The Literature of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: A Bibliography and Essays by Stephen Dow Beckham, Doug Erickson, Jeremy Skinner, Paul Merchant

Abstract

and frequently is, a retroactive process. As an elaboration of thispoint,Wrobel contends that when immigrants moved froman impacted area toone of "stock mythic imagery,"theyfrequently clung to thehoary legends of theirnew place. Wrobel haswritten an importantbook. How significant will be leftto futurehistorians of the West who probe these same paths, some hidden, somewell blazed.Wrobel concedes asmuch when hewarns at thebeginning thathis book was in tended as a surveyof the "contours" ofwestern promoters' offers and the pioneers' reminiscences. The Literature of theLewis and Clark Expedition: A Bibliography and Essays Essays by Stephen Dow Beckham, bibliography by Doug Erickson, JeremySkinner, and Paul Merchant Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Ore., 2003. Illustrations, photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 315 pages. $75.00 cloth. Reviewed by David L. Nicandri Washington StateHistorical Society,Tacoma This is the type of Bo o K one imagines Thomas Jefferson would have found ap pealing: a Linnean-like catalogue of specimens, in thiscase thepublished literatureof theCorps of Discovery. This term, we learnhere, though the ubiquitous moniker for the enterprise, never ac tually appeared in the original documentary record but rather was coined and first appeared as the subtitle to Sergeant Patrick Gass's unau thorized but first-out-of-the-gate account, pub lished in 1807. The heft and production values of thisvol ume are amarvel, approximated inmy own ex perience onlyby the recent Atlas oftheLewis and ClarkExpedition, editedbyGaryMoulton, orKarl Bodmers America. The book isorganized into a seriesof essaysand attendantbibliographies. The latterare expanded so as to identifythose items tobe found specificallyintheholdings of theLewis and Clark College library. Many of these came to the institutionthrough theprodigious efforts of several regional bookmen, most notably Roger Wendlick. Students of the expedition will find thefirst two chapters ? analyses of the expedition's trav eling library and of theearliestexpedition-related accounts? tobe the most valuable in termsof interpretivecontent. StephenDow Beckham, the essayist forthepublication team,provides a fas cinatingreconciliationof journal entries with pas sages from those books in the libraryLewis put together that likely inspired particular observa tionsmade in the field. In so doing, Beckham seems,oddly, tohave overlooked the most obvi ous instance of the traveling library'sability to informthenarrative contentofLewis andClark's journals: theCorps ofDiscovery's multiple ad aptations of Alexander Mackenzie's triumphal scrawl of exploratory accomplishment at Bella Coolaini793. The remainingfivechapters explicate thefas cinating tusslebetween Lewis and thepublisher of Gass's account (a chapter unto itself), apocry phal narratives, the several editions of the jour nals, and two chapterson general histories of the expedition. The firstof thesechapters on general histories takes the reader through thecentennial era, or 1905,while the concluding chapter is a twentieth-century checklist.The latteristheonly one without thebenefit of an accompanying es say by Beckham, which would have been wel come.An interpretive synthesis ofLewis andClark 438 OHQ vol. 104, no. 3 literatureduring what can now be termed the "Moulton era" (1981-present) could have been the narrative capstone of an otherwise exhaust inglycomplete tome. Bibliophiles will pour over thepages of this book for generations, and, accordingly, any seri ous institutional libraryneeds a copy.The work thatwent into the collation, description, and cross-referencingof thepublished literatureby thebibliographers is most impressive.Icould find only one error, the suggestion (p. 59) that Lt. William Broughton ofGeorge Vancouver's expe dition sailed up the Columbia River in the Chatham toPointVancouver inpresent-dayClark County, Washington. In fact,Broughton and some of his crew rowed up the river from the estuary in a launch and cutter.This singlemis step aside, The Literature of theLewis and Clark Expedition is sure to go intohistory as one of the landmarkpublications of theexpedition's bicen tennial. In this respect, the epigraph for this book might have been Jefferson's famous quip to John Adams: "I cannot live without books." On page 22,Beckham provides his own wise corollary to Jeffersonby universalizing the proposition: "Books are part of the glue thathelps hold to gethercivilization." The burgeoning literature and wide appeal of theLewis and Clark story,a veri tablephenomenon unto itself(much to thedis may of some intheacademic community), binds millions ofAmericans together ina community of common historical interest. This book istheir card catalog on a shelf. Changing Landscapes: "Sustaining Traditions" Proceedings of theFifth and SixthAnnual Coquille Cultural...