Exploring Lewis and Clark: Reflections on Men and Wilderness

by Thomas P. Slaughter

This provocative work challenges traditional accounts of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s expedition across the continent and back again. Uncovering deeper meanings in the explorers’ journals and lives, Exploring Lewis and Clark exposes their self-perceptions and deceptions, and how they interacted with those who traveled with them, the people they discovered along the way, the animals they hunted, and the land they walked across. The book discovers new heroes and brings old ones into historical focus.

Thomas P. Slaughter interrogates the explorers’ dreams, how they wrote and what they aimed to possess, their interactions with animals, Indians, and each other, their sense of themselves as leaders and men, and why they feared that they had failed their nation and President. Slaughter’s Lewis and Clark are more confused, frightened, courageous, and flawed than in previous accounts. They are more human, their expedition more dramatic, and thus their story is more revealing about our own relationships to history and myth.

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 14, 2003

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

An in depth look at the accounts of Lewis and Clark's expedition. The author frequently reverts to pure speculation which often reveals more about the biases and beliefs of the Midwestern author/professor than it does about Lewis and Clark.

[Greg Van Vorhis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got so lost and bored in the first 3 pages that I quickly lost interest. I was supposed to be reading about Lewis and Clark, not myths and legends.

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 1 out of 5]

P48 The journals are generally read as fonts of fact rather than as honed reflections designed for effect.

It makes sense that Lewis and Clark wrote what they wanted the public to read, leaving out some events and embellishing others in the published journals, but some of this author's arguments for the "real" story seem a bit theatrical.

For example, the explorers certainly did not expect to be the first White Americans to see the Pacific Coast, but in the chapter Being First, Slaughter suggests that they were sorely disappointed at their "failure" to reach the coast before other "civilized" men, hiding their "inadequacy" from their journals. How could that be when the Pacific Coast was well known to those in the East by the time the Corps of Discovery embarked from St. Louis?

In his chapter Writing First, Slaughter is shocked - shocked, I tell you - that the journal keepers sometimes wrote about what happened on a given day by using the word "today", when in reality they were writing about the events a few days later. This is blatant falsification of official documents, according to this author. If they did this, how can we trust anything at all in those journals?

Perhaps this "close reading" of the Lewis and Clark journals is more sensationalism than insight.

[Jason · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the idea of this book - and I think "debunking" some of the myths about L&C and the expedition would be a great book...but this is NOT it. It is stale and pedantic and worse - while there may be some good ideas and findings somewhere in this slim book...it is so hodgepodge and poorly put together...it almost seems like random paragraphs slapped together to finish an overdue term paper.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating, uncompromising look at the Journals of Lewis & Clark. It performs a perfect form-tackle on an issue I have questioned for a long time -- the headlong rush by historians and educators to value "primary sources" to a fault.

Let's face it, when somebody writes something down, even as a first-person observer, they are viewing the event from their particular viewpoint, which includes their own interests, biases, perspectives, etc. As a result, just as we would naturally take most autobiographies for what they are (skewed in the direction that the writer/subject would like other people to know or remember), we too should consider the journals of the Lewis & Clark expedition. And up to now, they have been given a free pass through the past 100 years of historical interpretation.

I would submit that this close reading of the journals and should be considered authentic history rather than revisionist history, which I'm sure lots of folks will tag it. Notre Dame history profession Thomas Slaughter does a real service with this book -- not undermining Lewis & Clark, but showing that they were human, with egos and shortcomings that are generally glossed over in most of the hundreds of books written about the Corps of Discovery.

[Robert Ortiz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible read. I am surprised that a professor of history at Notre Dame would write something as one sided as this. Regret reading it and it has no place on my bookshelf

[A.V.]

Chapter 5: Porivo's Story (controversy over Sacagawea's date of death, 1812 vs 1884)

[Tom DeLoughrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hate to not finish a book and this one tested me many times!

[Lauretta · Rating 2 out of 5]

Definitely a book to be read after reading Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage.

[JC · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm sure the expeditions journals were biased but I'm not sure they were as biased as this.