15. Ibid., 261–263, 276.
16. Zelinsky, Nation into State, 29.
17. Michael Frisch, “American History and the Structures of Collective Memory: A Modest Exercise in Empirical Iconography,” Journal of American History 75, no. 4 (March 1989): 1132, 1140.
18. Jackson, “Public Image of Lewis and Clark,” 4.
19. Allen, “Of This Enterprize,” 276.
20. E. W. Carpenter, “A Glimpse of Montana,” Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine 2, no. 4 (April 1867): 379–380.
21. C. M. Scammon, “In and Around Astoria,” Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine 3, no. 6 (December 1869): 495–499.
22. Josiah Copley, “The Rocky Mountains,” Debow’s Review 4, no. 6 (June 1843): 521; William Bradford, “Discovery, Characteristics, and Resources,” Debow’s Review 20, no. 5 (May 1856): 549; J.D.B. Debow, “Climate of the United States,” Debow’s Review 23, no. 5 (November 1857): 507.
CHAPTER 1: MONUMENTS
1. Carl Abbott, The Great Extravaganza: Portland and the Lewis and Clark Exposition (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1981), photo facing p. 1, 12–14.
2. Ibid., 3.
3. Burton Benedict et al., The Anthropology of World’s Fairs: San Francisco’s Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915 (Berkeley: Scolar Press and the Lowie Museum of Anthropology, 1983), 6–7.
4. Robert W. Rydell, All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 18–19.
5. Warren L. Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon Books), 1984. For an example of the phrase “our national epic,” see Helen B. West, “Lewis and Clark Expedition: Our National Epic,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 16, no. 3 (July 1966): 4–5, although the phrase was used as early as the 1905 exposition in Portland.
6. Lewis and Clark Journal: Official Publication of the Lewis and Clark Fair (February 1904): 4.
7. Ann Rogers, “We Met Them at the Fair: Lewis and Clark Commemorated at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition,” part 1, We Proceeded On 21, no. 3 (August 1995): 21–22; part 2, 21, no. 4 (November 1995): 21.
8. Karal Ann Marling, George Washington Slept Here: Colonial Revivals and American Culture, 1876–1986 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 156.
9. H. W. Scott, “Historical Significance of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” Lewis and Clark Journal: Official Publication of the Lewis and Clark Fair 1, no. 1 (January 1904): 6.
10. Abbott, Great Extravaganza, 3, 16.
11. Scott, “Historical Significance,” 7.
12. Ella E. Clark and Margot Edmonds, Sacagawea of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), appendix D: Sacagawea Memorials.
13. Donna Kessler, The Making of Sacagawea: A Euro-American Legend (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1996), 55.
14. Esther Burnett Horne and Sally McBeth, Essie’s Story: The Life of a Shoshone Teacher (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 144–148.
15. Ibid.
16. Laura McCall, “Sacagawea, a Historical Enigma,” in Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Lives: Women in American History, ed. Kriste Lindenmeyer (Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 2000), 39.
17. Ibid., 40.
18. Historian Grace Hebard championed the Wind River tradition in Sacajawea: A Guide and Interpreter of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Glendale, Calif.: A. H. Clark, 1933).
19. Horne and McBeth, Essie’s Story, 148–150. The authors point out (p. 150) that mixed feelings toward Sacagawea developed on the Wind River Reservation, with many viewing her as a cause of Indian woes because she helped Lewis and Clark.
20. Ibid., 150–151.
21. McCall, “Sacagawea, a Historical Enigma,” 48.
22. Kessler, Making of Sacagawea, 66–67; Eva Emery Dye, The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1902).
23. Lewis and Clark Journal: Official Publication (February 1904): 26.
24. Ronald W. Taber, “Sacagawea and the Suffragettes: An Interpretation of a Myth,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 58, no. 1 (January 1967): 7–11.
25. Kessler, Making of Sacagawea, 90.
26. Bert Huffman, [untitled poem], Lewis and Clark Journal (January-March 1904): 8–9.
27. Laura Tolman Scott, paper presented to the Montana Federation of Women’s Clubs, Lewistown, Montana (June 1914), VF 2606, Washington State University Special Collections, Pullman. In North Dakota the preferred spelling is the Hidatsa “Sakakawea”; most historians use Sacagawea.
28. Stone marker quotes in “Historical Sites Preserved and Markers Erected by the Montana Society, Daughters of the American Revolution and Its’ [sic] Chapters,” VF, MSHS.
