In 1807, a year after Lewis and Clark returned from the shores of the Pacific, groups of trappers and hunters began to drift West to tap the rich stocks of beaver and to trade with the Native nations. Colorful and eccentric, bold and adventurous, mountain men such as John Colter, George Drouillard, Hugh Glass, Andrew Henry, and Kit Carson found individual freedom and financial reward in pursuit of pelts. Their knowledge of the country and its inhabitants served the first mapmakers, the army, and the streams of emigrants moving West in ever-greater numbers. The mountain men laid the foundations for their own displacement, as they led the nation on a westward course that ultimately spread the American lands from sea to sea.

Lewis and Clark's Expedition from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean was the first governmental exploration of the "Great West." The history of this undertaking is the personal narrative and official report of the first white men who crossed the continent between and British and Spanish possessions.

Spanish, British, and French explorers reached the Pacific Northwest before Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. The American captains benefited from those predecessors, even carrying with them copies of their published accounts. James Cook, George Vancouver, and Alexander Mackenzie--and to a lesser extent fur traders John Meares and Robert Gray--directly and indirectly influenced the expedition. Based on new material as well as revised essays from popular history journals, Lewis and Clark Reframed examines several curious and seemingly inexplicable aspects of the journey after the Corps of Discovery crossed the Rocky Mountains. The captains’ journals demonstrate that they relied on Mackenzie’s 1801 Voyages from Montreal as a trail guide. They borrowed field techniques and favorite literary expressions--at times plagiarizing entire paragraphs. Cook’s literature also informed the pair, and his naming conventions evoke fresh ideas about an enduring expedition mystery--the identity of the two or three journalists whose records are now missing. Additional journal text analysis dispels the notion that the captains were equals, despite expedition lore. Lewis claimed all the epochal discoveries for himself, and in one of his more memorable passages, drew on Mackenzie for inspiration. Parallels between Cook’s and other exploratory accounts offer evidence that like many long-distance voyagers, Lewis grappled with homesickness. His friendship with Mahlon Dickerson lends insights into Lewis’s shortcomings and eventual undoing. As secretary of the navy, Dickerson drew from Lewis’s troubled past to impede the 1840s ocean expedition set to emulate Cook and solidify America’s claim, through Lewis and Clark, to the region.

More than sixty paintings, drawings, and prints inspired during the sixty-five years of exploration in the West after the Corps of Discovery completed its epic journey are featured in this collection of historical artwork by George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, Seth Eastman, Charles Bird King, and other notable artists of the nineteenth-century American West.

“Combines adventure, mystery, and tragedy . . . a ‘Who’s Who’ of explorers who opened the pathway for an ocean-to-ocean America.” —St. Joseph News-Press (Missouri) The story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition has been told many times. But what became of the thirty-three members of the Corps of Discovery once the expedition was over? The expedition ended in 1806, and the final member of the corps passed away in 1870. In the intervening decades, members of the corps witnessed the momentous events of the nation they helped to form—from the War of 1812 to the Civil War and the opening of the transcontinental railroad. Some of the expedition members went on to hold public office; two were charged with murder. Many of the explorers could not resist the call of the wild and continued to adventure forth into America’s western frontier. Engagingly written and based on exhaustive research, The Fate of the Corps chronicles the lives of the fascinating men (and one woman) who opened the American West. “A fascinating afterword to the expedition . . . demands inclusion in the canon of essential Lewis and Clark books.”—Seattle Post-Intelligencer “Succinct, clear style . . . The diverse fates of the members of the expedition . . . give the feel of a Greek epic.”—Santa Fe New Mexican

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.

Particularly valuable for Ronda's inclusion of pertinent background information about the various tribes and for his ethnological analysis. An appendix also places the Sacagawea myth in its proper perspective. Gracefully written, the book bridges the gap between academic and general audiences.OCo"Choice""

When Meriwether Lewis began shopping for supplies and firearms to take on the Corps of Discovery’s journey west, his first stop was a federal arsenal. For the following twenty-nine months, from the time the Lewis and Clark expedition left Camp Dubois with a cannon salute in 1804 until it announced its return from the West Coast to St. Louis with a volley in 1806, weapons were a crucial component of the participants’ tool kit. In Weapons of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, historian Jim Garry describes the arms and ammunition the expedition carried and the use and care those weapons received. The Corps of Discovery’s purposes were to explore the Missouri and Columbia river basins, to make scientific observations, and to contact the tribes along the way for both science and diplomacy. Throughout the trek, the travelers used their guns to procure food—they could consume around 350 pounds of meat a day—and to protect themselves from dangerous animals. Firearms were also invaluable in encounters with Indian groups, as guns were one of the most sought-after trade items in the West. As Garry notes, the explorers’ willingness to demonstrate their weapons’ firepower probably kept meetings with some tribes from becoming violent. The mix of arms carried by the expedition extended beyond rifles and muskets to include pistols, knives, espontoons, a cannon, and blunderbusses. Each chapter focuses on one of the major types of weapons and weaves accounts from the expedition journals with the author’s knowledge gained from field-testing the muskets and rifles he describes. Appendices tally the weapons carried and explain how the expedition’s flintlocks worked. Weapons of the Lewis and Clark Expedition integrates original research with a lively narrative. This encyclopedic reference will be invaluable to historians and weaponry aficionados.

If life is an adventure, no one will ever live it more fully than Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to explore the rumored Northwest Passage, Lewis and Clark instead discovered a seemingly endless land whose very existence foretold a future America infinitely different from what had been imagined. May 2004 marks the beginning of a two-and-a-half year bicentennial celebration of their incredible journey and its significance to the history of America. Against staggering odds, these unique men inspired such absolute loyalty in each other and in their group that they are still widely regarded as the most successful leadership team in American history. Today's leadership adventures unfold in the rugged terrain of business, and who better than Lewis and Clark to lead us through its toughest challenges? Their story resonates with business leaders of our time because they had to: * Think strategically * Make tough and timely decisions * Surround themselves with good people * Manage resources * Motivate the team * Deal with different cultures * Assimilate information from many sources * Balance long-term goals against short-term realities * Learn from their mistakes * Try new approaches Most importantly, they had to persevere and change course in the face of adversity. Their lessons will inspire business leaders to take their teams to new adventures of great discovery.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the United States expedition to cross the newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase. Sabin's novel follows the expedition as it made its way westward and crossed the Continental Divide of the Americas before reaching the Pacific Coast.