Skip to main content
University of California Press

Lewis & Clark

Legacies, Memories, and New Perspectives

by Kris Fresonke (Editor), Mark Spence (Editor)
Price: $34.95 / £30.00
Publication Date: Feb 2004
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 298
ISBN: 9780520238220
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 10 b/w photographs, 5 maps, 1 table

About the Book

Two centuries after their expedition awoke the nation both to the promise and to the disquiet of the vast territory out west, Lewis and Clark still stir the imagination, and their adventure remains one of the most celebrated and studied chapters in American history. This volume explores the legacy of Lewis and Clark's momentous journey and, on the occasion of its bicentennial, considers the impact of their westward expedition on American culture. Approaching their subject from many different perspectives—literature, history, women's studies, law, medicine, and environmental history, among others—the authors chart shifting attitudes about the explorers and their journals, together creating a compelling, finely detailed picture of the "interdisciplinary intrigue" that has always surrounded Lewis and Clark's accomplishment. This collection is most remarkable for its insights into ongoing debates over the relationships between settler culture and aboriginal peoples, law and land tenure, manifest destiny and westward expansion, as well as over the character of Sacagawea, the expedition's vision of nature, and the interpretation and preservation of the Lewis and Clark Trail.

About the Author

Kris Fresonke is Assistant Professor of English at Adelphi University and the author of West of Emerson: The Design of Manifest Destiny (California, 2002). Mark Spence is Associate Professor of History and Chair of American Studies at Knox College and author of Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks (1999).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Introduction—Kris Fresonke

I. CONTEXTS
1. Living with Lewis & Clark: The American Philosophical Society’s Continuing Relationship with the Corps of Discovery from the Michaux Expedition to the Present
Edward C. Carter II

2. Wilderness Aesthetics
Frank Bergon

3. "Two dozes of barks and opium": Lewis & Clark as Physicians
Ronald V. Loge, M.D.

II. LEGACIES
4. The Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis & Clark Expedition: A Constitutional Moment?
Peter A. Appel
5. "Twice-born" from the Waters: The Two-Hundred-Year Journey of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Indians
Raymond Cross
6. George Shannon and C. S. Rafinesque
Charles Boewe

III. MEMORIES
7. "We are not dealing entirely with the past": Americans Remember Lewis & Clark
John Spencer
8. Sacajawea, Meet Cogewea: A Red Progressive Revision of Frontier Romance
Joanna Brooks
9. On the Trail: Commemorating the Lewis & Clark Expedition in the Twentieth Century
Wallace G. Lewis

IV. NEW PERSPECTIVES
10. Let’s Play Lewis & Clark: Strange Visions of Nature and History at the Bicentennial
Mark Spence
11. On the Tourist Trail with Lewis & Clark: Issues of Interpretation and Preservation
Andrew Gulliford
12. The Lewis & Clark Bicentennial: Putting Tribes Back on the Map
Roberta Connor

Epilogue. "We proceeded on"—Dayton Duncan
List of Contributors
Index

Reviews

"This miscellany of insightful, articulate, and well-documented essays will find a receptive audience amoung all levels of adult readers."
Choice