lots of very high quality images and maplinked primary resources
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/lewisandclark/index.html
National Park Service. “The Corps Explorer: Trail and Error,” Lewis and Clark National
Historic Trail website
Excellent general resource, including printed matter, lesson plans, useful
links to other websites, and suggestions for field trips.
http://www.nps.gov/lecl/Administration&Grants/News/is26.htm
Nebraska State Historical Society, P.O. Box 82554, 1500 R Street, Lincoln, NE 68501
One of many online sources for easy-to-follow instructions for paper bag
moccasins.
http://www.nebraskahistory.org/museum/teachers/material/trail/indians/m
occasin.htm
53
U.S. Forest Service. Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center website
Geared toward field trips to the Center in Great Falls, Montana, but has
particularly succinct, downloadable timeline of the expedition and short
biographies of all the Corps personnel
http://www.fs.fed.us/r1/lewisclark/lcic/teachers/index.html
54
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allen, John L. “Geographical Knowledge and American Images of the Louisiana
Territory,” in Voyages of Discovery: Essays on the Lewis and Clark Expedition,
ed. James P. Ronda. Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1998.
________, Passage Through the Garden: Lewis and Clark and the Image of the
American Northwest. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975.
________, Review of Atlas of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by Gary Moulton,
Great Plains Quarterly 4, no. 1 (Winter 1984): 70.
________, Review of The Definitive Journals of Lewis & Clark, vols. 2, 3, and 4, edited
by Gary E. Moulton, William and Mary Quarterly 46:3 (1989), 630-632.
________, “’Of This Enterprize’: The American Images of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition” in Voyages of Discovery: Essays on the Lewis and Clark Expedition,
ed. James P. Ronda. Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1998.
Alt, David and Donald W. Hyndman. Roadside Geology of Montana. Missoula,
Montana: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 1986.
Ambrose, Stephen E. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and
the Opening of the American West. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1996;
Touchstone, 1997.
“An 1810 Book Review” Reprint of “Intelligence,” a review of [the apocryphal] The
Travels of Captains Lewis and Clarke, from St. Louis, by way of the Missouri and
Columbia Rivers, to the Pacific Ocean; performed in the Years 1804, 1805, and
1806, by Order of the Government of the United States, We Proceeded On
(February 1984): 16-17.
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