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Reviews
TWO CENTURIES OF LEWIS AND CLARK: REFLECTIONS ON THE VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY
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by William L. Lang and Carl Abbott
with a conversation with Roberta Conner and Christopher Zinn
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Oregon Historical Society Press, Portland, 2004.
Photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 158 pages. $18.00 paper. |
| The number of new Lewis and Clark books published during the bicentennial would fill a large bookcase. What sets Two Centuries of Lewis and Clark apart from the crowd is that two leading historians of the West assess the long-term significance of the Expedition. The introductory chapter by William L. Lang, professor of history at Portland State University, dissects the well-known celebratory narrative to ask questions about what it meant for the new nation represented by Jeffersonian America to explore a foreign country dominated by various Indian nations living along the Missouri, Snake, and Columbia rivers. In particular, Lang directs readers' attention to the diplomacy of Lewis and Clark. |
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In the end, Lang reaffirms that "the significance of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and its personnel is an open and contested matter. Those who find it preeminently a story of adventure, achievement, and nationalistic accomplishment have plenty of drama to support their viewpoint. Those who see it as part of a long history of paternalistic and damaging engagements with Indian people in the Northwest can cite incident upon incident where the explorers appear arrogant and dismissive of native peoples" (p. 56). |
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Carl Abbott, professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University, examines the significance of the Expedition from the perspective of the Lewis and Clark Exposition, the world's fair held in Portland to commemorate the centennial of the voyage of discovery. What he finds is that little of the 1905 fair was truly about Lewis and Clark. If anything, it was a commercial exploitation of Lewis and Clark in an effort to promote the Pacific Northwest. The Lewis and Clark Expedition served merely as a way to direct popular attention to the region and its claims of greatness. Boosterism ran rampant in Oregon and Washington at the start of the twentieth century, and so the narrative of the Lewis and Clark Expedition was transmuted to suit the needs of regional promoters. |
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Can it be said that two centuries after Lewis and Clark, even regional boosterism has been elbowed aside by a variety of entrepreneurs determined only to make a fast buck from anything associated with the names Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea — from candy bars to quickie guide books to the trail? I think it can, with a particularly outrageous example being a map of the Oregon Trail on a postcard sold to unwary tourists as a map of the route of Lewis and Clark. |
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The third portion of Two Centuries of Lewis and Clark, and in some ways the most lively because of its conversational format, is an extended discussion of the meaning(s) of Lewis and Clark with Lang, Abbott, Roberta Conner, and Christopher Zinn, executive director of the Oregon Council for the Humanities and former professor of American literature. Conner, who is a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and vice president of the National Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council Board of Directors, brings to the roundtable discussion a valuable Native American perspective that helps explain why the Lewis and Clark commemoration (not a "celebration" for Indians, Conner is quick to explain) did not degenerate into the ugly accusations of genocide that marred the 1992 Columbian Quincentennial. All conversationalists agree that it is very difficult to convey to Americans the multifaceted dimensions of the Lewis and Clark story because of the popular and abiding appeal of the triumphalist narrative. That narrative helped make Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage a best seller. |
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Two Centuries of Lewis and Clark is a valuable book for readers already familiar with the dominant narrative of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Its three parts offer a valuable critique of that narrative. It also offers an examination of the historical uses that have been made of the Expedition. Its lively conversational chapter will heighten readers' understanding of the significance of the bicentennial commemoration — the many successes and an occasional failure. It would be nice to have a future issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly bring these four people together again after the formal end of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial in September 2006 for a follow-up conversation that offers their retrospective assessment of all that was good, bad, or ugly about the multi-year commemoration. |
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| CARLOS SCHWANTES
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| University of Missouri-St. Louis |
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