Great Plains Studies, Center for

 

Date of this Version

Spring 2005

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 25, No. 2, Spring 2005, pp. 125-26.

Comments

Copyright 2005 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Abstract

Following the Lewis and Clark expedition's return in 1806, almost a decade passed before the first official record of their journey was published by Nicholas Biddle and James Allen in 1814. Two hundred years later Gary E. Moulton's definitive thirteen-volume editing of the journals was completed. In the past two centuries dozens of books and thousands of articles have explored various aspects of the Corps of Discovery and its participants. Dozens of biographies have chronicled the lives of Meriwether Lewis, George Drouillard, York, and, especially, Sacagawea. Amazingly, William Clark has received little notice. One important exception was Jerome O. Steffen's 1977 thematic treatise on Clark as a Jeffersonian man on the American frontier. Though ignored for years, several studies have been or soon will be published, including James J. Holmberg's editing of almost fifty of William Clark's letters to his brother Jonathan Clark in Dear Brother (2002). William Foley and Landon Jones have now produced book length biographies, fortuitously timed to correspond with the bicentennial's commemorations. From the outset, they are very different books.

Foley, an experienced historian of Missouri and fur trade history and editor of the Missouri Biography Series, provides a comprehensive account of Clark's multifaceted life. He stresses Clark's capabilities in mapping the route, transporting men and equipment, erecting winter posts, and negotiating with the tribes that met the Corps along the way. Moreover, Foley succeeds in demonstrating that the expedition was but one episode in Clark's "wilderness journey" that included soldiering in the Ohio campaigns before the expedition as well as an illustrious career in government administration in St. Louis after. In addition to his tenure as Missouri's only territorial governor, Clark served the government as an Indian agent and superintendent of Indian affairs for more than thirty years. Usually a kind and generous man committed to assisting friends and family in need, he was also, paradoxically, a severe master who exhibited cruel treatment toward his slaves.

Jones, former managing editor of People magazine, provides a newsy, journalistic rendition of the "shaping of the West" with Clark cast in the lead role. He, like Foley, faced the daunting task of understanding the complexities of the world wherein Clark operated and the complications exhibited in his character and behavior. Although Clark is the protagonist, more than bit parts are filled by others, like Clark's elder brother George Rogers Clark-simultaneously Revolutionary War hero and villainous Indian fighter. The elder Clark was unusually brutal in his dealings with Indians, exemplifying behavior common to many frontiersmen living in antebellum America. Jones provides vignettes of numerous individuals who helped shape William Clark's life: Anthony Wayne, James Wilkinson, Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, John Jacob Astor, Robert Dickson, Nicholas Biddle, Henry Atkinson, Daniel Boone, and others. An Indian presence is achieved by Jones's incorporating words and actions of Little Turtle, Blue Jacket, Tecumseh, Keokuk, Kenekuk, Black Hawk, and other Indian leaders Clark knew.

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