The Lewis and Clark Journals (Magill’s Literary Annual 2004)
At a glance:
- Author: William Clark, Meriwether Lewis
- First Published: 2003
- Type of Work: History and memoir
- Time of Work: 1804-1806
- Setting: The United States
- Principal Characters: Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, Sacagawea
- Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, History
- Subjects: Virginia, United States or Americans, Nineteenth century, West, U.S., Native Americans or American Indians, Washington, D.C., Tennessee, New Orleans, Missouri, Heroes or heroism, Presidents, Kentucky, Louisiana, Northwest Passage, Exploration or explorers, Louisiana Purchase, Maps, Fur trade, Expeditions
- Locales: United States
When Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and some forty others set off for the trans-Missisippi West on May 14, 1804, they were entering a mythical landscape. Alonso Decalves’s Travels to the Westward or the Unknown Parts of America (1794) imagined utopian communities there. Perhaps the explorers would find descendants of Madoc, a Welsh prince who was said to have come to America in 1170. Mastodons might still roam the plains. Stories were told of a mountain of salt 180 miles long and 45 miles wide.
Thomas Jefferson had long been curious about the trans-Mississippi West. As...
[The entire page is 1730 words long]
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