Most good ideas are simple, and, as the title of this book suggests, it is a simple collection of some extremely profound ruminations by Native Americans on the acts and impact of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Nine extremely well educated authors were asked to address the effects of the Corps of Discovery for its bicentennial. They are not representative of the man in the street. They may, however, have captured the...
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Plenty of history books tell the Lewis and Clark expedition story from different angles; but here for the first time is the other side of the story from nine descendants of the Native Americans whose homelands were traversed by the two intrepid explorers. From a newspaper editor who writes of his childhood belief he was descended from Clark to essays which reveal family encounters, tribal law, or the expedition's long impact...
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Only a man of the lifelong sense of fairness and perspective of Alvin Josephy could have had the idea of letting Indian historians weigh in on such a momentous event. Alvin Josephy's intimate association with these writers gives the title of editor way more weight that it would normally get. This is a very important book, the last effort of a historian committed to the Indian side of the story. He lived to finish it--as...
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This is an important book. In 2001, I asked a Hidatsa woman working on the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial effort about sources concerning the Native American view of Lewis and Clark. She answered that there wasn't a source. Further, she said that no one person could write such a book. The tribes with whom Lewis and Clark made contact were different in many ways; including their forms of government and how they lived their...
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Josephy has put together a strong cast of writers representing a number of tribes that interacted with the Corps of Discovery. The writers represent the Lakota, Salish, Kootenai, Shoshone-Bannock, Crow, Cayuse, Umatilla, Nez Perce, Walla Walla, Mandan-Hidatsa, Puyallup, Coeur d'Alene, Clatsop Nehalem, and Kiowa. These essays delve into their connection with the Corps, but also migrate towards the effects of those interactions...
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