11. On the Tourist Trail with Lewis & Clark
Issues of Interpretation and Preservation
Andrew Gulliford
Western states are bracing for a huge influx of Lewis and Clark tourists who will follow the explorers’ routes before, during, and after the 2004–06 Lewis and Clark bicentennial. Tourists will travel along a 4,000-mile route from St. Louis, Missouri to Astoria, Oregon, even though some scholars argue that the Lewis and Clark trail begins not in St. Louis, but in Pittsburgh or in Washington, D.C. These matters are of little or no concern to those who readily identify the two explorers with the lands they encountered. Some especially dedicated enthusiasts will follow the entire Trail, embarking from St. Louis then paddling and walking in the footsteps of their heroes. Most will travel in a more comfortable manner, with some opting for luxurious accommodations aboard vintage trains like the American Orient Express or modern cruise ships on the Columbia and Snake Rivers like the Columbia Queen, the Spirit of the West, and the Spirit of Discovery. Besides first-class meals and sumptuous accommodations, these rail and ship tours have established guided excursions where historians and naturalists lecture on everything from the location of Lewis and Clark campsites to Sacagawea's love for wapato roots. Just how many will don backpacks, board cruise ships or set out in the family car is anyone's guess, but certainly thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, and maybe millions will follow some portion of the expedition route in the next few years. Regardless of how Americans will get up the Missouri River, across the Dakotas and Montana, through the Bitterroot Range of Idaho, and down the canyons of the Snake River into the magnificent Columbia River Gorge, they will come.[1]
Unlike other commemorations or celebrations of historical events, the Lewis and Clark bicentennial is unique in that visitors want to cover the route, see the terrain, smell the prairie after a thunderstorm, and hike steep mountain slopes in Montana and Idaho.[2] Revisiting the route of the Corps
PERSONAL DISCOVERIES
Most Americans have seen the central regions of their country only from 30,000 feet out the window of commercial jets, or through the car window as they sped along interstate highways. The Lewis and Clark route, however, like the old Indian trails, follows the contours of the land. Tourists have rarely been drawn up the Missouri River to North and South Dakota, but that is changing. Today, people want to come into the country the way the captains did: slowly, upriver, moving out of the humid east and across the vast western landscape of open sky and few fences.[4] The prairie states are delighted with this newfound tourist desire, and momentum for the bicentennial is resulting in everything from new visitor centers to extra motel rooms along the route. On the western edge of the continent, traveling on the Columbia River is more developed and luxurious than in the Dakotas. Yet in both parts of the continent, river travel is a new medium for most Americans and is growing in popularity thanks to the newfound excitement about Lewis and Clark.
Travelers following the Corps of Discovery are not arriving at a single tourist destination; instead they are encountering an entirely new landscape not visible from jets or four-lane highways. The entire route has its appeal and no one particular historic campsite, mountain ridge, or museum visitor center can claim to be the tourist nexus. Just as the explorers had not completed their journey until they had arrived back home, this commemoration is about crossing America—by river, trail, and back roads—and returning with new understanding. Following the captains’ route is a personal voyage of discovery, a tourist odyssey linking landscape and history as described by the Lewis and Clark journals.
Walking down the main street of Three Forks, Montana, after rocking on the porch of the Sacagawea Inn, provides a special delight for suburban tourists who may never have experienced a western barbecue cooked in an
Four things the captains had in a bundance that we have lost in the twenty-first century are silence, solitude, darkness, and proximity to mammals like wolves and grizzlies. These qualities of the wilderness landscape are unknown in subdivisions and on city streets. Nevertheless, the words of T. K. Whipple from Study Out the Land still apply to the Corps of Discovery as well as to the legions of tourists traveling the Lewis and Clark trail: “All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream.”[5]
Lewis and Clark tourists reawaken their senses on the plains of eastern Montana, on the Weippe Prairie of Idaho, and on open riverboats at the Missouri River's Gates of the Mountains near Helena, Montana. There travelers can visit Meriwether Campground and view the Joe and Reuben Fields Gulch where the expedition stayed on 19 July 1805.[6] For many suburban visitors to the West, just seeing an uncluttered starry sky makes the trip worthwhile. For others, following the Lewis and Clark trail is both a historical pilgrimage and a personal spiritual quest.[7]
Lewis and Clark in their buckskin shirts and with their hunting rifles symbolize a freedom and independence unknown in modern America. They represent an irresistible draw for the young who want to follow in Lewis and Clark's footsteps and learn about the landscape as they learn about themselves. For senior citizens it is also a journey about youth and self-discovery. Sitting around a campfire at the Triple O Hunting Camp deep in Idaho's Bitterroot Range, a woman from Rhode Island more accustomed to cocktails and card parties explains after a week of rafting, hiking, and horseback riding along the trail, “I never knew I could do these things. My friends told me I was a fool to come. Now I know that they are the fools. Why have I limited my life? I was ready to lie down and retire and snooze away my afternoons. Not now. Not ever. I hurt. I’m sore, but I’m stronger than I've ever been.”[8]
A widow from Baton Rouge, Louisiana stares into the fire and says, “I've never been so free. The kids are grown. I’m on my own. All my life I've wanted to follow Lewis and Clark and see these woods. This journey has
PATRIOTISM AND SUSTAINABLE HEROES
Both the young and the old are rediscovering America in a patriotic impulse not seen since the nation's bicentennial in 1976. Patriotism is back in style, and the Lewis and Clark expedition is being recognized as the precursor to Manifest Destiny and the settlement of the West as well as a symbol of America's national virtues. Thomas Jefferson may have bought Louisiana, but Lewis and Clark gave us the continent. By embracing them, we embrace ourselves and our yearning for a simpler time. Imagine the members of the Corps of Discovery struggling along rocky shoals near the three forks of the Missouri as they tried to find a nonexistent water route across the continent.[10] In many ways, their epic journey represents one of the nation's primal origin myths just as the Pilgrims who shivered through their first winter near Plymouth Rock gave us the first Thanksgiving. But this story is different, and Americans are fascinated by the distances covered and the immense difficulties the corps faced.
