In America's early national period, Meriwether Lewis was a towering figure. Selected by Thomas Jefferson to lead the expedition to explore the Louisiana Purchase, he was later rewarded by Jefferson with the governorship of the entire Louisiana Territory. Yet within three years, plagued by controversy over administrative expenses, Lewis found his reputation and career in tatters. En route to Washington to clear his name, he died mysteriously in a crude cabin on the Natchez Trace in Tennessee. Was he a suicide, felled by his own alcoholism and mental instability? Most historians have agreed. Patricia Tyson Stroud reads the evidence to posit another, even darker, ending for Lewis. Stroud uses Lewis's find, the bitterroot flower, with its nauseously pungent root, as a symbol for his reputation as a purported suicide. It was this reputation that Thomas Jefferson promulgated in the memoir he wrote prefacing the short account of Lewis's historic expedition published five years after his death. Without investigation of any kind, Jefferson, Lewis's mentor from boyhood, reiterated undocumented assertions of Lewis's serious depression and alcoholism. That Lewis was the courageous leader of the first expedition to explore the continent from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean has been overshadowed by presuppositions about the nature of his death. Stroud peels away the layers of misinformation and gossip that have obscured Lewis's rightful reputation. Through a retelling of his life, from his resourceful youth to the brilliance of his leadership and accomplishments as a man, Bitterroot shows that Jefferson's mystifying assertion about the death of his protégé is the long-held bitter root of the Meriwether Lewis story.

A beautifully rendered reference guide to the Great Plains portion of the famous expedition through the American West highlights the explorer's remarkable encounters with previously undocumented flora and fauna as they moved through the Plains region. Original. (Biology & Natural History)

The first five volumes of the new edition of the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition have been widely heralded as a lasting achievement in the study of western exploration. The sixth volume begins on November 2, 1805, in the second year of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s epic journey. It covers the last leg of the party’s route from the Cascades of the Columbia River to the Pacific Coast and their stay at Fort Clatsop, near the river’s mouth, until the spring of 1806. Travel and exploration, described in the early part, were hampered by miserable weather, and the enforced idleness in winter quarters permitted detailed record keeping. The journals portray the party’s interaction with the Indians of the lower Columbia River and the coast, particularly the Chinooks, Clatsops, Wahkiakums, Cathlamets, and Tillamooks. No other volume in this edition has such a wealth of ethnographic and natural history materials, most of it apparently written by Lewis and copied by Clark, and accompanied by sketches of plants, animals, and Indians and their canoes, implements, and clothing. Incorporating a wide range of new scholarship dealing with all aspects of the expedition, from Indian languages to plants and animals to geographical and historical contexts, this new edition expands and updates the annotation of the last edition, published early in the twentieth century.

"The team of the "Grand Expedition," as it was optimistically named, was the first to send its findings on the newly annexed territory to the president, who received Dunbar and Hunter's detailed journals with pleasure. They include descriptions of flora and fauna, geology, weather, landscapes, and native peoples and European settlers, as well as astronomical and navigational records that allowed the first accurate English maps of the region and its waterways to be produced. Their scientific experiments conducted at the hot springs may be among the first to discover a microscopic phenomena still under research today."--Jacket.

The Lewis and Clark expedition is both one of the greatest geographical adventures undertaken by Americans and one of the best documented at the time. The University of Nebraska Press edition of the Journals of Lewis and Clark now reaches volume 10 of the projected 13 that will contain the complete record of the expedition. In order that the fullest record possible be kept of the expedition, captains Lewis and Clark required their sergeants to keep journals to compensate for possible loss of the captains' own accounts. The sergeants' accounts extend and corroborate the journals of Lewis and Clark and contribute to the full record of the expedition. Volume 10 contains the journal of expedition member Sergeant Patrick Gass. Gass was promoted to sergeant on the expedition to fill the place of the deceased Charles Floyd. His journal was subsequently published and proved quite popular: it went through six editions in six years. A skilled carpenter, Gass was almost certainly responsible for supervising the building of Forts Mandan and Clatsop; his records of those forts are particularly detailed and useful. Gass was to live until 1870, the last survivor of the expedition and the one who lived to see transcontinental communication fulfill the promise of the expedition. Gary E. Moulton is a professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and recipient of the J. Franklin Jameson Award of the American Historical Association for the editing of these journals.