This provocative work challenges traditional accounts of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s expedition across the continent and back again. Uncovering deeper meanings in the explorers’ journals and lives, Exploring Lewis and Clark exposes their self-perceptions and deceptions, and how they interacted with those who traveled with them, the people they discovered along the way, the animals they hunted, and the land they walked across. The book discovers new heroes and brings old ones into historical focus. Thomas P. Slaughter interrogates the explorers’ dreams, how they wrote and what they aimed to possess, their interactions with animals, Indians, and each other, their sense of themselves as leaders and men, and why they feared that they had failed their nation and President. Slaughter’s Lewis and Clark are more confused, frightened, courageous, and flawed than in previous accounts. They are more human, their expedition more dramatic, and thus their story is more revealing about our own relationships to history and myth.

Few events in American history have shaped the nation like the Lewis and Clark Expedition. It opened the American West for settlement. It redrew the map of the United States. It identified an array of native peoples, spectacular places, fascinating creatures, and extraordinary flora unknown in "civilized" America. It defined the American nation as a land stretching from coast to coast-and it launched the spread of population in a mighty frontier migration unlike anything ever witnessed in America before or since. Lewis and Clark on the Trail of Discovery contains 19 chapters, detailing the expedition chronologically. A "museum in a book," this fascinating volume contains re-creations of original documents such as diary entries, letters, maps, and sketches-all meticulously reproduced so that the reader can actually handle and examine them. Among the documents included in the book are: The actual letter of credit Jefferson wrote to Lewis committing the U.S. government to pay for the expedition. The code Thomas Jefferson provided to Lewis for sending secret messages. Clark's sketch of the technique some Indians used to flatten their heads, a sign of prestige. Clark's letter of gratitude to Sacagawea, a Shoshone teenager who helped the expedition. A newspaper account of the expedition's return to St. Louis.

Journal entries chronicle the experiences Charles Floyd had while working with Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery in 1804.

A 150-pound Newfoundland dog teams with Lewis & Clark for an edge-of-your-seat middle grade adventure. It is 1804, the year that Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and the Corps of Discovery set out for their now-legendary exploration of the Louisiana Purchase. With no maps and little idea what wonders and dangers lie ahead, Seaman, a 150-pound Newfoundland dog, proves to be one of the most valuable members of the Corps. In the face of starvation, Seaman catches and retrieves game, and his intimidating size and teeth protect the small band of explorers – from Native American raiders and even a ferocious grizzly bear! As the bond and mutual trust between Seaman and the Corp grows, they're confident that nothing—not even raging waters and towering mountains—will stop them from reaching the West Coast. This thrilling fictional account of Lewis and Clark's expedition with the Corps of Discovery, Seaman, and eventually Sacagawea, is full of accurate details drawn from Lewis's own diary entries and will draw readers into one of the most exciting chapters in American history.

Seaman, Meriwether Lewis's Newfoundland dog, describes Lewis and Clark's expedition, which he accompanied from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean.

Dramatizes Lewis and Clark's exploration of the land west of the Mississippi River.