Lewis and Clark tourists are also captivated by the leaders’ bonds of friendship, and they retrace the journey as an antidote to much of the negative history taught since the 1960s. A quarter century after the Vietnam War, Americans want to be proud of themselves and their accomplishments. Captains Lewis and Clark have earned their place as heroes, and tourists want to visit the exact spots where heroic deeds took place.[11]
Lewis and Clark are sustainable heroes and role models who reflect human weakness and prejudice. Their ultimate success is therefore all the more remarkable. Clark's anger at the Sioux who blocked their river route as the corps ascended the Missouri River, and Lewis's fatal use of weapons against young Blackfeet can be understood as errors in judgment. Despite the mistakes, including almost losing one of the young Kentucky hunters who had been missing for three days, deep friendships and human bonds forged by both the prairie heat and the frigid Great Plains winters kept them all together.
Near present-day Great Falls, Montana, cactus thorns reduced the soles of William Clark's feet to a pulpy mass, and his good friend Meriwether Lewis had to remove those thorns by firelight. Later on the homeward journey, when all the men wore elkskin, Pierre Cruzatte mistakenly shot Lewis in the buttocks with his .54 rifle. The bullet went through both cheeks, and Captain Clark cleaned the wounds to stave off infection.
The captains’ respect for each other represents one of the great friendships in American history. As Stephen Ambrose has pointed out, theirs was a shared command, unheard of in military annals, and yet it succeeded. American veterans who are tourists, and who remember when they were young and seemingly invincible, recall in the captains’ friendship their own deep bonds with soldiers and comrades now at rest.
The Lewis and Clark journey was as complicated and as full of danger as going to the moon and back, but more so because the Apollo astronauts had maps and photographs of the moon. Lewis and Clark had their Indian guides, but no reliable maps, and certainly no photographs. Beyond Fort Mandan in North Dakota, they were on their own.[12] The appeal of Lewis and Clark to many Americans is that the captains did not know where they were most of the time, and yet they persevered. Today's tourists may panic driving across the plains with a quarter tank of gasoline and no small towns insight. The openness of the prairies can be unnerving, but Lewis and Clark never panicked. Perhaps they faced a longer interval between meals, but they had the inner resources we seem to have misplaced. We depend upon technology instead of on ourselves. That, too, is part of the captains’ appeal—their resourcefulness across so many different landscapes.
Tourists who are business professionals and chief executive officers ponder the logistical aspects of outfitting the expedition, worrying about the subcontractors, and finding all the supplies. Executives contemplate Lewis and Clark's management style and the captains’ ability to hone forty-five disparate young men into efficient soldiers, explorers, and the vanguard of what became mountain men. Not surprisingly, Lewis and Clark's leadership style has become a model for corporate management seminars. The expedition's accomplishments are all the more remarkable when compared to the next exploring party to head from St. Louis to the Pacific Coast. Financed by the millionaire John Jacob Astor in 1811, this group had the benefit of Lewis and Clark's information and took comfort in the fact that supplies would come by water to the mouth of the Columbia River. Many of these Astorians died en route, others starved, and at least two men went mad. Why did the captains succeed while other later and better-equipped companies fell apart? Tourists are justifiably impressed by the group cohesion exemplified by the Corps of Discovery, and they marvel at the captains’ ability to lead their men through such diverse and difficult terrain, under trying circumstances and with an unswerving common purpose. Retired
The appeal of Lewis and Clark stems, in part, from the American fascination with wilderness. As the historian James Ronda makes clear, however, the American West of the early nineteenth century was “a crowded wilderness.”[14] The expedition would have failed miserably without the constant support and guidance of Native Americans. Contemporary Native Americans can tell us about the captains’ dependence upon their ancestors. The captains may have been self-sufficient woodsmen blazing trails through the wilderness, but they also depended upon Indian women, wapato roots, and the kindness of strangers.
SACAGAWEA'S LEGACY AND WOMEN'S HISTORY
By far the most important Native individual to assist the expedition was Sacagawea, the Shoshone (some say Hidatsa) woman who joined the expedition in the spring of 1805. Not surprisingly, Sacagawea elicits a great deal of conversation on the Lewis and Clark tourist trail. Some of this reflects the influence of romantic novels like Anna Lee Waldo's Sacajawea (1984), some pulls from debates among historians, and some comes from unclear or inconclusive passages in the expedition journals. Invariably, questions arise about the pronunciation and spelling of her name—is it Sacajawea, Sacagawea, or Sakakawea? The answer is never definitive, but it is usually “Sacagawea,” with a hard “g.”[15] The question, or the answer, matters less than the continuing fascination that surrounds the historical figure. Although each generation wants to see a different symbol in Sacagawea, she remains central to how people understand the expedition and its significance. Of course, there is always deep fascination about her personal and psychic survival as the only female among two dozen men. In the early twentieth century, this made her a key symbol for the women's suffrage movement.[16] At other times, her position within the expedition has led to more personal reflection—for artists, writers, and tourists alike.
The expedition journals provide some dramatic scenes that have piqued the imaginations of many. In the freezing Bitterroots, facing starvation, Sacagawea offered to share with Captain Clark a crust of bread that she had kept hidden on her person to feed her baby, Jean Baptiste. And during that cold, wet Christmas at Fort Clatsop she presented Captain Clark with a stunning gift of two dozen white weasel tails—the most valued fur from the Rocky Mountains.[17] Did she admire Clark, because he was such a contrast to her lout of a husband, Charbonneau, or was there more to their relationship? Historians and Lewis and Clark aficionados lightly pass over such questions, but tourists on the Trail still wonder. After all, for months Lewis,
Until very recently no one has dealt with the complex issues of female representation surrounding Sacagawea. This is surprising, since she has more statues erected to her honor than any other American woman. The height of Sacagawea representation came at the turn of the twentieth century as the Daughters of the American Revolution and other women's groups sought to create a female heroine to take her rightful place in American history. Sacagawea succeeded as a female symbol of bravery and personal independence, yet she also represented stoicism, loyalty, motherhood, and Native participation in the expedition. What does that say about us as Americans, and what does that say about her?[19]
Besides frequent debates on the correct form of her name, tourists on the Lewis and Clark trail frequently discuss Sacagawea's tribal origins, her life after the expedition, and her final resting place. Today, she is claimed by the Northern Shoshone at Fort Hall, Idaho, the Eastern Shoshone at Fort Washakie, Wyoming, and the Hidatsa in North Dakota. The National Park Service and the historian James Ronda are convinced that Sacagawea died of a “putrid fever” on 20 December 1812 and was buried at Fort Manuel, on the Missouri River near the present-day border between North and South Dakota. According to John C. Luttig, the clerk at Fort Manuel, “she was a good and the best woman in the fort, aged abt 25 years.”[20] The Eastern Shoshone Indians have a different story and believe she lived to be an old woman and is buried in the Wind River Mountains to the west of the Sacagawea Cemetery near Fort Washakie. When asked to explain the contradiction between the Park Service's version of her death and their own, Eastern Shoshone elders smile and state that when Charbonneau took Sacagawea for a wife, he had a second young wife who did not make the trip, and she is the one who died in the Dakotas. In other words, Luttig erred.[21]
Sacagawea's story thus becomes a prism, which reflects not only the history of the Lewis and Clark expedition, but also the significance of the bicentennial to Native peoples. She is enormously important to western tribes who regard her with compassion and treat her as a valued ancestor. The old woman who came to live on the Shoshone reservation knew many strange things, told interesting stories, sang beautiful songs, and remembered visiting the great water and seeing the great fish, that is, the beached whale at the Pacific Ocean near Cannon Beach. What is the truth? When will we let Indian tribes interpret their own story of contact with the Corps of Discovery? Encouraging American Indians to tell their stories may become a significant achievement of the bicentennial.[22]
From the Native American perspective, a band of white men wandered through their territory begged for food, made many promises they never
The Nez Perce tell the story of an old woman who had been taken captive as a child, much like Sacagawea. The woman regained her freedom when a Canadian trapper helped return her to her people. She was there when Lewis and Clark stumbled starving out of the Bitterroots, bloated themselves with salmon and camas roots, and suffered miserably from intense stomach pains. The Nez Perce seriously considered killing the explorers for their valuable rifles and ammunition, but the old woman said, “Do them no harm.” A white man had once befriended her so she felt they should be spared. The Nez Perce had never seen whites before and distrusted them, but she argued that the debilitated explorers should be nursed back to health and not killed for their guns.
