Lewis and Clark Matter :: History Expeditions Essays

Lewis and Clark MatterAmid all the hoopla, its easy to omit sight of the expeditions true significance As the Lewis and Clark bicentennial approachesthe corps of Discovery set out from Camp Dubois at the get together of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers on May 14, 1804all the signs of a long cultural-historical wallow are in place. Hundreds of Lewis and Clark books are flooding the marketeverything from The Journals of the Lewis and Clark chasse to Gary Moultons magnificent 13-volume edition of the expeditions journals, to cookbooks, coloring books and drag out guides. A gift catalog from Thomas Jeffersons Monticello offers stuffed versions of a prairie dog, a bison and a Newfoundland dog made to look like Seaman, the animal that accompanied Lewis on the trip. You can even order dolls of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Sacagawea and York with detailed removable clothing. in that location are Corps of Discovery television documentaries, an IMAX movie and rafts upon dozen s of Internet Web sites. There are Lewis and Clark conferences, museum exhibitions and trail rides. Last caput Harley-Davidson motorcycle riders drove parts of the trail. When Harley hogs discover Lewis and Clark, you know something big is exhalation on Now I would be the last person to adorn mashed potatoes on all of this after all, Ive written four books approximately the expedition. Much of this bicentennial celebration is good, clean family fun thats twain informative and entertaining. But in all this hoopla I alarm that we may miss the underlying significance of the Lewis and Clark story and the chance to connect these early explorers to the larger and richer stories of our past. On the road with Thomas Jeffersons Corps of Discovery, or even standing alongside the trail as they pass by, we meet ourselves, and more important, we meet people who are not ourselves. non the firstLewis and Clark were not the first white men to cross the absolute from the Atlantic to the Pac ific north of Mexico. (Scottish fur trader Alexander Mackenzie traverse Canada a decade earlier.) Nor did they visit places not already seen and mapped by generations of native Australian people. You could even say that Lewis and Clark began the American invasion of the West, which aimed at making it pencil eraser for cows, corn and capital at the expense of bison, prairie grasses and cultures not fitting the expansionist agenda. If we want to be hard edged, we could even make a geek that the Lewis and Clark story is a mainstay of the same shelf-worn narrative that glorifies and justifies the American oppression and dispossession of the North America natives.