| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.2

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

On the River with Lewis and Clark. By Verne Huser. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004. xiv + 205 pp. Illustrations, map, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $40.00, cloth; $17.95, paper.)

Among the many bicentennial books, articles, documentaries, and other works about the Lewis and Clark Expedition, none have taken the strict focus on it that Huser's latest work does: the expedition was first and foremost a river trip. After all, he points out, of the 10,264 miles traveled by the Corps of Discovery, 9,046, or 85 percent, were by water (p. 35). That the explorers chose to follow the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Snake, the Columbia, and the Yellowstone, along with a host of smaller streams, to and from their destination was not only tradition (travel by river being a way of life for centuries in North America) and necessity (there being no roads), it was also one of the objectives laid out for the party by President Jefferson, in a letter to Meriwether Lewis: "The object of your mission is singular, the direct water communication from sea to sea formed by the bed of the Missouri and perhaps the Oregon." Huser goes on to say, "The expedition was primarily a scouting party for westward expansion, sponsored by the federal government, using the most common means of transportation for the period" (p. 31).

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