For Native American tribes two elements of this story are important. The first element is that in the history of the expedition two different Indian women saved the corps—Sacagawea, as a translator whose brother Cameahwait sold them horses, and a Nez Perce female elder who spared their lives. Second, though white women had little social standing in the Virginia of the captains’ birth and were rarely consulted on important decisions, among Indian communities, then and now, women's opinions are highly respected. Few interpreters get that story straight or understand the nuances of Native American history. Clearly, Indian interpretation needs to be central to the bicentennial.[23]
Tourists need to know that Lewis and Clark moved, not through an unknown wilderness world, but rather through an Indian landscape where even the rocks and trees had names. The Corps of Discovery were strangers at the mercy of powerful tribes who let them pass in peace. To see Lewis and Clark as explorers of a vast wilderness is to miss the context of the expedition and the reasons for its successful completion.[24] Lewis and Clark ran out of trade goods on their way home and even had to barter their buttons.
Tourists should learn about the corps's desperation, but Americans also need to understand the irreversible changes the captains wrought including the spread of diseases, the availability of guns, and the disappearance of certain Indian bands who befriended them. Tourists have always seen Lewis and Clark as the epitome of “Great White Men” who led America westward, but in 2004–06 tourists must rethink their stereotypes and learn that American history is not the seamless, unchangeable past they once believed. Such an awakening will be jarring, but inevitable. Whether or not tourists set out to find cultural diversity along the Lewis and Clark trail, they will find it anyway, and the full richness and complexity of American history will resonate deeply. Understanding the cultural complexity of the expedition, in terms
CLEAN CAMPSITES AND THE ABSENCE OF ARCHAEOLOGY
Given the vast expanse of land covered by the Lewis and Clark expedition, and the changes wrought by two hundred years, tourists are understandably curious about what sites can still be visited. If commemorating the expedition means following its trail, then how can visitors still walk in the actual footsteps of the Corps of Discovery? Their concern gives special importance to archaeology, because this science can significantly aid interpretation at wayside exhibits, visitor centers, and local, state, and regional museums. Emphasis on the archaeology of Lewis and Clark sites is a recent phenomenon, but it illustrates well some of the special challenges of commemorating the expedition. Unlike a Civil War battlefield or a visit to a historic antebellum house, the expedition's route yields very little physical evidence. Lewis and Clark campsites have been difficult to validate, because the explorers left few traces. After years of searching, Ken Karsmizki, the curator of history at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center, has found only a rifle flint, a wooden stake, and butchered buffalo bones at Lower Portage Camp, where the corps spent weeks near Great Falls, Montana (Figure 8). The results have been equally dismal along the entire eight thousand mile round-trip route.[25]
One interesting new lead in the hunt for traces of Lewis and Clark has to do with sex, venereal disease, and three pewter penis syringes, which Lewis bought in Philadelphia and took along the trip. He used them to inject mercury compounds up the urethra of the enlisted men who found too much delight with Indian women. Mercury is a deadly heavy metal and some of the corps probably went to early graves because of their promiscuity. Archaeologically, heavy metals remain deep in stratified soil, so a search has been undertaken to find the latrine at Fort Clatsop and to use that location to identify the fort's actual site. This archaeological strategy assumes the captains followed strict military procedure in building the latrine at a specified distance from the fort. Archaeology may prove the exact location of the 1805–6 winter quarters along the cold and wet Oregon coast.[26]
INTERPRETIVE CENTERS
Lewis and Clark tourism is an economic reality among western states and a potent force reshaping small towns along the expedition's route. Tourists will traverse the Lewis and Clark trail, which is now clearly marked and identified, thanks in large part to the efforts of the Lewis and Clark Trail
Figure 8. Excavation of Lower Portage Camp. (Photo by Andrew Gulliford, Center of Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College)
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The size and scope of the upcoming bicentennial is perhaps best indicated by the attentions of the federal government. Congress has designated a special caucus just to oversee the bicentennial and to appropriate additional
Park Service plans also include driving three diesel tractor-trailers on the route and stopping at selected sites during the same time of year as the corps's visits. One truck would hold artifacts, another would contain satellite dishes and e-mail links to school children across the nation, and the third truck would be staffed with scientists and biologists who would study plants and animals at each stop and compare them with historic descriptions from the journals.[30] As its name—The Corps of Discovery II—suggests, the concept is a “multi-agency project designed to augment and enhance, but not duplicate or replace, local bicentennial events already in the planning stages. Hundreds of communities and Indian nations throughout the United States will be visited by this traveling education center.”[31] The Park Service also plans to join forces with Amtrak to place interpretive guides aboard trains between Grand Forks, North Dakota and Portland, Oregon.
