Now from portland, oregon, the tv takes a tour of Library Archives and special collections and of lewis and clark university. We are in portland, oregon, at the special collection in the law library upstairs in a reading room and today we will see a range of collection from our lewis and clark collection including material, not representative of the types of things they brought with them on the exposition to the Pacific Ocean, contemporary material that informed their decisions they undertook. We will see contemporary accounts of the expedition created almost immediately after they returned to washington and we will also see the legacy of the expedition, material that reflects upon the expedition from 100 to 150 years later and romanticizes the events of the exposition. I think they show us the developing relationship of americans with the idea of the west. We start with material reflecting upon the nature of adventuring and the unknown from the early night team 18th century and then move forward with the west is beginning to be known into sort of a more scientific and knowledgebased understanding of this frontier america. We will learn about the traveling library in the books that lewis and clarke took along with them at great effort appeared to then we will talk to associate had a special collections about early accounts of the expedition upon lewis and clarks return and finally, i will talk about some of the 20th century novels and exercises that reflected on the expedition much later. We will start by looking at items from the traveling library that lewis and clark brought with them on their journeys. We have tried to recreate here at lewis and clark the library that lewis and clarke, the Library Books they would have brought with them. Not the same volumes, obviously. Copies of the same additions they wouldve had with them and they really shed light on some and their interests and concerns in the larger purposes and meaning behind the voyage, so the first item is a book by alexander, Alexander Mackenzie was actually the person to cross the north american con he went through what is now canada in the 1790s and lewis and clark would have got this book, first of all because he wouldve encountered some of the same challenges and issues that they did. In many ways his voyages more daunting than theirs. Mackenzie had also collected a lot of indian native american vocabularies and if so they were taking that as a model for their own efforts to collect linguistic information from the native americans that they encountered or expected to encounter. At the fourth book we have here is by patrick kelly. This is an introduction to not astronomy. One of the main things lewis and clark were charged with was making a good map of the American West and to do that they needed to know a lot about collecting latitude and longitude. That was a fiendishly difficult operation at that time. Lewis never really completely mastered it, but they did bring with them, not just kellys book, but also lengthy tables and charts of the positions of various astronomical bodies as they would have appeared at different times and that was a way to trace longitude by majoring distances between say the moment and the moon and stars and other bodies, so they never quite fully mastered this technique, but it was key to creating what would eventually be a successful map of the American West that clark put together, so when lewis and clark first arrived in oregon they were understandably ecstatic. This long journey had reached its destination and when clark first saw the Pacific Ocean, although, it turned out it was not quite the pacific, but they were close and he wrote in his journal famously, oceanview, oh the joy so this was in november 1805. There was a great deal of ecstasy at the time, but as the core discovery spent the next several months in oregon on the coast, a bit inland from the coast they quickly grew disenchanted with its. Rainy winter and claimed only seven or eight days had been without train that winter and they also complained a lot about the food. They had trouble finding things to eat. They lived basically off elk meat and roots and because the weather was so damp they couldnt drive the meat and so it was often in the process of spoiling while they were eating it, so i actually looked back with some nostalgia to the previous winter, which they had spent in what is now north dakota, which was very cold, sometimes 40 but degrees below zero, but at least they had plenty of game two of off of in a variety Different Things that they could eat. So, they werent necessarily enamored with their time in oregon despite their initial excitement at arriving. Another interesting thing is the length they went to to preserve these books and keep them dry during what was obviously a watery journey and so they had jefferson taught lewis how to wrap books and oilcloth and they had some kind of drama or box that they stored the books in. They had the 17 volumes of the books they were bringing with them and also 30 volumes of journals that they themselves wrote in and so keeping these things dry was a major challenge and again the fact that they the only other thing they went to such lengths to keep dry was their gunpowder and so again it suggests how important these things were to them and how seriously they took the whole project of recording knowledge and being influenced by these books. Following from ejs description and discussion on preparatory material and claim library, in 1806, the expedition returned back to philadelphia following the twoyear journey out towards Pacific Ocean. 