29. Eva Emery Dye, The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1914).
30. Scott, paper to the Montana Federation of Women’s Clubs.
31. Marker description and Clark quoted in Carroll van West, “Montana’s Monuments: History in the Making,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 40, no. 4 (Fall 1990): 17.
32. Zillah Harris’s lullaby in unattributed news story, “What Became of Sacajawea?” dated April 9, 1916, Astoria (Oregon) Heritage Museum VF, C-boxes.
33. “Historical Sites Preserved and Markers Erected by the Montana Society, DAR. . . 1899–1917,” VF Lewis and Clark Expedition—Statuary, Markers, Monuments, etc. MSHS.
34. Brass plate inscription from Harris, “What Became of Sacajawea?”
35. Mobridge monument in The Wi-Iyohi (monthly bulletin of the South Dakota Historical Society) 8, no. 5 (August 1, 1954): 9.
36. Astoria (Oregon) Evening Budget, February 10, 1922.
37. Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 505.
38. More spectacular than the grave markers for Clark and Lewis is that of Sergeant Charles Floyd near Sioux City, Iowa. The 100-foot sandstone obelisk dedicated to Floyd, the only member of the Corps of Discovery who died during the expedition, was dedicated in 1901. In 1960 it became the first registered National Historic Landmark, a category created in part as a compromise between Iowa’s congressional delegation and the National Park Service, which refused to accept a gravesite as an official historic site. Barry MacKintosh, The Historic Sites Survey and the National Historic Landmarks Program, a History (Washington, D.C.: Historical Division, National Park Service, Department of the Interior, 1985), 41–46.
39. The Unveiling of the Lewis-Clark Statue at Midway Park in the City of Charlottesville, Virginia (Charlottesville, Va.: City of Charlottesville, 1919), frontispiece.
40. Astoria Evening Budget, July 22, 1926; John E. Goodenberger, “Column Tells Astoria’s Story,” Daily Astorian 125th Anniversary Issue, September 25, 1998. Time and weather, in fact, would not be kind to the decorative historical frieze that covers the Astoria Column. According to the 125th anniversary issue, Pusterla returned ten years later to restore his deteriorating artwork. Subsequent efforts would also be required to protect the frieze, most recently the application of a water repellent in 1995, which, it is hoped, “will preserve the column for another 50 years or more” (Goodenberger, “Column Tells Astoria’s Story”).
41. Astoria (Oregon) Daily Astorian Centennial Edition, July 22, 1976.
42. Astoria (Oregon) Evening Budget, July 22, 1976.
43. Description of 1925 and 1926 Columbia River historical expeditions from Michael Kammen, In the Past Lane: Historical Perspectives on American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 134–138.
44. Astoria (Oregon) Evening Budget, July 21, 1926.
45. Seaside (Oregon) Chamber of Commerce press release, April 29, 1968, LC VF, Astor Library, Astoria, Oregon.
46. Jane Steel, “Misspelling on End of Trail Sign at Beach Draws Attention,” Daily Astorian, March 16, 1967.
47. The history
of the early attempts to fund the statues discussed in this paragraph is from Dr. H. J. Wunderlich (Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Celebration Committee) to Montana Governor Stan Stephens, February 9, 1991, VF Lewis and Clark Expedition X Statuary, Markers, Monuments, etc. MSHS.
48. H.B. 167, 15th Session, Montana Legislative Assembly, 1917, House Journal, 167, 305, 637.
49. “History of the Henry Lion Bronze, etc.,” VF MHS, Lewis and Clark Memorial Committee, MSHS.
50. “The Three Forks of the Missouri River: Logical Site of a National Memorial to Captains Lewis and Clark” (Three Forks, Montana: Chamber of Commerce, 1928), 3, 13, 16, Leggat-Donahoe Collection, Montana State University Special Collections, Bozeman.
51. Papers of the 1929 Lewis and Clark Memorial Commission: Minutes of May 1, May 26, and September 10 meetings, and undated copy of the final report to the Montana Legislature, RS-164, folders 1–4, MSHS.
52. River Press (Fort Benton, Montana), June 9, 1976.
53. Ibid.; Billings (Montana) Gazette, May 21, 1976. Although Russell’s statue design was never used, the artist did paint a 12-foot by 25-foot mural for the State House of Representatives chambers in the Montana capitol in Helena depicting the explorer’s encounter with Flathead (Salish) Indians in Ross’s Hole in September 1805.