NEW INTERPRETATION ON THE WASHINGTON COAST
Along with these novel interpretive efforts, the bicentennial may also lead to significant, and permanent, changes in how visitors access Lewis and Clark sites. In southwestern Washington state, Rex Ziak has urged the removal of portions of U.S. Highway 101 along the coast because he believes it runs too close to campsites where Lewis and Clark suffered miserably from cold November winds, pelting rain, surging tides, and high waves. A close reading of the journals, expertly combined with a local's knowledge of the raw fall weather and with tidal charts from the U.S. Navy, have helped Ziak to understand that those November days on the Washington coast represented epic endurance in the face of miserable weather, rotting elk-skin clothing, and starvation so severe that Clark named one site “Camp Despair.”
The state of Washington has funded a feasibility study to move U.S. Highway 101 away from the coast to provide more walking access to these valuable sites. Ziak's personal vision for commemoration includes creation of a large rotunda near the beach to be shaped like the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. Inside the rotunda, a bronze plaque would repeat Jefferson's
Ziak's efforts have even begun to alter accepted approaches to Lewis and Clark interpretation in the Pacific Northwest. For decades Oregon has claimed the significant West Coast site for the end of the Lewis and Clark trail at the Fort Clatsop National Memorial near Astoria. Now historians and experts are scrutinizing campsites on the Washington side. The state of Washington may implement a new state park at Station Camp near Long Beach where the explorers stayed between 16–25 November 1805.[33] The competition between Washington and Oregon over what is more historically important to Lewis and Clark—the Washington side or the Oregon side of the Columbia River, is creating interesting new scholarship and will inevitably result in increased interpretation.[34]
SUPPORTING ROLES
One of the marvels of the Lewis and Clark saga is that American tourists are attracted to more than just the captains, and this affection is leading to bicentennial commemorations of Sacagawea's offspring and even the corps's faithful canine companion. There are new children's books about Seaman, Lewis's loyal Newfoundland dog who guarded the camp at night, woofed and barked at grizzlies, and was so powerful he could kill fleeing deer and drag them out of rushing rivers. Sculptors have even completed statues of the dog![35]
Dozens of men in western states have joined Lewis and Clark reenactor groups, which are thriving in the Northwest and in Montana. Reenactors study the journals and become first-person interpreters of the voyageurs, privates, sergeants, and captains of the Corps of Discovery. Men grow beards, hand-sew leather clothing, hack out wooden dugout canoes, practice their black powder shooting, and try to entice their wives with blue beads.[36]
Irish Americans now claim an affinity for Sergeant Patrick Gass and his-carpentry expertise. Never mind that Captain Lewis loathed the fact that Gass got his book published first, Irish Americans are proud to claim him. Likewise, African Americans want to learn more about York, who accompanied Captain Clark the entire route, and French Canadians want to know more about Drouillard, or “Drewyer” as the captains called him.[37] A Drouillard descendant explained that family members know what Drewyer knew—how to cook muskrat in a savory fashion. The recipe has been handed down for generations.[38] Fiddlers, of course, choose to reenact the nearsighted French-Canadian Pierre Cruzatte.
Just as Lewis and Clark campsites have been discovered on the Washington
INDIAN VOICES
Rarely do historic site staff discuss Lewis and Clark as the vanguard of expanding American capitalism, as a moving front of the lucrative fur trade, and as the progenitors of enormous social and economic transformations. Those perspectives need to be raised along with the historical impact of forcing tribal peoples into the orbit of American diplomacy.[41] Tourists know about Sacagawea, but they need to learn about the other western tribes who befriended the Corps of Discovery and their descendants’ perspectives on the bicentennial. Moreover, contemporary issues including sacred site protection and the return of human remains and burial goods should be more central to how the legacies of the expedition are understood.[42]
Because of the bicentennial, at least one sacred site on the Great Plains may now become protected. The National Park Service is working to acquire Spirit Mound in South Dakota. Native beliefs about this lone hill in the midst of a vast expanse of flat prairie greatly intrigued the two explorers. On 25 August 1804, accompanied by nine expedition members and Lewis's dog Seaman, the captains crossed the Missouri River from their camp and hiked for nine miles in hot, humid weather to climb the mound and determine the reasons for its sacred attributes. The captains noted an abundance of insects, and hence bird life, but they sensed no spirits, despite the Indian name. Native Americans will be glad to have that site in public ownership
as a vindication of their oral traditions. Besides Spirit Mound, other sacred sites along the expedition route that need protection include the Smoking Place in the Bitterroots (Figure 9) and, along the Columbia River, the rock
Figure 9. The Smoking Place, Bitterroot Range, Idaho. (Photo by Andrew Gulliford, Center of Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College)
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The bicentennial will also shed new light on relations between the Corps of Discovery and Native peoples that may help confirm a number of Indian stories about the expedition. The Nez Perce claimed that when the corps delayed their departure because of deep snow in the spring of 1806 and had to stay on the Weippe Prairie an extra two weeks, William Clark fathered a son. This may be an Indian legend that is provable. Recent DNA evidence verified that Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings had a romantic liaison. As part of the forthcoming Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Exhibition sponsored by the Missouri Historical Society, a telescope from the Clark family went to Colonial Williamsburg for cleaning. Conservators found a red hair between two glass lenses. DNA testing may be possible, and if Nez Perce genealogy is accurate, and if a descendant of the supposed offspring of Captain Clark still lives, another story from the expedition could be proven. The journals frequently mentioned dalliances of other men, but perhaps the captains also enjoyed the attentions of Native American women.
At Fort Clatsop, so much fraternizing went on between the enlisted men and the local Indians that the captains felt obligated to close the doors to
CONTROVERSY AND THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN LEWIS
William Clark's grave can be found in the prestigious Belle Fountain Cemetery of St. Louis where the gravestone reads, “His life is written in the history of his country.” Well known in his own lifetime, and a significant figure in the history of the American West, Clark administered Indian affairs for all of the Upper Louisiana Territory from 1813 until his death in 1838. In the process he earned the respect of tribes who nicknamed him “the Red-headed Chief,” and referred to St. Louis as “Red Hair's Town.” Such respect, and the tremendous service he provided his country through most of his life, never brought William Clark a captaincy in the U.S. Army. While Thomas Jefferson's best efforts to confer an equal rank to Lewis and Clark
In contrast, Captain Lewis's remains lie in a remote area of rural Tennessee far from the Lewis and Clark trail, yet at a site integral to understanding the Lewis and Clark legacy in the nineteenth century. The site is important as a link to other Lewis and Clark sites in the east, specifically Monticello, Virginia, the home of Thomas Jefferson. The bicentennial will make the Lewis gravesite better known and incorporate it into the tourist pilgrimage, because understanding Lewis's death makes the contributions of his short, vital life more meaningful. Lewis's prolonged downfall into alcohol and drug addiction, his several suicidal attempts, and finally his violent death along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee, lend tragedy to the expedition's heroism.
