The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, August 30, 1803–August 24, 1804 ed. by Gary E. Moulton, and: The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, August 25, 1804–April 6, 1805 ed. by Gary E. Moulton (review)

Reviews 67 story of Shipman’s last winter on location and the fate of her company of loyal two-legged and four-legged creatures provides a dramatic and moving climax to her memoirs. SHARON KAHIN Dubois, Wyoming The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, August 30,1803- August 24, 1804, Vol. II. Ed. Gary E. Moulton. (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Ne­ braska Press, 1986. 612 pages, $40.00.) The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, August 25, 1804-April 6, 1805, Vol. III. Ed. Gary E. Moulton. (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Ne­ braska Press, 1987. 544 pages, $40.00.) Students of the literature of the Lewis and Clark Expedition from St. Louis to the Pacific and back at President Jefferson’sbidding in 1804-06, and “buffs” of this greatest of American explorations, have every reason to rejoice at the most recent of the four major editions of the journals of the explorers and other materials produced by them. Two volumes of thè journals are now available, as well as an Atlas of Expedition maps published in 1983 and reviewed in Western American Literature (May, 1985). Eleven volumes are planned, including the Atlas, the journals of Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Sergeants Charles Floyd, John Ordway, and Patrick Gass, and Private Joseph Whitehouse, and a volume of the Expe­ dition’s natural history materials. The impressive accumulation of Expedition-related scholarship since the 1904-05 journal edition by Reuben Gold Thwaites demanded a new “stand­ ard” edition, as did notable discoveries of materials unknown when Thwaites published. Discoveries include the journals of Sergeant Ordway; a journal kept by Lewis, and later Clark, of Lewis’s trip, with the Expedition’skeelboat, from Pittsburgh to Camp Dubois in Illinois, where the party wintered and trained; and a collection of 67 sheets of Clark’s field notes covering both the Camp Dubois period and the early stages of the journey along the Missouri and winter quarters at Fort Mandan in North Dakota. In his excellent introduction to the second volume (and the first contain­ ing the journals), editor Moulton reports the captains quite inconsistent in their record keeping. Lewis, for example, missed over 400 daily journal entries, but wrote much on natural history, climate, topography and other scientific matters. At times they wrote field notes, later transcribing them to journal notebooks; they also wrote directly into their journals. Often Clark wrote field notes over sketch maps, as many reproduced journal pages indicate. He also wrote across sketches of Indian pictographs. Volume Two takes the Expedition from Pittsburgh to Camp Dubois and onto the Vermillion River in South Dakota. It closes with several appendices: 68 Western American Literature biographies of members of the party, the provenance and description of the journals, and a calendar of journals and manuscripts. A bibliography and index are included. Volume Three, relating the journey from the Vermillion to Fort Mandan and the events of the winter there, closes with a Fort Mandan Miscellany, including Lewis’s “Affluents of the Missouri River” ;Clark’s “Estimate of the Eastern Indians (although he includes Utes and Snakes of the western re­ gion)”; Lewis’s notes on his botanical and mineralogical collections; and materials by Clark on the Indian tribes thus far encountered. There is a final “Baling Invoice” of contents of packs to go to the West. In the style, vocabulary, and spelling of the original writers, the journals tell a story that will enthrall loversof exploration and the history of the growth of the American nation. Readers will easily feel themselves present as keelboat and pirogues collide with floating logs on the swirling Missouri, and as the little party faces down a horde of Teton Sioux near present-day Pierre in South Dakota. Such readers, as well as scholars of the historical period, will eagerly anticipate publication of the other planned volumes of this splendid series. REX E. ROBINSON Logan, Utah Escape From Death Valley, As Told by William Lewis Manley and Other ’49ers. Edited by Leroy and Jean Johnson. (Reno and Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 1987. 230 pages, $25.00 cloth, $14.95 paper.) In 1849 thousands of gold seekers went across the continent by wagon...