54. Rogers, “We Met Them at the Fair,” part 1, 23.
55. Stephen Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (New York: Simon & Schuster/ Touchstone, 1996), 457–458.
56. Howard Betts, In Search of York: The Slave Who Went to the Pacific with Lewis and Clark, rev. ed. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado and Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, 2000).
CHAPTER 2: TRACING THE ROUTE
1. I have generally avoided repeating “the present-day site of” and similar phrases when referring to towns or other modern locations now at or near places referred to in the journals. I believe the reader will recognize that few such referents existed in 1804–1806. Further, I have not altered spellings in direct quotations from the journals. The description of the expedition’s routes that follows is based primarily on Gary Moulton ed., The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, volumes 2–8 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1987–1993). Only direct quotes from entries and the editor’s notes are cited. Unless otherwise indicated, all citations of the journals are from the Moulton edition and, for convenience, are indicated by volume and page in brackets in the text (e.g., [VI, 87] for volume six, page 87, or [VIII, 166n12] for volume 8, p. 166, note 12).
2. Jefferson’s instructions are in Frank Bergon, ed., The Journals of Lewis and Clark (New York: Penguin Books, 1989), xxiv–xxvi.
3. Paul Russell Cutright, Lewis and Clark: Pioneering Naturalists (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books, 1989), 48.
4. Daniel B. Botkin, Passage of Discovery: American Rivers Guide to the Missouri River of Lewis and Clark (New York: Berkly/Perigee, 1999), 36, 38.
5. Cutright, Lewis and Clark, 50.
6. Ibid., 63.
7. James P. Ronda, Lewis and Clark among the Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 21.
8. Cutright, Lewis and Clark, 79.
9. On Sioux expansion, see Richard White, “The Winning of the West: The Expansion of the Western Sioux in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Journal of American History 65 (September 1978): 319–343; for Sioux territory in 1856, see Edwin Thompson Denig, Five Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri, ed. John C. Ewers (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961), 64–65. See also Anthony McGinnis, Counting Coup and Cutting Horses: Intertribal Warfare on the Northern Plains, 1738–1889 (Evergreen, Colo.: Cordillera, 1990) and Theodore Binnema, Common and Contested Ground: A Human and Environmental History of the Northwestern Plains (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001) for relations among Missouri River and Northern Plains tribes at the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
10. Ronda, Lewis and Clark among the Indians, 28; Jefferson quote on p. 30.
11. Ibid.
12. Interpretation of the encounter with the Brulé band is from ibid. 31–41.
13. Ibid., 42–44.
14. Ibid., 44–45.
15. Cutright, Lewis and Clark, 134.
16. Ibid., 137–138.
17. Ronda, Lewis and Clark among the Indians, 158–159.
18. Ibid., 167–169; D. W. Meinig, The Great Columbia Plain: A Historical Geography, 1805–1910 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968), map of plateau tribes on 22–23.
19. Ronda, Lewis and Clark among the Indians, 170.
20. Clark also waited anxiously for a group of four men led by Sergeant Nathaniel Pryor, who had been sent ahead down the Yellowstone to obtain horses at the Mandan Villages. Pryor and his men lost the few horses they had and were forced to float down the river on bull boats behind the main party.
21. Pierre Cruzatte apparently mistook his captain for game while they were hunting on August 11. The following day they met up with Clark.
CHAPTER 3: THE NEW EXPLORERS
1. David Dary, The Oregon Trail: An American Saga (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 310–326. Meeker’s journeys are also discussed in David M. Wrobel, Promised Lands: Promotion, Memory, and the Creation of the American West (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002), 109–113. Meeker described his twentieth-century wagon journeys in several similar accounts, including (in collaboration with Howard R. Driggs) The Busy Life of Eighty-Five Years: Ventures and Adventures (Seattle: pub. by the author, 1916) and The Ox Team, or the Old Oregon Trail, 1852–1906 (Mt. Vernon, Ind.: repr. Windmill Publications, 1992). Meeker never stopped boosting the Oregon Trail. In addition to making another wagon trip west, he traced the overland route by automobile in 1916 and flew over it as a passenger in an open-cockpit U.S. Army plane in 1923. Meeker was one of the founders of an organization that became the Oregon Trail Memorial Association in 1926, a group that forged close ties with the National Highways Association—appropriately, since Meeker’s ultimate aim was to establish an Oregon Trail memorial highway.
