Westward ho! (Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West - Stephen E. Ambrose)

Member Name: Belgian999

Product:	Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West - Stephen E. Ambrose
Date:	17/01/02 (961 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Superb style, and a great, true story!

Disadvantages: Makes it all too clear how the US would treat the Indian tribes in later years

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 from the untapped resources of this vast continent.

The British, French, Spanish and Russian crowns all had claims on various parts of North America, in direct competition with the young republic on the eastern seaboard, as its population sought ever more land to the west of the Appalachians. In 1804, President Jefferson was still obsessed with the idea of finding an all-water route from east to west, a navigable waterway that would link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and open up the lucrative fur trade, to the benefit of his fledgling nation.

It was against this backdrop that one of the most important and well-known expeditions in US history set out, with the express aim of finding a path to the Pacific. However, before reading this book, I had absolutely no idea who Lewis and Clark were. I had studied some American history at school, but we had only ever really taken a cursory glance at the opening of the American West. You know the stories that get told – Custer, the gold rush, the slaughter of the buffalo herds and the creation of the Indian reservations, but nothing was ever taught in great detail.

This is definitely not the case in the United States, as this expedition is still regarded as one of the most momentous events ever – Lewis and Clark have had rive
rs and mountain passes named after them, their story is familiar to any American with a basic grasp of the history of the nation, and this book paints a stunning picture of their background and their experiences on this most arduous of tasks.

Stephen Ambrose uses the journals kept by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their travels to retrace their steps across what was, for them at least, virgin territory. Lewis had been personally selected by Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the nation, to head the expedition to the west, and he chose Clark to help him lead the mission, as he was a trusted friend from their time in the army.

They not only had to negotiate potentially hostile Indian tribes on the journey west, but also had to make sure that they steered clear of any contact or conflict with the troops of any other nation. News travelled painstakingly slowly from town to town in those days, and the postal service was notoriously unreliable, so the instructions were made crystal clear right from the outset. Negotiations were ongoing with France over the possession of New Orleans, talks that would lead to the Louisiana Purchase, but this simply led to confusion – no one really knew what nation was nominally in power in cities such as St. Louis.

If the European powers suspected that Jefferson intended anything more than a purely exploratory mission to the west, then they would surely seek out and destroy the small company of men selected by Lewis and Clark. However, their primary task was to record details of new flora and fauna, see how suitable the land would be for colonisation by the frontier settlers (who started encroaching into the new territory of Louisiana as soon as the deal was struck), make peace with any indigenous tribes along the rivers they were to navigate, and see if there was any way of crossing the continent by water, without making troublesome portages or negotiating mountain ranges.

Lewis had
received personal tutelage from Jefferson and a select band of scientists, as they attempted to give him a crash course in the art of science, and this is really the essence of the task, the real reason why these men were sent on such an difficult mission. They were to be the vanguard of the ‘civilised’ people from the east, sent to explore the interior and bring the ideals of the Enlightenment to the ‘savage’ tribes who had lived quite happily without outside influence for centuries before. Of course Jefferson was interested in finding out what lay to the west of the Missouri, but before any possible use could be made of the new lands, he had to establish what the situation was like with the tribes who lived there.

If possible, they had to be made aware that there was a great power in the east, led by a ‘great father’ who would protect them, as long as they entered into trading agreements with the new country and did not wage war on the US. This occupied Lewis’s thoughts every time the company ran into a new tribe, and they discovered many: Nez Percé, Blackfeet, Clatsop, Chinook and others. Each time a new people crossed their path, Lewis and Clark offered gifts that amounted to nothing more than a bag of beads, some medals and ceremonial cloaks. On no account were they to offer rifles or ammunition of any kind, although it strikes me that that was like shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted – many tribes already had foreign traders in their midst, and most were armed with European weapons by the early 19th century, but Lewis still continued to take the moral high ground, preferring instead to demonstrate the power of gunpowder and flint, and thereby cow the Indians into submission.

With hindsight, such acts seem insulting, but it is almost impossible to judge the thoughts and deeds of men 200 years ago, in completely different circumstances to those which would confront any man alive to
day. There is nowhere in the world (apart perhaps from secluded areas of the Amazon basin) where anyone can go and be sure that no ‘civilised’ man has set eyes on that place before, or that the local tribe have had no contact with foreigners. The reader is helped immensely by Ambrose’s decision to insert excerpts from the captains’ journals into the text, exactly as they were written and unchanged by modern spelling and grammar, to give something of an insight into how the men thought at the time.

They honestly believed that they understood Indian customs and cultures, and blundered headlong into various tense situations without thinking of the consequences. There are reports of at least two instances when the expedition came close to disaster, as encounters with the Sioux and the Blackfeet went wrong from the start. You would think that Lewis would have made more use of Sacagawea, the native bride of Charbonneau (a French trader who was attached to the company), but he preferred instead to apply ‘enlightened’ methods to his diplomatic dealings.

However, you can not be too harsh or judgmental when considering how Lewis and Clark dealt with the events that confronted them – they were in a completely alien environment, inhabited by people they knew nothing about, and had to display immense courage in situations that would have broken lesser men. Crossing the Continental Divide, negotiating the Rockies, portaging the Falls of the Missouri and making themselves understood with Indian tribes all took a great deal of tenacity and bravery, and it is amazing to note the discipline that was maintained throughout the mission. There are only scarce reports of insubordination, and the punishment normally ensured that such misdemeanours did not happen again.

And it is fair to say that, unlike the Spanish explorers in South America, these men did not attempt to impose their religion onto the native peoples. They
may have considered them to be savages, but as was typical of the time, they were not averse to taking sexual advantage of the women of the tribe (indeed, women were often offered to them), and Lewis took copious notes of the ceremonies and dances they saw at the Indian villages.

There are many throwaway comments made by Lewis, however, which give away the underlying train of thought prevalent at the time, which was that they had found a land of plenty that was there simply to be exploited. They just shot and ate whatever animal happened to be passing, but displayed little resourcefulness when supplies became scarce. It is almost incredible to believe that the men wanted for food on the Pacific coast, simply because there was little game in the area. The local Indians fished every day and always had plenty of food, but the explorers instead killed all the elk and buffalo in the area, and then moved on.

The bare facts of the expedition make for disappointing reading – there was of course no direct waterway from east to west, and Lewis had to return to Jefferson with the disappointing news that a mountain range had to be negotiated to reach the Pacific Ocean by land. The great dream of an American trading network could not come to fruition due to the continuing hostility of some Indian tribes along the way, sometimes accentuated by the unthinking actions of the explorers. To counterbalance this, Lewis did collate and send back examples, descriptions and drawings of countless plants and animals that were new to science, and was able to recount the customs and living conditions of the indigenous peoples.

What impressed me most about this book was the superbly fluid style in which it was written – it is a fairly hefty tome, even in paperback, but is divided into reasonably short chapters. Stephen Ambrose writes convincingly, taking the reader smoothly back to the start of the 19th century and setting the scene, providing plenty of
background material before launching into the gripping account of the expedition. It is told in the third person, but the regular excerpts from the journals give you the impression of seeing events through the eyes of Lewis and Clark. You experience the wonder of seeing a totally foreign land, the tension of meetings with potentially hostile natives, the privations imposed by near starvation and extreme terrain and weather conditions, and feel genuine disappointment when you realise that the expedition could not fulfil its primary aim. This is a story that should be told outside of the United States, but as far as I can tell the book is only available from Amazon.com, which is a shame. Still, if you don’t mind paying the postage, and want to find out more about one of the greatest explorations in American history, I can recommend this book without reservation.

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