Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West - Stephen E. Ambrose

At the end of the 18th century, there were still huge swathes of unexplored land across the globe – the African interior, the polar regions, and of course that great ‘undiscovered country’ that we now know as the American West. Barely 200 years ago, huge areas that we now blithely refer to in newspaper articles and television programmes were, quite simply, not on the map. In the lands to the west of the newly independent United States of America, the European colonial powers were gradually encroaching on the lands of the indigenous peoples as yet untouched by ‘civilisation’, trying to extend the reach of empire and, of course, make money ...