The Relevance of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to Modern Travelers

What is the contemporary significance of the Lewis & Clark Expedition? Does it hold enduring meaning, or is it simply a relic of a different historical era?

Humanities Scholar in Residence Clay Jenkinson believes the story of Lewis and Clark is one of the most compelling American tales. And despite its 200-year-old vintage, he says, it is a story that remains relevant today. In this brief excerpt from his August speech to first-year students, which opened this year’s Inventing America course, Jenkinson argues that the Lewis and Clark story holds important lessons—especially for those newly enrolled in a liberal arts college.

By now you may already be thinking, or rather grumbling, "I hope that we’re not going to be bombarded endlessly for the next four years with the Lewis and Clark story just because this is Lewis & Clark College. I came here for a liberal arts education, not for a black powder rendezvous."

Indeed. But here are five reasons why you should give the Lewis and Clark story a chance.

First, the textual base is very rich (and what is a liberal arts education but a sustained encounter with texts—not all of them on the printed page). From journals of this sort, we all expect sentences like, "Musquiters very turrible and troublesome tonight." But there is also literature of another sort, and it is very interesting and worthy of repeated close readings. I’ll give you just one example. It’s by Meriwether Lewis, who was the most interesting writer of the expedition. It’s a birthday meditation that he wrote on the day he turned 31 out in the middle of nowhere on August 18, 1805. And I can promise you this: Sometime during the next two semesters, although not probably on your birthday, you will feel what Meriwether Lewis felt that day. It will be at 2 a.m. on the night before a calculus test or an essay exam on Shakespeare’s dark comedies. Listen to poor Mr. Lewis:

"This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I had in all human probability now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little, indeed, to further the happiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended. but since they are past and cannot be recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought, and resolved in future, to redouble my exertions and at least endeavour to promote those two primary objects of human existence, by giving them the aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have bestowed on me: or in future, to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself."

Second, it is a multicultural story. However much we might think of Lewis and Clark as identical twins in matching buckskins, they were remarkably different men with different styles of leadership. Their party included Clark’s slave York, a strong African-American who may have been legally and socially powerless back in Kentucky but who in the American wilderness turned out to be one of the greatest assets of the expedition. And there was Sacagawea, a Shoshone-Hidatsa Indian woman, 17 years old, a teenaged mother with an infant child on her back. There were Virginia army officers and plantation owners and raw Kentucky frontiersmen, members of the gentry and working class boys, the German-speaking John Potts, a blacksmith and a tailor and a sign language interpreter and a salt manufacturer, Catholics and Scotch Protestants and deists like President Jefferson. They were red, white, and black, male and female, old men and young, the dominant Anglos and a rich representation of every other cultural group of North America—except white women.

Third, it’s an encounters story. And not just an encounters story but the story of encounters with the Other. Being on the Lewis and Clark Expedition wasn’t like taking the Grand Tour of Europe and seeing people more or less like themselves but speaking French or Italian or German.

The encounters of the expedition were of four types: encounters with people; encounters with landscapes; encounters with language, including the limits of their own language; and encounters with self, particularly for Meriwether Lewis.

In the course of their journey Lewis and Clark explored, learned about, and socialized with a rich tapestry of other peoples: Mandan, Hidatsa, Shoshone, Sioux, Arikara, Nez Perce, Walla Walla, Yakima, Clatsop, Chinook, Flathead, Blackfeet, assiniboine, Cree, Oto, Missouri.

Lewis and Clark were prepared for the prairies of Missouri and Kansas—more or less what they had experienced all of their lives in Virginia and Kentucky—but nothing had ever prepared them for the Great Plains (treeless, windswept, alkaline, and in the winter appallingly cold).

They had expected the Rocky Mountains to be about the height of the Appalachians, and moreover they had somehow talked themselves into believing that the Rockies would be a single dividing range of mountains. They could not have anticipated the jumble of the Rocky Mountains, their sharpness, their mass, what Meriwether Lewis called their "eternal snows," and not just one elegant ridge, but range upon range upon range as far as the eye could see.

Fourth, the expedition threw up some very interesting cultural mirrors.

What is the difference between a civilized man and a savage? What are the indicator marks of a civilized man? A gun? A writing instrument? A clock? A magnetic compass? Do clothes make the man? What happens when you suddenly discover that you are dressed like an Indian, that you look like an Indian, that you are eating what an Indian eats, and sleeping as an Indian sleeps? Is it liberating? Does it create a sense of the common fund of humanity? Or does it freak you out?

These and many other cultural mirrors were held up to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in the heart of the American wilderness. They looked into these mirrors and Meriwether Lewis was destabilized by the experience—driven to distraction and eventually to suicide. And William Clark (no less an exemplar of Western Enlightenment civilization) somehow took it all in stride. They looked into these cultural mirrors, Lewis and Clark. Lewis shuddered. Clark shrugged. And in their private lives, that made all the difference.

Finally, the journey of Lewis and Clark is a very interesting metaphor—especially for someone matriculating at a liberal arts college.

What did Jefferson instruct young Lewis to do as he left the safety of the White House and embarked on a journey into the heart of the heart of the country? I’ll paraphrase, but as faithfully to the original text as possible. Some of this should sound familiar.

Take good notes and lots of them. Write home as often as possible. Treat everyone you meet with as much respect as they deserve, and maybe a little bit more. Study languages. Learn everything you possibly can about other cultures, other economies, other religions, other ways of organizing life. Study the humanities but give special attention to the hard sciences. Back up your hard drive from time to time. Take risks, of course take risks, but don’t take unnecessary risks that would jeopardize the great investment I am making in you. If things go badly wrong, you can always come home at any time.

And finally, good patron that he was, Jefferson gave Meriwether Lewis a universal letter of credit that he could use anywhere on earth at any time to purchase anything he might need, and the bill would be sent to the United States government for immediate payment. Jefferson gave this credit card with no dollar limit to Meriwether Lewis but of course, like all good parents, he warned him never to use it unless he absolutely positively had to.

And, of course, Meriwether Lewis, like all good children, took this advice seriously but made a few creative adjustments along the way.