The story of Lewis's death resonates deeply; as Stephen Ambrose has written, it “is the great mystery of Lewis's life.” Ambrose rightly argues that Lewis's suicide served to obscure the success of the expedition. Nineteenth-century scholars could not come to terms with Lewis's death, and so the value of the corps's contribution to American exploration diminished. According to Ambrose, “Lewis's suicide hurt his reputation. Had Cruzatte's bullet killed him, he would be honored today far more than he is. … [T]hrough most of the nineteenth century he was relatively ignored and in some danger of being forgotten.”[46]
Lewis's stone grave marker in Lewis County, Tennessee has recently been repointed and structurally assessed by the National Park Service whose experts pronounced the 1848 Tennessee monument to be sound. Designed to “express the difficulties, successes and violent termination of a life which was marked by bold enterprise, by manly courage and devoted patriotism,” the monument's broken shaft represents Lewis's premature death.[47]
Amateur historians claim Lewis was murdered by members of the Grinder clan, who owned the run-down cabin where he stayed that fateful night, but he died by his own hand. Besides the wide acceptance among Lewis's contemporaries that he died by his own hand, scholars are convinced that Lewis was clearly inclined toward suicide.[48] A forthcoming book by the Lewis interpreter Clay Jenkinson discusses Meriwether Lewis and the “Other,” an anthropological term often used to consider explorers and their ambiguous relationships with Native peoples. Jenkinson believes that after his return to St. Louis, Lewis failed to adjust back to “civilization”; indeed, he claimed never to have slept on a bed after returning from the journey but instead slept on wooden floors wrapped in his robes. Scholars also question Lewis's sanity and his relationship to other men. In one of Lewis's last letters, posted from New Orleans, he confessed that there was always an
Meriwether Lewis's botched management of the Louisiana Territory, his alcoholism and painful bouts of depression, his egregious failure to publish the journals, his difficult social adjustments after the expedition, and his poignant inability to impress marriageable women all point to a complex, tortured personality that tourists still debate but cannot fathom two centuries later. One explanation for his death has been described by the noted epidemiologist Reimert Thorolf Ravenholt, who believes Lewis contracted syphilis in Chief Cameahwait's camp the same evening he struck the bargain to procure horses. Ravenholt argues that the onslaught of neurosyphilis resulted in skin eruptions, weeks of convalescence, erratic behavior, poor financial decisions, febrile attacks with extreme disorientation, and at least two suicide attempts en route to Memphis.[50]
Few people visit Meriwether's grave on the historic Natchez Trace just south of Nashville, but at least the National Park Service, which manages the Lewis Monument, has resisted all efforts by self-seeking archaeologists to exhume Lewis to prove or disprove his suicide. Along the Natchez Trace, current National Park Service interpretation leaves open the matter of Captain Lewis's death but honors his life and his outstanding accomplishments. As befitting the bicentennial, visitors need to pay homage to his grave but let Lewis's remains stay buried in Tennessee soil. Let him receive in death the peace he could not find in life.[51]
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
An understanding of the corps and its significance at the bicentennial requires an understanding of landscape change. Twenty-first-century tourists must recognize what has been forever altered in the American West since 1806, and tourists must appreciate the captains not only as frontier patriots, but also as naturalists in elkskin who provided us with scientifically valid observations on a once diverse and healthy environment. The bicentennial commemoration must also be aware of its own environmental “footprint,” as tens of thousands of people follow in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark and seek out the same remote locales.
Positive and negative environmental impacts of the 2004–06 Lewis and
The conservation biologist Daniel Botkin's Passage of Discovery: The American Rivers Guide to the Missouri River of Lewis and Clark (1999) may well become the cornerstone for a major movement during the bicentennial to restore the Missouri River, one of the most dammed rivers in the West, and make portions of it free flowing. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri at great cost, but with few benefits. The Missouri was made safe for heavy barge traffic that never materialized. The dams generated hydroelectric power for markets that did not need it, and reservoirs stored irrigation water for crops that do not need to be grown. Now, however, the Corps of Engineers may turn over a green leaf and undo some of the needless damage. In both Passage of Discovery and Our Natural History: The Lessons of Lewis and Clark (1995), Botkin wrote superbly about the mighty force of the Missouri in spring flood and the roils of muddy water that forced the men of the Corps of Discovery to tug and pull on tow lines as they dragged their keelboat upriver in the spring of 1804. Their accounts of fish, animal, and bird life stand as vivid biological markers of all that has been lost, and as a challenge in the twenty-first century to restore natural wetlands cleared for agriculture. This may be a lasting legacy of the Lewis and Clark bicentennial—returning the Missouri River watershed into bird sanctuaries, rich river meanders, and Great Plains habitat for small mammals and white-tailed deer.[52]
Equally pressing are environmental issues related to survival of endangered stocks of salmon. In the Shoshone camp of Chief Cameahwait, Lewis tasted his first piece of broiled salmon and realized he was about to cross into the Columbia River system. For millennia salmon have been a sacrament for Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest. In little more than a century, however, logging, agriculture, urbanization, bad fishery science, and dams along the Columbia and Snake Rivers have diminished the salmon runs to tiny fractions of what they once were. When Lewis and Clark passed the great fishery at Celilo Falls, they marveled at its seemingly infinite supply of huge fish. The fishery was drowned in 1957, behind the waters of The Dalles Dam.[53]
It would be appropriate to combine the commemorative tourist bicentennial
Figure 10. Grandfather Tree at Lemhi Pass (Photo by Andrew Gulliford, Center of Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College)
[Full Size]
The bicentennial has already resulted in special issues in Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club, about wild and scenic places and the need to save special areas along the four-thousand-mile route.[54] The best places to visit are the upper Missouri wild and scenic river section in eastern Montana, which Lewis wrote about in grand detail; Lemhi Pass on the Montana and Idaho border along the Continental Divide; select sites like the Sinque Hole and Smoking Place deep in the Bitterroot Range of Idaho; steep trails on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge; and the last twenty miles of the wild, western Washington coast. Here tourists confront the dynamic wilderness landscape of Lewis and Clark where ecological integrity of place still exists. To stand on the top of Lemhi Pass at dawn, to be caught in a freezing late November rain in the Columbia Gorge, and to walk among the wild, windswept bracken on the Washington coast is to experience a new sense of awe for the captains and their tenacity. Here is an opportunity to come face to face with both ecological wonder and ecosystem loss.
