Through a retelling of Lewis's life, from his resourceful youth to the brilliance of his leadership and accomplishments as a man, Patricia Tyson Stroud shows that Jefferson's unsubstantiated claim of his protégé's suicide is the long-held bitter root at the heart of the Meriwether Lewis story.

In this sweeping adventure story, Stephen E. Ambrose, the bestselling author of D-Day, presents the definitive account of one of the most momentous journeys in American history. Ambrose follows the Lewis and Clark Expedition from Thomas Jefferson's hope of finding a waterway to the Pacific, through the heart-stopping moments of the actual trip, to Lewis' lonely demise on the Natchez Trace. Along the way, Ambrose shows us the American West as Lewis saw it -- wild, awsome, and pristinely beautiful. Undaunted Courage is a stunningly told action tale that will delight readers for generations. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a voyage up the Missouri River to the Rockies, over the mountains, down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean, and back. Lewis was the perfect choice. He endured incredible hardships and saw incredible sights, including vast herds of buffalo and Indian tribes that had had no previous contact with white men. He and his partner, Captain William Clark, made the first map of the trans-Mississippi West, provided invaluable scientific data on the flora and fauna of the Louisiana Purchase territory, and established the American claim to Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Ambrose has pieced together previously unknown information about weather, terrain, and medical knowledge at the time to provide a colorful and realistic backdrop for the expedition. Lewis saw the North American continent before any other white man; Ambrose describes in detail native peoples, weather, landscape, science, everything the expedition encountered along the way, through Lewis's eyes. Lewis is supported by a rich variety of colorful characters, first of all Jefferson himself, whose interest in exploring and acquiring the American West went back thirty years. Next comes Clark, a rugged frontiersman whose love for Lewis matched Jefferson's. There are numerous Indian chiefs, and Sacagawea, the Indian girl who accompanied the expedition, along with the French-Indian hunter Drouillard, the great naturalists of Philadelphia, the French and Spanish fur traders of St. Louis, John Quincy Adams, and many more leading political, scientific, and military figures of the turn of the century. This is a book about a hero. This is a book about national unity. But it is also a tragedy. When Lewis returned to Washington in the fall of 1806, he was a national hero. But for Lewis, the expedition was a failure. Jefferson had hoped to find an all-water route to the Pacific with a short hop over the Rockies-Lewis discovered there was no such passage. Jefferson hoped the Louisiana Purchase would provide endless land to support farming-but Lewis discovered that the Great Plains were too dry. Jefferson hoped there was a river flowing from Canada into the Missouri-but Lewis reported there was no such river, and thus no U.S. claim to the Canadian prairie. Lewis discovered the Plains Indians were hostile and would block settlement and trade up the Missouri. Lewis took to drink, engaged in land speculation, piled up debts he could not pay, made jealous political enemies, and suffered severe depression. High adventure, high politics, suspense, drama, and diplomacy combine with high romance and personal tragedy to make this outstanding work of scholarship as readable as a novel.

Provides facts and information about the travels of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and their Corps of Discovery and its importance in relation to Native Americans and the westward expansion in the United States.

Strange as it may seem today, William Clark—best known as the American explorer who joined Meriwether Lewis in leading an overland expedition to the Pacific—has many more claims to fame than his legendary Voyage of Discovery, dramatic and daring though that venture may have been. Although studies have been published on virtually every aspect of the Lewis and Clark journey, Wilderness Journey is the first comprehensive account of Clark’s lengthy and multifaceted life. Following Lewis and Clark’s great odyssey, Clark’s service as a soldier, Indian diplomat, and government official placed him at center stage in the national quest to possess and occupy North America’s vast western hinterland and prefigured U.S. policies in the region. In his personal life, Clark had to overcome challenges no less daunting than those he faced in the public arena. Foley pays careful attention to the family and business dimensions of Clark’s private world, adding richness to this well-rounded and revealing portrait of the man and his courageous life. Coinciding with the bicentennial in 2004 of the departure of Lewis and Clark’s famed Corps of Discovery, Wilderness Journey fills a major gap in scholarship. Intended for the general reader, as well as for specialists in the field, this fascinating book provides a well-balanced and thorough account of one of America’s most significant frontiersmen.

This new full-length biography of Meriwether Lewis is presented within the context of the turbulent times of the early AmericanRepublic. The author discusses intrigues to seize the Floridas and Louisiana from Spain with the help of France or Britain, and makes the case for General James Wilkinson assassinating General Anthony Wayne to become the commanding general of the U.S. Army. She proposes that the deadlock in the presidential election of 1800 between Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson was caused by a British faction of Federalists who planned to invade Louisiana and Mexico if Burr were elected president. Three parts of the conspiracy are identified: a secret military base on the Ohio, Cantonment Wilkinsonville, where 700 U.S. Army troops were stationed; the Philip Nolan filibuster into Texas; and British naval support. After Jefferson's election, Lewis lived in the White House as his confidential aide. In 1803, he left the White House as the leader of an elite army unit to reinforce America's claim to the Pacific Northwest. When he returned, Jefferson appointed him governor of LouisianaTerritory based in St. Louis with orders to remove followers of Aaron Burr from positions of power and influence. Within two years Meriwether Lewis was dead at the age of 35, killed by an assassin's bullets in 1809. The case is made that General Wilkinson and John Smith T., a wealthy lead mine operator, were the organizers of his assassination. Their motive was to prevent Lewis from stopping another filibuster expedition into Mexico in 1810. This biography of Lewis offers a very different interpretation of his character and achievements, supporting the idea that, if he had lived, Lewis was in line to become president of the United States. It presents a detailed account of his activities as a loyal Jefferson supporter, presidential aide, leader of a continental expedition, and governor of LouisianaTerritory.

"An extensive study of the emergence of ethnology and ethnography, and how theories in Europe and Russia during the eighteenth century experienced a paradigm shift with the work of Franz Boas starting in 1886"--