In the Footsteps of Lewis and Clark: Early Commemorations and the Origins of the National Historic Trail

Introduction

 T he official opening of thenationalLewisandClarkBicentennial in January 2003 ushered in nearly four years of commemorative events and activities that dwarfed all earlier attempts to recognize the expedition’s historical significance. The bicentennial celebration represented a variety of purposes with regard to public historical consciousness, including expressing patriotism, maintaining myths of national identity, educating family members through hands-on history, boosting tourism in communities along the expedition ’s routes, and so forth. For many, it provided an opportunity to enlighten Americans by making their understanding of the past broader and more inclusive. What should the history of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s Corps of Discovery mean to us? The answers are varied, but it seems clear that we can no longer accept the white American Introduction  I n t r o d u cti o n view of “progress” through conquest that characterized earlier writings and commemorations up until at least around 1975. Regarding Lewis and Clark as simply heroic icons not only glorifies conquest and dispossession but also distorts the nature of the expedition and obscures much else that is interesting in the history of the West. With the exception of Sacagawea, who provided numerous essential services but has been often miscast as the expedition’s guide, Native Americans have traditionally been given short shrift in this story. Lewis and Clark’s dependence for survival on the help of tribes such as the Mandan, Hidatsa, Lemhi Shoshone, Salish, Nez Perce, and Clatsop was integral to the entire journey, yet it did not fit into a Eurocentric heroic narrative. Since the 1970s, a more enlightened and realistic view has predominated among scholars and students of western expansion. That view was largely reflected in bicentennial efforts to publicize and interpret the history of the Corps of Discovery. However, what for convenience I call the “standard model” of public attitudes toward the Lewis and Clark Expedition prevailed throughout much of the twentieth century and in some ways continues today. That model, epitomized in the phrase “our national epic of exploration,” extolled the frontier past as a glorious march toward “progress” and “civilization.” In 1966 Helen B. West, secretary of the Montana Lewis and Clark Trail Advisory Committee, reapplied the label “our national epic” to the expedition. Further, she used the terms “unique saga” and “allegory” and compared “this odyssey” to Pilgrim’s Progress. Nationalistic rhetoric of this type has more often than not shaped the means by which Lewis and Clark have been memorialized . As a putative American “epic,” the collective account of the journey was celebrated as a master narrative of Manifest Destiny and a great adventure tale.1 In a commercial sense, these were the expedition’s strongest selling points. Pride in the national myth could be easily converted into economic gain. Much of the groundswell for a designated trail during the 1960s and 1970s came from boosters in towns along the routes, who sensed the potential for tourism. It is, in fact, almost impossible to separate such boosterism from the desire to honor national heroes in either the 1905 centennial or the 1955 sesquicentennial, although  I n t r o d u cti o n the same is true of nearly all public representations of the American past. When it comes to tourism, history sells. The fact that historical commemorations express public memory may seem obvious, but the term “memory” in this sense is open to numerous interpretations. French historian Pierre Nora, for example, distinguishes public memory from written history. History, according to Nora, is studied analysis and representation of the past based on an examination of factual evidence. Memory, on the other hand, entails imaginative and symbolic conceptions of the past and is subject to change according to present interests and circumstances. Public memory, according to Nora, is also tied more to places or “sites” that foster collective identity than it is to historical events. In other words, where something occurred is more mythically important than is an accurate account of what actually took place there.2 The distinction between scholarly history and public memory is not clear-cut, however. Few historians today would accept Nora’s stringent ideal of written history as simply objective analysis based on evidence. Present interests and circumstances appear to affect scholarly work as well. The French theorist’s connection between public memory and place, however, does apply particularly to popular attitudes toward the Lewis and Clark trail. Certainly, far...