Lewis & Clark: Journey to Another America

Topic 1: Introduction
By Peter J. Kastor, Washington University

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The following text is excerpted from the essay in Lewis & Clark: Journey to Another America

The Object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by it's course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregan, Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent for the purpose of commerce.
---Thomas Jefferson, instructions to Meriwether Lewis

Consider some of the questions that surround the Lewis and Clark Expedition, beginning with the most obvious one: Why would Thomas Jefferson send these men, including a personal friend, on such a hazardous venture? Consider as well the other questions that came during or after the expedition: How did Lewis and Clark select their supplies? How did Lewis and Clark interact with each other and with the other members of the expedition? What did the Indians they met along the way think of Lewis and Clark or the country they represented? Finally, how is it that we know so much about the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and why does it remain such a compelling story?

The answers to all these questions do not emerge strictly from the details of the expedition. Instead, making sense of the Lewis and Clark Expedition requires a more general understanding of North America at the turn of the nineteenth century, a time of considerable uncertainty and change. Likewise, seemingly abstract concepts such as scientific theory, international relations, and cultural differences become clearer when examined in the particular context of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

For all these reasons, the essays that constitute this anthology do more than retell the story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Instead, this anthology provides a means to understand the expedition.

Photo credit: Portraits of Lewis and Clark from Original journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804-1806: printed from the original manuscripts in the library of the American Philosophical Society ... and the journals of Charles Floyd and Joseph Whitehouse ... / edited, with introduction, notes, and index, by Reuben Gold Thwaites. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1904-05.

1. What were the domestic and international developments that shaped the Lewis & Clark Expedition?

2. What priorities led Jefferson to dispatch the Corps of Discovery, and how did those priorities change during the planning for the expedition?

3. How do the personal experiences of Lewis and Clark help us understand the worlds they occupied?

4. What ideas, events or problems do you most strongly associate with the Lewis & Clark Expedition?

5. What aspects of the expedition seem most clear? Likewise, what seems the most elusive?

6. How do you think the expedition can help us better understand broader questions about American history and American culture? Likewise, what contextual matters are essential for a clear understanding of the expedition?

Clark, William Dear Brother: Letters of William Clark to Jonathan Clark. Edited by James J. Holmberg.ŹNew Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002.

Foley, William E. The Genesis of Missouri: From Wilderness Outpost to Statehood. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989.

Furtwangler, Albert. Acts of Discovery: Visions of America in the Lewis and Clark Journals. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

Jackson, Donald. Thomas Jefferson & the Stony Mountain: Exploring the West from Monticello. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981.

Lewis, James E., Jr. The American Union and the Problem of Neighborhood: The United States and the Collapse of the Spanish Empire, 1783-1829. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Lewis, Meriwether, and William Clark. The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Edited by Elliott Coues. Reprint. New York: Dover Publications, 1979.

Madison, James. The Papers of James Madison. Edited by Robert J. Brugger, et. Al. Secretary of State Series.Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986.

Nobles, Gregory H. American Frontiers: Cultural Encounters and Continental Conquest. New York: Hill & Wang, 1997.

Ronda, James P. Lewis and Clark among the Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988. Reprint. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Thorne,Tanis C. The Many Hands of My Relations: French and Indians on the Lower Missouri. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996.