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Exploring Lewis and Clark: Reflections on Men and Wilderness
Most Americans know that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led our nation’s first trans-continental exploratory expedition, which was sent west by President Thomas Jefferson in 1803. Their journey is one of the most celebrated events in American history and one of the most written about. But most of us do not know any more than what the explorers told us, or what they wanted readers of their voluminous journals to know, or anything other than what they understood about themselves and their wilderness experiences.
Exploring Lewis and Clark probes beneath the traditional narrative of the journey, looking beyond the perspectives of the explorers themselves to those of the woman and the men who accompanied them, as well as of the Indians who met them along the way.
It reexamines the journals and what they suggest about Lewis’s and Clark’s misinterpretations of the worlds they passed through and the people in them. Thomas Slaughter portrays Lewis and Clark not as heroes but as men—brave, bound by cultural prejudices and blindly hell-bent on achieving their goal.
He searches for the woman Sacajawea rather than the icon that she has become. He seeks the historical rather than the legendary York, Clark’s slave. He discovers what the various tribes made of the expedition, including the notion that this multiracial, multiethnic group was embarked on a search for spiritual meaning.
Thomas Slaughter shines an entirely new light on an event basic to our understanding of ourselves. He has given us an important work of investigative history.
Exploring Lewis and Clark probes beneath the traditional narrative of the journey, looking beyond the perspectives of the explorers themselves to those of the woman and the men who accompanied them, as well as of the Indians who met them along the way.
It reexamines the journals and what they suggest about Lewis’s and Clark’s misinterpretations of the worlds they passed through and the people in them. Thomas Slaughter portrays Lewis and Clark not as heroes but as men—brave, bound by cultural prejudices and blindly hell-bent on achieving their goal.
He searches for the woman Sacajawea rather than the icon that she has become. He seeks the historical rather than the legendary York, Clark’s slave. He discovers what the various tribes made of the expedition, including the notion that this multiracial, multiethnic group was embarked on a search for spiritual meaning.
Thomas Slaughter shines an entirely new light on an event basic to our understanding of ourselves. He has given us an important work of investigative history.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 14, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 7, 2022
An in depth look at the accounts of Lewis and Clark's expedition. The author frequently reverts to pure speculation which often reveals more about the biases and beliefs of the Midwestern author/professor than it does about Lewis and Clark.
June 21, 2011
I got so lost and bored in the first 3 pages that I quickly lost interest. I was supposed to be reading about Lewis and Clark, not myths and legends.
September 14, 2023
P48 The journals are generally read as fonts of fact rather than as honed reflections designed for effect.
It makes sense that Lewis and Clark wrote what they wanted the public to read, leaving out some events and embellishing others in the published journals, but some of this author's arguments for the "real" story seem a bit theatrical.
For example, the explorers certainly did not expect to be the first White Americans to see the Pacific Coast, but in the chapter Being First, Slaughter suggests that they were sorely disappointed at their "failure" to reach the coast before other "civilized" men, hiding their "inadequacy" from their journals. How could that be when the Pacific Coast was well known to those in the East by the time the Corps of Discovery embarked from St. Louis?
In his chapter Writing First, Slaughter is shocked - shocked, I tell you - that the journal keepers sometimes wrote about what happened on a given day by using the word "today", when in reality they were writing about the events a few days later. This is blatant falsification of official documents, according to this author. If they did this, how can we trust anything at all in those journals?
Perhaps this "close reading" of the Lewis and Clark journals is more sensationalism than insight.
It makes sense that Lewis and Clark wrote what they wanted the public to read, leaving out some events and embellishing others in the published journals, but some of this author's arguments for the "real" story seem a bit theatrical.
For example, the explorers certainly did not expect to be the first White Americans to see the Pacific Coast, but in the chapter Being First, Slaughter suggests that they were sorely disappointed at their "failure" to reach the coast before other "civilized" men, hiding their "inadequacy" from their journals. How could that be when the Pacific Coast was well known to those in the East by the time the Corps of Discovery embarked from St. Louis?
In his chapter Writing First, Slaughter is shocked - shocked, I tell you - that the journal keepers sometimes wrote about what happened on a given day by using the word "today", when in reality they were writing about the events a few days later. This is blatant falsification of official documents, according to this author. If they did this, how can we trust anything at all in those journals?
Perhaps this "close reading" of the Lewis and Clark journals is more sensationalism than insight.
January 1, 2012
I was intrigued by the idea of this book - and I think "debunking" some of the myths about L&C and the expedition would be a great book...but this is NOT it. It is stale and pedantic and worse - while there may be some good ideas and findings somewhere in this slim book...it is so hodgepodge and poorly put together...it almost seems like random paragraphs slapped together to finish an overdue term paper.
January 19, 2015
A fascinating, uncompromising look at the Journals of Lewis & Clark. It performs a perfect form-tackle on an issue I have questioned for a long time -- the headlong rush by historians and educators to value "primary sources" to a fault.
Let's face it, when somebody writes something down, even as a first-person observer, they are viewing the event from their particular viewpoint, which includes their own interests, biases, perspectives, etc. As a result, just as we would naturally take most autobiographies for what they are (skewed in the direction that the writer/subject would like other people to know or remember), we too should consider the journals of the Lewis & Clark expedition. And up to now, they have been given a free pass through the past 100 years of historical interpretation.
I would submit that this close reading of the journals and should be considered authentic history rather than revisionist history, which I'm sure lots of folks will tag it. Notre Dame history profession Thomas Slaughter does a real service with this book -- not undermining Lewis & Clark, but showing that they were human, with egos and shortcomings that are generally glossed over in most of the hundreds of books written about the Corps of Discovery.
Let's face it, when somebody writes something down, even as a first-person observer, they are viewing the event from their particular viewpoint, which includes their own interests, biases, perspectives, etc. As a result, just as we would naturally take most autobiographies for what they are (skewed in the direction that the writer/subject would like other people to know or remember), we too should consider the journals of the Lewis & Clark expedition. And up to now, they have been given a free pass through the past 100 years of historical interpretation.
I would submit that this close reading of the journals and should be considered authentic history rather than revisionist history, which I'm sure lots of folks will tag it. Notre Dame history profession Thomas Slaughter does a real service with this book -- not undermining Lewis & Clark, but showing that they were human, with egos and shortcomings that are generally glossed over in most of the hundreds of books written about the Corps of Discovery.
June 18, 2018
Terrible read. I am surprised that a professor of history at Notre Dame would write something as one sided as this. Regret reading it and it has no place on my bookshelf
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April 25, 2020Chapter 5: Porivo's Story (controversy over Sacagawea's date of death, 1812 vs 1884)
January 10, 2017
I hate to not finish a book and this one tested me many times!
August 12, 2008
Definitely a book to be read after reading Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage.
November 19, 2024
I'm sure the expeditions journals were biased but I'm not sure they were as biased as this.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews