In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Exploring Lewis and Clark: Reflections on Men and Wilderness
  • Etta M. Madden (bio)
Exploring Lewis and Clark: Reflections on Men and Wilderness. Thomas P. Slaughter. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. xviii, 231 pp.

Thomas Slaughter's interpretation of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's journey cross-country and back between 1803 and 1806 joins the ranks of several other volumes and articles anticipating the bicentennial celebrations associated with the expedition Thomas Jefferson commissioned. Exploring Lewis and Clark, Slaughter explains in his introduction, fills a gap in the analyses that have been provided most recently by Stephen Ambrose, Bernard De Voto, James P. Ronda, and John Logan Allen. These often have glorified the men and treated the expedition chronologically, granting mythic and epic status to the explorers, their adventures, and their homecoming. At least, they have treated their respective analyses as factual truths. Slaughter claims he will analyze these mythic aspects of the story, as it has been constructed and valued in American history. In so doing he will provide a new vision of the expedition—"correctives to our readings, usages, and understandings of the journals" which have emphasized "a shallow, simple, straightforward narrative of movement across space and through time" (57). His rereading presents spiritual aspects of the expedition as well as those associated with science, bridging the natural world, the natives' understanding of it, and the impact of both upon the explorers.

Slaughter's volume bears the marks of a scholarly author who has moved beyond the bounds of academic publishing. First, there is the imprint of Knopf, the mark not only of the Burns-Dayton collaborative volume but also of such academics-gone-popular as Pulitzer winner Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, whose Age of Homespun was ushered from the same press less than two years ago. The publication by Knopf does not diminish the scholarship associated with the production; Slaughter, not unlike Ulrich, writes from a wealth of details informed by careful research. The massive journals of the expedition, as well as numerous works on Native American culture and natural history that inform Slaughter's narrative, are noted meticulously at the volume's end. Yet these notes are another mark of his assumed popular audience, since the narrative is all but free (the introduction is the exception) from the name dropping and direct citation frequently appearing in scholarly books. [End Page 527]

In addition, however, readers may be surprised by another telltale sign—paragraphs of didactic prose which preach not about the facts of the expedition but instead offer insights into human nature, direct from the author himself, unmediated by outside voices or a sense that the scholar should refrain from such oracular passages. Within the first chapter, for example, he writes:

To be human is to dream, but other creatures also dream. To live is to dream. The earth lives—rivers and mountains, rocks and trees too. To dream is to live. Does death bring an end to dreaming or is it simply another dream? The sun sleeps, oral traditions teach us, and so does the that animate life.

(18)

Reminiscent of Harold Bloom's oracular style in The American Religion, and even Cotton Mather's histories, Slaughter's lyrical prose and critical confidence remain quite engaging throughout the volume, a reminder of a style that has almost disappeared among historians.

Slaughter's style parallels a major claim of his text, one that could serve as a palliative for scholars of early American literature prone to indigestion when served such stuff. He acknowledges in his first pages that historians and explorers construct truths from narratives and within their own narratives. "Being First" (the title of Slaughter's second chapter) with a written claim overrides the truthfulness of the claim and often includes "self-delusion" (35), he explains. This awareness, not often stated by historians, is writ large in the third chapter, "Writing First." Here he explains:

[T]he journals contain lies, deceptions, errors, inconsistencies, internal contradictions, differences among the six journal writers, and contestable perspectives. They embody suppressions, exclusions, ignorance, bias, and partial knowledge. In other words, the journals are reflections of human fallibility and are the product of explorers' ambitions. They are, then, just...

pdf