2. Olin D. Wheeler, The Trail of Lewis and Clark, 1804–1904, 2 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1926), vol. I, xi–xiii, 52.
3. Ibid., xiii.
4. Ibid.
5. Mullan, handwritten original of speech at Fort Owen, Montana, December 24, 1861, SC 547, MSHS archives, 26–27, 31, 38.
6. Ted Van Arsdol, “Pioneer of Travel Routes: The Story of C. C. Van Arsdol,” Latah Legacy (Latah County Historical Society, Moscow, Idaho) 15 (Spring 1986): 10, 15; quote (in article) is from the Yakima (Washington) Republic, January 26, 1900, 15.
7. Wheeler, Trail of Lewis and Clark, vol. II, 84.
8. Ibid., 85.
9. Ibid., 81–82.
10. John Leiberg quote, report to the director of the USGS, in ibid., 84–85.
11. Ibid., 85–86.
12. Ibid., 89.
13. Ibid., 87–89.
14. Ibid., 89.
15. Ibid., 85, 87; Kirby Lambert, “Through the Artist’s Eye: The Painting and Photography of R. E. DeCamp,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 49, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 47–48. As in Chapter 2, I am citing material from the Moulton edition of the journals in square brackets within the text.
16. Wheeler, Trail of Lewis and Clark, vol. II, 85.
17. Ibid., 86.
18. Ibid., 98–100.
19. Ibid., 158.
20. Ibid., 164, 206.
21. Ingvard Eide, American Odyssey: The Journey of Lewis and Clark (New York: Rand McNally, 1969); Albert Salisbury and Jane Salisbury, Two Captains West: An Historical Tour of the Lewis and Clark Trail (Seattle: Superior Publishing, 1950); Ralph Space, The Lolo Trail: A History of Events Connected with the Lolo Trail since Lewis and Clark (Lewiston, Idaho: Printcraft Printing, 1970); John J. Peebles, “Rugged Waters: Trails and Campsites of Lewis and Clark in the Salmon River Country,” Idaho Yesterdays 8, no. 2 (Summer 1964): 2–17, and Peebles, “On the Lolo Trai
l: Route and Campsites of Lewis and Clark,” Idaho Yesterdays 9, no. 4 (Winter 1965–1966): 2–15.
22. Weippe [Idaho] Hilltop Heritage Society, Inc., “Lewis and Clark on the Weippe Hilltop” (grant proposal, 2001); Clearwater Tribune (Orofino, Idaho), June 26, 1932. I am also indebted to Robben Johnston, archaeologist for the Clearwater National Forest, and Bernice Pullman of the Clearwater Historical Museum (Orofino) for some of the information about Sewell and Harlan.
23. Space, Lolo Trail, 41–43 (third quote), 58 (first two quotes).
24. Ibid., 52–53.
25. Peebles, “On the Lolo Trail,” 15.
26. Ibid., 14–15.
27. Peebles, “Rugged Waters,” 5 (map legend).
28. Anne Farrar Hyde, An American Vision: Far Western Landscape and American Culture, 1820–1920 (New York: New York University Press, 1990), 117.
29. Earl Pomeroy, In Search of the Golden West: The Tourist in Western America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957), 135.
30. Wheeler, Trail of Lewis and Clark, vol. I, 53.
31. Curt McConnell, Coast to Coast by Automobile: The Pioneering Trips, 1899–1908 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2000), 59–62.
32. Ibid., 225.
33. Ibid., 307.
34. Ibid., 305.
35. John A. Jakle, The Tourist: Travel in Twentieth Century North America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 103.
36. Taussig’s book, privately printed in San Francisco in 1910, cited in Michael Vinson, Motoring Tourists and the Scenic West, 1903–1948 (Dallas: Southern Methodist University De Golyer Library, 1989), 37.
37. James J. Flink, Car Culture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1975), 53.
38. Drake Hokanson, “To Cross America, Early Motorists Took a Long Detour,” Smithsonian 16, no. 5 (August 1985): 59.
39. Joe McCarthy, “The Lincoln Highway: The First Transcontinental Paved Road,” American Heritage 25, no. 4 (June 1974): 32–34.
40. Hokanson, “To Cross America,” 59.
41. Lewiston (Idaho) Morning Tribune, November 3, 1916.
In the Footsteps of Lewis and Clark Page 19