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Exploring Lewis and Clark: reflections on men and wilderness

2003; Association of College and Research Libraries; Volume: 41; Issue: 02 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5860/choice.41-1136

1943-5975

Thomas P. Slaughter,

Botany, Ecology, and Taxonomy Studies

Exploring Lewis and Clark: Reflections on Men and Wilderness. By Thomas P. Slaughter. (New York: Knopf: Random House, 2003. Pp. xviii, 231. Illustrations, maps. Cloth, $24.00; paper, $14.00.)Thomas P. Slaughter has written an intriguing and courageous book. In the midst of the hagiography surrounding the bicentennial anniversary of the journey of Lewis and Clark, Slaughter bravely challenges long-cherished beliefs about the of and the men who chronicled it.Exploring Lewis and Clark impressively blends research from all the extant journals, including those of Joseph Whitehouse, Patrick Gass, Charles Floyd, and John Ordway. Slaughter wonders whether these men's writings denote an accurate depiction of what actually transpired or a carefully orchestrated attempt to provide future generations with what the expedition members wanted their readers to perceive. His valuable monograph also attempts to provide Native-American perspectives of the encounter and examines what occurred after the expedition.Slaughter admires Lewis and Clark, but guardedly. he respects the men who led an expedition that originated east of the Appalachians, traveled from Missouri to the Pacific Ocean and back, and lost only one man. Yet while acknowledging the appeal of this hugely fascinating story, Slaughter urges scholars to look beneath the explorers' narratives for different meanings than those they intended us to find (xiv).Through careful comparisons of the journals, Slaughter discovers numerous inconsistencies. he contends that the so-called Voyage of Discovery was the first in virtually nothing, even though the chroniclers vehemently wanted the world to believe they were. he questions other scholars' insistence that the journey represented a forward-looking exercise in egalitarianism as well as a multicultural, multiracial, gender-integrated success (101). he accuses Lewis and Clark of numerous obfuscations, especially when they sought to justify their thefts of Native-American property or paint themselves in a morally superior light relative to the men who served under them as well as the indigenous peoples whom they encountered.Slaughter arranges his chapters topically rather than chronologically. Therefore, each can be read as a discrete essay. At its best, Slaughter's work brings voice to those who have always wondered why expedition members were so fascinated by snakes, hateful of bears, relentless and wasteful in their massacre of game, miserly about their possessions, and dismissive of Sacagawea and Clark's slave, York.Porivo's Story, the chapter about the Shoshone woman who joined the expedition at the Mandan Village in North Dakota, is a tour deforce. Slaughter willingly accepts the real possibility that Sacagawea survived until 1884, despite attempts to kill her off in 1812. Sacagawea's extended life among the Comanche and later with her own people in present-day Wyoming has tended to upstage the major players. Killing her off is one means of getting her offstage. Keeping her alive alters the plot (87).Slaughter's chapters on Sacagawea and York also raise important questions about the validity of the written word versus oral tradition. Written records, particularly those of William Clark and his acquaintances, place Sacagawea's and York's demises but a few years after the voyage. Oral sources, however, report them returning to the wilderness, where they led long and adventurous lives. Sacagawea left her ne'er-do-well husband and fled to the Comanche, later returning to her people and dying an elderly woman. …