For the bicentennial, dedicated Lewis and Clark enthusiasts will canoe the Clearwater River and paddle down the Snake to the Columbia. They will traverse the many locks and dams of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Sea kayakers will travel the Washington side of the Columbia passing sloughs, islands, and sheltered stretches of backwater. There is a proposal for a Lewis and Clark Columbia River water trail from Portland to Astoria for tourists who favor canoes, kayaks, and small shallow-draft boats. Thus, for seasoned paddlers, Lewis and Clark's journey will become a personal voyage of discovery.[55]
Using waterways to experience history is one more special aspect of the bicentennial, and these forms of ecotourism represent a whole new form of historical commemoration. A century ago local business leaders, Daughters of the American Revolution, and small-town promoters erected statues, parks, immense log buildings, and other edifices including the Astoria Column at Astoria, Oregon, which features scenes from the expedition. A century ago the heroes were commemorated for bringing the seeds of civilization, which they helped to sow; now they are being commemorated for the wild spaces they traversed, the rapids they shot, and their hardy endurance in crossing barren landscapes.[56]
In 1904 Americans revered the expedition for what changes the captains wrought. Hitting the tourist trail with Lewis and Clark a hundred years later is a different experience. In the twenty-first century Americans seek the solitude, the silence, and the darkness that come only from wild landscapes and undeveloped stretches of the American West. Tourists want to experience the Lewis and Clark landscape as the explorers saw and traversed it, and this longing suggests that we may have come of age as a nation. Perhaps at last we are willing to consider Manifest Destiny and western conquest not
NOTES
The author would like to thank Mark Spence for his editorial encouragement, and David and Linda Tozer for locating Oregon newspaper sources. Betty Bauer and Alfred J. R. Koumans read early drafts. Rex Ziak gets a thank-you for his enthusiasm and wisdom when it comes to Lewis and Clark in Washington state. Thanks also to Gary Ripley of Portland, Oregon, for designing a Smithsonian Associates study tour of Lewis and Clark sites in Montana and Idaho and for helping me lead the Smithsonian tours by horseback and canoe.
1. For an analysis of the 2004–06 Lewis and Clark bicentennial see the essays in “Lewis and Clark: 200 Years Later,” a feature edition of History News 56 (Spring 2001). A great deal of the interest in Lewis and Clark has been inspired by Stephen E. Ambrose's best-selling Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996); no doubt, large numbers of tourists will have copies by their side as they travel the expedition route. Other major texts include David Lavender, The Way to the Western Sea: Lewis and Clark Across the Continent (New York: Doubleday, 1988); and James P. Ronda, ed., Voyages of Discovery: Essays on the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1998). [BACK]
2. One of the author's favorite access points for the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail is at Howard Creek Picnic area in Montana along Lolo Pass. See Thomas Schmidt, The Lewis and Clark Trail (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1998). For a better understanding of Lewis and Clark's actual route with up-to-date maps, see Cathy Riggs Salter, “Lewis and Clark's Lost Missouri: A Mapmaker Re-Creates the River of 1804 and Changes the Course of History,” National Geographic Magazine, April 2002, 90–97. [BACK]
3. The upcoming commemoration is generating an avalanche of kitsch including Lewis and Clark shot glasses, replica telescopes, blue bead necklaces, baseball caps, refrigerator magnets, and the ubiquitous T-shirt. See Mark Spence, “Selling Out Lewis and Clark,” The Oregonian, 14 May 2000, B1; and, for a dissenting opinion, Chet Orloff, “Lewis and Clark bicentennial More Than a Party,” The Oregonian, 20 May 2000, B9. [BACK]
4. Two personal artistic voyages of discovery include paintings of the trail by Kenneth Holder, and a photo series by Mike Venso. See Jennifer Hattam, “An Artistic Adventure: Following the trail of Lewis and Clark with Paintbrush in Hand and History in Mind,” Sierra 85 (July–August 2000): 73–74; and Joan Abrams, “A Journey Recreated,” Lewiston Tribune, 6 August 1999, 1C. [BACK]
5. T. K. Whipple, Study Out the Land (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1943), 65. Whipple's lines serve as the epigraph for Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985). [BACK]
6. Most of the Lewis and Clark landscapes are on public land, but Gates of the Mountains is also protected by private easements. The establishment of the Gates of
7. There are numerous Lewis and Clark Historic Trail guidebooks and well illustrated reference books. Schmidt's Lewis and Clark Trail is the best small guide-book, but also see the excellent maps in Barbara Fifer and Vicky Soderberg, Along the Trail with Lewis and Clark ([Helena]: Montana Magazine, 1998). For excellent photos see Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns, Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998); Stephen E. Ambrose, Lewis & Clark: Voyage of Discovery (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1998), photographs by Sam Abell; and Thomas and Jeremy Schmidt, Saga of Lewis and Clark: Into the Unknown West (New York: Dorling Kindersley Press, 1999). [BACK]
8. Campfire conversation on a Smithsonian Associates’ study tour at the Triple O Outfitters Bitterroot Camp, July 2000. [BACK]
9. Marjorie Belk on the Smithsonian tour, Bitterroot, July 2000. [BACK]
10. Donald F. Nell and John E. Taylor, eds., Lewis and Clark in the Three River Valleys, Montana, 1805–1806 (Tucson: Patrice Press and Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Headwaters chapter, 1996). [BACK]
11. Patricia Limerick has coined the phrase “sustainable heroes” in speeches where she has discussed the need not only to tell the truth about history but also to find suitable role models who are not just Great White Men who own slaves or possess robber baron tendencies. [BACK]
12. For an intellectual history of the journey and attitudes toward geography and landscapes see Albert Furtwangler, Acts of Discovery: Visions of America in the Lewis and Clark Journals (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993). [BACK]
13. On the trials and tribulations of the Astorians, see James P. Ronda, Astoria & Empire (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 165–195. For an excellent discussion on discipline and morale within the corps, see Gunther Barth, ed., The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Selections from the Journals Arranged by Topic (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1998), 45–80. [BACK]
14. James P. Ronda, Lewis and Clark among the Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 2. [BACK]