33 men were along the text exposition and in that seven men were encouraged to keep a journal of their experiences along the way along with lewis and clarke who kept meticulous journals along the way and would consolidate them several times during the journey into more finalized thoughts into their experiences and upon returning in 1806 lewis himself had collected the other journals and data and began taking the information putting it together for the official report of the core discovery. Unfortunately, lewis passed away in 1812, before he could finish kind of putting out this final reports. At that point time the journals themselves and all of his information made its way back to philadelphia where a man by the name of biddle took information began assembling it into a final report. In 1814, and again this is eight years after the expedition itself we finally get the official reports of the expedition of the core discovery at the government publication, so mostly like statistical data, information on the native americans they encounter, resources they discover that might be used for future explorers or people moving into the area or can 1814 we see this twovolume set coming to publication that kind of synthesizes the information with the official report picked up initial publication for this was 1417 copies. We see here one of about a dozen copies known to exist that are in the original boards, so its how the publish originally published it with a simple stamp affronts, not published it with a simple stamp affronts, not bound in leather or a personal copy, just kind of the raw publication version, so a bit better than the 1700 representative copies that are out there work again, this is the official report that comes down the lewis and Clark Expedition. Nearly 100 years after the expedition in 1893 a man by the name of elliott coos who was interested in the expedition itself, but had an interest that went beyond kind of look at the official reports, but he was more interested in the original narrative of the travelers of the expedition, so he went to philadelphia where the original journals are kept and asked if he could borrow them to put them out as a published series of volumes that actually had the transcriptions of the original journal themselves, so people interested in the historical and narrative approach of the expedition could read them in the original version and he took the original journals back to washington dc and hired a woman by the name of Mary Anderson to make an exact copy of the journals of lewis and clark and this represents one volume of the series and whats interesting is that Mary Anderson was paid 150 to hand copy an exact duplicate of the journals. This is the only one known to exist and you can see her incredible craftsmanship of copying the text exactly as lewis and clark would have written it and even copying an illustration they would have done, so this represents the candlesticks they discovered along the way and done a drawing in the original journals and she made an exact copy of us apart from this and the original journals in philadelphia, thats basically the whole representation of looking at the actual journals themselves. After the initial report of the expedition there was continuing interest that died down a bit over the course of the 19th century, but in the 20th century there has been resurgence of the American West, cowboy stories in general had huge traction in the 50s and 60s, but the lewis and Clark Expedition next specifically at the attention of fiction authors as well as nonfiction writers in one book that emphasizes such as julia role sacajawea role really emphasizes or possibly invents sacajaweas role at the center and another important figure that came along that we dont know that much about his york who comes into the party only to the Pacific Ocean and back. Hes not well accounted for in the original journals or any other original contemporary accounts of expedition, but we are working to gain a better understanding of him. Our selection includes some modern scholarship around new york around york, but unlike sacajawea hes only beginning to capture the imagination of modern scholars and modern fiction writers and more recently more has been done to think about yorks role. His position on the expedition was an unusual one. He had a lot of freedom as he came with expedition wes including as a zach mentioned earlier rights to vote on where the camps made their winter accommodation and to carry a gone, but when they got back to the east when all the other members of the party were awarded 320 acres of land to thank them for their efforts, york as a slave was not given any reward. At that time once they made it back he asked for his freedom from william clark, but was not granted his freedom, so continued in slavery. In the 19th century sacajawea he was sort of for his unusual status in the American West of the american. Unlike sacajawea he was made into a clownish character who might have softened relations with the native americans. He may not have interacted with a person of his race before, so this myth grew around him, but lost some traction in later retelling of the story and is only beginning to emerge again with sort of enthusiasm from the academic community. This is one of our many collections that helped us explore how history is received, so not only do we have the books we talked about at the beginning that give us a sense of a motive and intellectual grounding of the expedition, but they also let us see how historians have related with that event from the very earliest moments after lewis and clark returned to the present moment and we see iterations of accounts of the expedition, which really is much as a complex on what lewis and clark did reflects on their own moment in time and that moments relationship with the past and i think that offers a demonstration of the filters we as historians put on what we study and let us interrogate our own preconceptions and prejudices and intentions when we telly story for the past. Thats what i can is really exciting about having popular reaction to the expedition of lewis and clark through the times ranging from literally just moments or years after they returned to this day and almost every decade between. I think its as really useful sense of what we bring to history. This is tom mccall Waterfront Park in oregon, late after the former Oregon Governor tom mccall who is known for his strong Environmental Policies to right now we hear from author Richard Clucas about the complexities of oregon politics. The name of
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