|
|
|
Reviews
Finding Lewis and Clark: Old Trails, New Directions
|
Edited by James P. Ronda and Nancy Tystad Koupal
|
South Dakota State Historical Society Press, Pierre, 2004. Illustrations, index. 217 pages. $17.95 paper.
|
Reviewed by Albert Furtwangler
Salem, Oregon
|
|
|
| In April 2003, the South Dakota State Historical Society sponsored a conference on Lewis and Clark and the Louisiana Purchase. This book contains eleven of the nineteen conference papers, which reflect many of the authors' recent books or works in progress. |
1
|
|
Two papers reconsider historical backgrounds. W. Raymond Wood surveys shifting relations among Indian tribes of the Upper Missouri region in 1804 and explains how the pressures of European empires and American expansion were creating dynamic changes there. Peter J. Kastor examines how the Louisiana Purchase changed the aims and methods of the Corps of Discovery, then molded the two captains' later careers. |
2
|
|
Three papers discuss legacies. William E. Foley presents a brief portrait of William Clark, based on his new, full-length biography. Robert McCracken Peck traces the scientific artifacts of the expedition as they passed through many hands. Joni L. Kinsey discusses early works of art about the expedition, including sketches in the explorers' journals and later illustrations of their deeds and their plant and animal specimens. |
3
|
|
Four papers look at modern media that have reinterpreted the American West. Richard W. Etulain summarizes several novels that retell the Lewis and Clark story and glamorize the leading characters, especially Sacagawea. Greg Mac Gregor offers fifteen sample photographs from his project that recorded the expedition route as it looks today. Joseph A. Mussulman describes his work in creating an interactive Web-site history of the expedition and its backgrounds. Robert J. Myers develops the point that such Web sites can support improved methods for teaching American history. |
4
|
|
The book opens and closes with two general essays. James P. Ronda finds a constant tension in American history between the contrary pulls of home and the open road. Elliott West tries to step away from Lewis and Clark and see their accomplishments more clearly in comparison to explorations in other regions — the failed American expeditions up the Red River and Mungo Park's disastrous push into the disease-ridden tropics. |
5
|
|
This brief summary cannot do justice to these varied essays and their appeal to different kinds of readers, but it should suggest that they contain attractive samples of stimulating new work and new questioning. Books about Lewis and Clark already fill a long shelf, but these papers display how open-ended the discussion continues to be: relating art, science, geography, diplomacy, political theories, anthropology, literature, and technology to Thomas Jefferson, his two captains, and their adventures. Not even the branching links of a computer program can quite hold all the questions and lore these few essays take up. |
6
|
|
This book also embodies three enduring ways of making sense of such sprawling materials. It records lively exchanges between expert participants as they answer and refer to each other. It holds their reconsidered and resharpened arguments. And it reproduces some valuable graphics, including maps, illustrations of particular terrains, and artistic treatments of natural objects. Even an expert reader will find good reasons to pause and reconsider such details, from the telling arrangements in a drawing to the vectors on a map or the garish modern structures now embedded in American landscapes. The subtitle makes a nice echo: Lewis and Clark in fact followed old trails in new directions, and so do these writers in retracing their many routes into our history. |
7
|
|
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|