15. Irving W. Anderson, “Sacajawea, Sacagawea, Sakakawea?” South Dakota History 8 (fall 1978): 305–311. [BACK]
16. Donna J. Kessler, The Making of Sacagawea: A Euro-American Legend (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1996), 65–98. [BACK]
17. Bernard DeVoto, ed., The Journals of Lewis and Clark (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953), 294. [BACK]
18. For background information on the Charbonneau family, see Irving W. Anderson, “A Charbonneau Family Portrait: Profiles of the American West,” American West 17 (March–April 1980): 4–13, 58–64. This article was republished in 1992 by the Fort Clatsop Historical Association for sale to tourists. [BACK]
19. Jeannine Aversa, “The Search for Sacagawea,” The Oregonian, 28 December 2000, B1–2. [BACK]
20. I worked with the Eastern Shoshone Cultural Center and the Skaggs Foundation of Oakland, California to erect an interpretive plaque at the Sacagawea Cemetery near Fort Washakie, Wyoming. The plaque was dedicated on Memorial Day
21. Ronda, Among the Indians, 256–259. [BACK]
22. See Roberta Conner's chapter 12 in this collection. In October 2000, eighteen tribes with their own histories of Lewis and Clark met at Lewiston, Idaho to discuss the upcoming celebration and to make recommendations to numerous federal agencies. [BACK]
23. Ibid. [BACK]
24. No author makes this clearer than Ronda in Among the Indians. Though there are three different major Lewis and Clark exhibitions scheduled for the bicentennial, only the National Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Exhibition being produced by the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis will focus on the corps from an Indian perspective. For historical context see Anthony Wallace, Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1999). To understand Indian concepts of landscape and the naming of rocks, trees, and fishing places see Carolyn M. Baun and Richard Lewis, eds., The First Oregonians (Portland: Oregon Council for the Humanities, 1991); and Richard White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 18–23. [BACK]
25. Archaeological survey work includes verifying the corps’ route on the Lolo trail by Historical Research Associates of Missoula, Montana. The National Trust for Historic Preservation purchased in 1999 a site near Helena, Montana that may be the original September 1805 campsite known as “Travelers Rest.” The corps returned there in 1806 on its speedy route home. [BACK]
26. Richard Hill, “Hunting for the Explorers’ Fort,” The Oregonian, 14 November 2001, B1. [BACK]
27. Dustin Solberg, “A Lewis and Clark Revival Hits the Northwest,” High Country News, 27 September 1999, http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=5275 (25 June 2002). [BACK]
28. Rick Bella, “Gorge May Finally Get a Front Entrance,” The Oregonian, 26 December 2000, B1. [BACK]
29. See Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail—National Park Service Administrative Update, no. 13 (October 1999) and no. 14 (March 2000). One of many lasting contributions of the commemoration could be respect for Native peoples and preservation of tribal historic and sacred sites they deem significant. Dollars spent for new tourist visitor centers should be matched for tribal preservation issues and respect for Indian sacred places. [BACK]
30. Though there are some errors in the text, the standard book on Lewis and Clark's biological achievements is Paul Russell Cutright, Lewis and Clark, Pioneering Naturalists (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1969). Also see Ron Fisher, “Lewis and Clark: Naturalist-Explorers,” National Geographic Magazine, October 1998, 76–93 Plants plucked by Lewis and Clark and held by the Academy of National Sciences Museum in Philadelphia will be displayed in Idaho in 2005–06. Also see the special Homes and Gardens of the Northwest edition of The Oregonian titled “Lewis and Clark: The Legacy Grows,” 24 May 2001 (http://www.nwrac.org/lewis-clark/oregonian [25 June 2002]). [BACK]
31. Midori Raymore, technical editor, “Corps of Discovery II Update,” The Corps
32. Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983–99), 6:33. Ziak has other grand plans as well. Along with the author Dayton Duncan, he believes that democracy in America begins not with the framing of the U.S. Constitution, but with the first vote in American history in which a black (Clark's slave, York) and a woman (Sacagawea) voted as equalswith white men to determine where to spend the winter. At the spot near where the corps voted and where its members carved their names in trees now long gone, Ziak would place stone tree trunks etched with the names and dates of birth and death for each member of the corps. On quiet Baker Bay where the Field brothers shot a huge California condor with an eleven-foot wingspan, Ziak would like to see a life-size sculpture of the men holding up the almost mythical bird. [BACK]
33. Erin Middlewood, “Washington Seeks Lewis-Clark Park,” The Oregonian, 24 December 2000, A1, 12. [BACK]
34. Jonathan Nelson, “Lewis and Clark Feud Resolved,” The Oregonian, 19 May 2000, D11; and Karen Mockler, “Lewis and Clark Effort Takes Unified Stance,” The Daily Astorian, 19 May 2000, 1. Ziak is working on his own book, which will cover the expedition's movements from 7 November to 7 December 1805. [BACK]
35. For the definitive canine history see Ernest S. Osgood and Donald Jackson, “The Lewis and Clark Expedition's Newfoundland Dog: Two Monographs,” supplement to [Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation's official publication] We Proceeded On, no. 10 (September 1990). Of the many children's books and magazines about Lewis and Clark see “Lewis and Clark: Buffalo tongue for lunch … mmmmm good?” Kids Discover (New York, 1998). [BACK]
36. Reenactor friends greeted me at the Nez Perce National Historic Park in Spalding, Idaho with a present of a replica Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery lead powder canister. Lewis ingeniously devised the lead container to carry gunpowder and when it was empty the container could be melted down into bullets. I truly appreciate the gift, but getting it home through the Portland International Airport was not easy. It looks and feels almost exactly like a bomb! [BACK]
37. Robert B. Betts, In Search Of York: The Slave Who Went to the Pacific with Lewis and Clark, rev. ed. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2000). [BACK]
38. While giving a Lewis and Clark lecture at New Harmony, Indiana in February 2000 for Harmonifest, I met a Droulliard descendant with plenty to say about family history and muskrat recipes. He offered to cook up a batch for me, but I told him I was holding out for more beaver tail. A group is working to publish a genealogy of the trek's descendants (see Peter Sleeth, “Mapping Descendants of Lewis and Clark,” The Oregonian, 10 December 2001, 1). [BACK]
39. The Bureau of Land Management manages a visitor center and 473 acres near Pompeys Pillar, a site visited and named by William Clark on 25 July 1806. [BACK]
