Abstract
This essay maps the fall and rise of Lewis and Clark by exploring what happened to the explorers following the return of the Corps of Discovery to St. Louis in September 1806. Charting the personal descent of Meriwether Lewis and the political undoing of William Clark, the article ties the sad fate of the cocaptains to the far sadder fate of race relations on the American frontier. Turning, then, from the lives of Lewis and Clark after the expedition to their afterlives, it tracks how, in the years since the deaths of Lewis and Clark, Americans have forgotten and now remember them, how the cocaptains have been joined by Sacagawea and York in the American imagination, and what this resurrection tells us about them—and us.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Jefferson quoted in Betty Houchin Winfield, “Public Perception of the Expedition,” in Alan Taylor, ed., Lewis and Clark: Journey to Another America (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 2003), 187.
Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis, June 20, 1803, in Gunther Barth, ed., The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Selections from the Journals Arranged by Topic (Boston, MA: Bedford, 1998)
Anthony F. C. Wallace, Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999), 266
James P. Ronda, Finding the West: Explorations with Lewis and Clark (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2001), 12
Donald Jackson, Thomas Jefferson and the Stony Mountains: Exploring the West from Monticello (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1981).
I discuss the political situation that Lewis confronted in the Louisiana Territory in detail in Stephen Aron, American Confluence: The Missouri Frontier from Borderland to Border State (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005)
Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis, June 20, 1803, in Barth, ed., The Lewis and Clark Expedition, quotation on 20; Clark quoted in Buckley, “William Clark,” 113. On the education of Lewis and Clark and their reeducation from St. Louis merchants, see James Ronda, Lewis and Clark among the Indians (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 1–16
John Logan Allen, “Imagining the West: The View from Monticello,” in James P. Ronda, ed., Thomas Jefferson and the Changing West (Albuquerque, NM and St. Louis, MO: University of New Mexico Press and Missouri Historical Society Press, 1997), 3–23
William E. Foley, “The Lewis and Clark Expedition’s Silent Partners: The Chouteau Brothers of St. Louis,” Missouri Historical Review 77 (January 1983): 131–146
William E. Foley and C. David Rice, The First Choteaus: River Barons of Early St. Louis (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 89–96.
Meriwether Lewis, February 20, 1806, in Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 13 vols. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001)
Rufus King to Christopher Gore, September 6, 1803, in Charles R. King, ed., The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, 6 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1897)
William E. Foley, “James A. Wilkinson: Territorial Governor,” Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society 25 (October 1968): 14–15
Bernard Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction: Jeffersonian Philanthropy and the American Indian (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1973), 245–50.
Lewis quoted in Lynn Morrow, “Trader William Gilliss and Delaware Migration in Southern Missouri,” Missouri Historical Review 75 (January 1981): 151
Frederick Bates to Richard Bates, July 14, 1809, in Thomas Maitland Marshall, ed., The Life and Papers of Frederick Bates, 2 vols. (St. Louis, MO: Missouri Historical Society, 1926)
William E. Foley, “After the Applause: William Clark’s Failed 1820 Gubernatorial Campaign,” Gateway Heritage 24 (Fall 2003-Winter 2004): 104–11
Jerome O. Steffen, “William Clark: A New Perspective of Missouri Territorial Politics, 1813–1820,” Missouri Historical Review 47 (January 1973): 171–97.
Clark quoted in Jerome O. Steffen, William Clark: Jeffersonian Man on the Frontier (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977), 150.
William Clark to Secretary of War, March 1, 1826, in Walter Lowrie and Walter Franklin, eds., American State Papers, Class 11, Indian Affairs, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, 1834)
Landon Y. Jones, Jr., William Clark and the Shaping of the American West (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004), 296–334.
Virginia Scharff, Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement, and the West (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 11–33
Thomas P. Slaughter, Exploring Lewis and Clark: Reflections on Men and Wilderness (New York: Knopf, 2003), 86–113
Laura McCall, “Sacagawea: A Historical Enigma,” in Kriste Lindenmeyer, ed., Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Liues: Women in American History (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2000), 39–54
Robert B. Betts, In Search of York: The Slave Who Went to the Pacific with Lewis and Clark (Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2000, rev. ed.), 135–43
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2007 Organization of American Historians
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Aron, S. (2007). The Afterlives of Lewis and Clark. In: Jones, J. (eds) The Best American History Essays 2007. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-06439-4_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-06439-4_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-4039-7660-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-06439-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)