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Reviews
OCIAN IN VIEW! O! THE JOY: LEWIS AND CLARK IN WASHINGTON STATE
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illustrations by Roger Cooke
text by Robert C. Carriker
introduction by David L. Nicandri
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| Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma, 2005. Illustrations, maps, notes. 168 pages. $27.95 paper. |
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| Each major commemoration of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, including the centennial, sesquicentennial, and bicentennial, has seen the publication of numerous specialist and niche market books. In Ocian in View, author Robert C. Carriker and illustrator Roger Cooke have attempted to produce a book that fills a new niche. |
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Ocian in View had its beginnings in a Washington state road sign project, in which Carriker and Cooke participated as consultants. After completing the roadside project, they used their research as the basis for Ocian in View. While the majority of the text focuses on Lewis and Clark's journal entries in what is now the state of Washington, a region that Lewis and Clark did not encounter until the tail end of their journey, Carriker does a good job adding contextual information for readers who may pick up the book with minimal exposure to the Lewis and Clark Expedition. For example, Carriker provides information about Thomas Jefferson's vision for the Expedition and the backgrounds of various expedition members such as Sacagawea, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, Seaman the dog, and George Drouillard. |
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Roger Cooke's illustrations greatly enhance the text. In the introduction to Ocian in View, David Nicandri places Cooke in the "tradition" of artists such as George Catlin and Karl Bodmer (p. viii). While this seems to be a bit of an overstatement, the illustrations do show scenes of Lewis and Clark that have not been attempted by other artists and some, such as the cover illustration of the Corps of Discovery passing Beacon Rock, compare favorably with iconic illustrations of the Expedition by artists such as Charles Russell and John Clymer. |
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Ultimately, Ocian in View struggles to find an original identity of its own. While the book could have served as a guide to Lewis and Clark in Washington State, it does not quite achieve success by this measure. The book includes a useful map of Lewis and Clark's route through Washington, but the text does not include any reference to modern geography that would allow readers to explore the trail. Ocian in View also fails to distinguish itself as a book detailing Lewis and Clark in the region of the Columbia River. The book ignores almost all references to Lewis and Clark's activity in Oregon, which is awkward given that there were no state boundaries at the time. This problem is particularly apparent in the middle of the book; it moves abruptly from Lewis and Clark exploring the Washington side of the mouth of the Columbia in November 1805 to Lewis and Clark returning upriver in March 1806. The book devotes only one paragraph to Lewis and Clark's three-month stay at Fort Clatsop. In comparing the book to other works that focus on the same geography, such as Stephen Dow Beckham's Lewis & Clark from the Rockies to the Pacific, the book appears incomplete and limited in scope. |
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Despite these shortcomings, Ocian in View is an interesting, well-illustrated read that reveals something of the politics of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commemoration. It is likely that, two hundred years from now, the book will be used as primary-source evidence of how individual states used the bicentennial to promote tourism and state myths whose sources lie more in artificial political geography than historical reality. |
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| JEREMY SKINNER
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| Lewis and Clark College, Portland |
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