40. Peter Sleeth, “Overgrown Grave Site Breathes Life into State's Expedition History,” The Oregonian, 3 May 2000; and “Paying Tribute to Expedition's ‘Pomp,’” The Oregonian, 25 June 2000. Also see Donald Olson, “On the Trail of Sacagawea's son,” Sunset, June 2001, 48–49. President William Clinton declared Pompeys Pillar a national monument, but an agricultural company wants to erect four 150-foot-high
41. Only Idaho has so far taken Indian interpretation seriously. The Idaho Department of Commerce has produced a handsome color pamphlet titled “Lewis and Clark and the Native Peoples.” [BACK]
42. Another fitting bicentennial tribute in 2004 would be to return Native American bones to the volcanic soils of the Columbia Plateau. Archaeologists disinterred tribal dead during the hasty salvage archaeology that preceded dam construction on the Columbia River. Those remains should respectfully go back to the earth. Grave goods now on display should also be reburied, including original Thomas Jefferson peace medals dug up from burials along the Columbia. [BACK]
43. See Andrew Gulliford, Sacred Objects and Sacred Places: Preserving Tribal Traditions (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2000); see 74–75 for photos of the Smoking Place and how Clark described it. [BACK]
44. Erin Middlewood, “80 Chinook Gather at Park in Rally for Recognition from Government,” The Oregonian, 17 June 2000, D4; and Angie Chuang, “Native American, Mayor in Dispute on Lewis and Clark Commemoration,” The Oregonian, 8 November 2000, C11. Karen Mockler, “Chinook Tribe Recognized,” High Country News, 12 February 2001, 5; also see Courtenay Thompson, “ Chinook Quest Opens New Era,” and “Chinook Tribe wins Struggle for Federal Recognition,” The Oregonian, 7 January 2001, A9, 17. On the Bush administration's actions, see Office of the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, “Final Determination Declines Chinook Recognition,” Bureau of Indian Affairs press release, 5 July 2002, http://www.doi.gov/news/chinook.htm (15 July 2002); and Bryan Denson, “Chinook Stripped of Tribal Recognition,” The Oregonian, 6 July 2002, A8. [BACK]
45. Rick Bella, “Explorer William Clark will be promoted to rank of captain posthumously,” The Oregonian, 16 January 2001, B1, 8. Additional honors for Clark may include naming the summit of Tillamook Head in Oregon after him. See Peter Sleeth, “Making a Mountain Out of a Headland,” The Oregonian, 18 June 2001, 1. [BACK]
46. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, 468, 474. [BACK]
47. Midori Raymore, technical editor, “Restoration of the Meriwether Lewis Monument Completed,” The Corps Explorer 17 (January 2001): 9–10. [BACK]
48. See recently published letters included in James J. Holmberg, Dear Brother: Letters of William Clark to Jonathan Clark (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). [BACK]
49. Dr. Alfred J. R. Koumans, personal letter to author, 3 November 2000. Other evidence for suicide includes the obituary of the slave who gave Meriwether Lewis his last cup of water; see Jill K. Garrett, “Historical Sketches of Hickman County, Tennessee,” Hickman Pioneer, 5 April 1878, 6. The excerpt reads, “Peter Grinder, a colored man, was the property of Robert Grinder, Sen., and was at an early day our village blacksmith. He came from what is now Lewis County and with his master then lived at the Grinder stand, on the Natchez Trace, where the monument is erected over the grave of Gov. Lewis, and was the boy of all work at the hotel; was with Gov'r Lewis during his stay at the hotel, and the first one that saw him after he had committed the rash act of self-destruction. He was, like most of his race, superstitious, and did not like to talk of the event.” Also see Elliott Coues, ed. History of the Expedition Under the Command of Lewis and Clark (1893; reprint, New York: Dover, 1965), 1:xv–xxii. [BACK]
50. Reimert Thorolf Ravenholt, “Triumph then Despair: The Tragic Death of Meriwether Lewis,” Epidemiology (1994); and “Trail's End for Meriwether Lewis: The Role of Syphilis,” Cosmos (1997). Also see discussion on the History News Network for 8 April 2002; and Ravenholt's essay “Did Stephen Ambrose Sanitize Meriwether Lewis's Death?” [BACK]
51. Judge Thomas A. Higgens of Nashville, Tennessee has ruled that the remains of Meriwether Lewis are not to be disturbed despite an exhumation request by Dr. James E. Starrs and a proposal supposedly supported by 160 Lewis family members. [BACK]
52. Daniel B. Botkin, Our Natural History: The Lessons of Lewis and Clark (New York: Perigree Books, 1995), and Passage of Discovery: The American Rivers Guide to the Missouri River of Lewis and Clark (New York: Perigree Books, 1999). For another perspective on environmental change along the trail, see Benjamin Long, Backtracking: By Foot, Canoe and Subaru along the Lewis and Clark Trail (Portland: Sasquatch Books, 2000). Also see Traci Watson, “Missouri River Levels May Change,” USA Today, 30 November 2000, 11A. [BACK]
53. See Tim Palmer, The Snake River: Window to the West (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1991); Daniel L. Boxberger, To Fish in Common (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000); Lisa Mighetto and Wesley Ebel, Saving the Salmon: A History of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Efforts to Protect Anadramous Fish on the Columbia and Snake Rivers (Seattle: Historical Research Associates, 1994); and Charles Wilkinson, Messages from Frank's Landing: A Story of Salmon, Treaties, and the Indian Way (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000). [BACK]
54. Page Stegner, “Beyond the Sunset: Two Centuries after Lewis and Clark, A Chance to Rediscover the American West,” Sierra 85 (May–June 2000): 44–59. The Plum Creek timber company, which is cutting timber too close to a trail easement, has endangered the trail in Montana. [BACK]
55. Terry Richard, “Pioneer Trail: Lower Columbia Offers a Historic Ride,” The Oregonian, 17 October 1996, D2. To understand today's dedicated canoeists see Robin Cody, Voyage of a Summer Sun: Canoeing the Columbia River (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1995). In addition to canoeists following Lewis and Clark, bicyclists will travel from Fort Clatsop to Hartford, Ill. (Katy Muldoon, “Cyclist Ready to Peddle in Pioneers’ Path,” The Oregonian, 14 October 2001, E8). [BACK]
56. For discussions of the centennial celebrations of Lewis and Clark, see the essays by Mark Spence and Jonathan Spencer in this collection. New books about Lewis and Clark and the trail will chronicle landscape change along with the authors’ and photographers’ perspectives. The University of North Texas photography professor Brent Phelps is retracing the trail (Joseph B. Frazier, “On the Trail of Lewis and Clark,” The Oregonian, 20 January 2002, A21). Also see James R. Fazio, Across the Snowy Ranges: The Lewis and Clark Expedition in Idaho and Western Montana (Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 2001); and Long, Backtracking. [BACK]