Lewis Clark Tailor Made Trail Worn

When the Lewis and Clark Expedition crossed a continent in 1803 to 1806, they started out in U.S. Army uniforms, which gradually had to be replaced with simple leather garments. For parts of those uniforms, only a single drawing, pattern, or example survives. Historian Moore and artist Haynes have researched archives and museums to locate and verify what the men wore, and Haynes has painted and sketched the clothing in scenes of the trip. Also included are Indian styles the men adopted, and the wardrobes of the Creole interpreters and the French boatmen. Weapons and accessories round out this complete record of what the expedition wore or carried--and why. A great reference for artists, living history performers, museums, and military historians.

As the Lewis and Clark Expedition traveled west, white explorers and Native American peoples encountered each other for the first time. Learn how the natives lived, how they interacted, and what they thought of the explorers from the east.

By Terry Nathans he weather and climate of the trans-Mississippi west was virtually unknown at the begin- Tning of the nineteenth century. This changed dramatically shortly after the Louisiana P- chase was signed in 1803, which set the stage for acquiring the first systematic weather measurements of the trans-Mississippi west. The framework for obtaining these measurements was outlined in the now famous June 20, 1803 letter from President Thomas Jefferson to his protégé and personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis. In that letter, Jefferson instructed Lewis to plan and carry out an overland expedition to the Pacific Ocean for the purposes of commerce, and to observe and record a broad range of natural history subjects, including the ...climate, as characterised by the thermometer, by the proportion of rainy, cloudy & clear days, by lightning, hail, snow, ice, by the access & recess of frost, by the winds prevailing at different s- sons, the dates at which particular plants put forth or lose their flower, or leaf... (Jackson 1978, p. 63). Jefferson’s instructions to Lewis, which were part of his decades-long ambition of laun- ing an expedition to explore the interior of North America, were made at the threshold of what Fleming (1990) has called the “expanding horizons” in meteorology. During this period, more reliable meteorological instruments began to emerge allowing for a more comprehensive and systematic acquisition of weather data.

Although some have attributed the success of the Lewis and Clark expedition primarily to gunpowder and gumption, historian William R. Swagerty demonstrates in this two-volume set that adopting Indian ways of procuring, processing, and transporting food and gear was crucial to the survival of the Corps of Discovery. The Indianization of Lewis and Clark retraces the well-known trail of America’s most famous explorers as a journey into the heart of Native America—a case study of successful material adaptation and cultural borrowing. Beginning with a broad examination of regional demographics and folkways, Swagerty describes the cultural baggage and material preferences the expedition carried west in 1804. Detailing this baseline reveals which Indian influences were already part of Jeffersonian American culture, and which were progressive adaptations the Corpsmen made of Indian ways in the course of their journey. Swagerty’s exhaustive research offers detailed information on both Indian and Euro-American science, medicine, cartography, and cuisine, and on a wide range of technologies and material culture. Readers learn what the Corpsmen wore, what they ate, how they traveled, and where they slept (and with whom) before, during, and after the return. Indianization is as old as contact experiences between Native Americans and Europeans. Lewis and Clark took the process to a new level, accepting the hospitality of dozens of Native groups as they sought a navigable water route to the Pacific. This richly illustrated, interdisciplinary study provides a unique and complex portrait of the material and cultural legacy of Indian America, offering readers perspective on lessons learned but largely forgotten in the aftermath of the epic journey.

William Clark is famous as one of the leaders on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, but he was also a soldier, a politician, and Indian agent. When he was a young boy, America became an independent country and by the time he died, the young country had expanded beyond the Mississippi and more than doubled in size. William served in the Army, explored and mapped new territory, served as governor of the Missouri Territory, and worked to keep the peace between Native Americans and new American settlers moving west as the country expanded.

Charles Fritz: 100 Paintings Illustrating the Journals of Lewis and Clark unites exquisite Western art with one of our nation's greatest epics. The result of a decade of comprehensive research and on-location painting, this expanded collection of 100 paintings depicts the triumphs and travails of the Corps of Discovery's two-and-a-half-year trek through unknown territory to the Pacific Ocean and back between 1804 and 1806. Although several members of the Corps of Discovery kept journals, an artist did not accompany the expedition. Unlike almost every expedition since, there had been no one to visually document the unique people, landscapes, animals, and plants never before seen by Americans living in the East. With artistry and a passion for historical accuracy, Charles Fritz, one of the nation's most respected Western artists, brings the Journals of Lewis and Clark to life, telling this remarkable American story visually-and for the first time allowing us to experience what the Corps saw on their historic journey.

The surprising story of how Thomas Jefferson commanded an unrivaled age of American exploration—and in presiding over that era of discovery, forged a great nation. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, as Britain, France, Spain, and the United States all jockeyed for control of the vast expanses west of the Mississippi River, the stakes for American expansion were incalculably high. Even after the American purchase of the Louisiana Territory, Spain still coveted that land and was prepared to employ any means to retain it. With war expected at any moment, Jefferson played a game of strategy, putting on the ground the only Americans he could: a cadre of explorers who finally annexed it through courageous investigation. Responsible for orchestrating the American push into the continent was President Thomas Jefferson. He most famously recruited Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who led the Corps of Discovery to the Pacific, but at the same time there were other teams who did the same work, in places where it was even more crucial. William Dunbar, George Hunter, Thomas Freeman, Peter Custis, and the dauntless Zebulon Pike—all were dispatched on urgent missions to map the frontier and keep up a steady correspondence with Washington about their findings. But they weren’t always well-matched—with each other and certainly not with a Spanish army of a thousand soldiers or more. These tensions threatened to undermine Jefferson’s goals for the nascent country, leaving the United States in danger of losing its foothold in the West. Deeply researched and inspiringly told, Jefferson’s America rediscovers the robust and often harrowing action from these seminal expeditions and illuminates the president’s vision for a continental America.