America: The Lewis and Clark Expedition and the Dawn of a New Power

John Abbott is a professor of history at Laurentian University’s Algoma University College. He is the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste Marie and The History of Fort St. Joseph.

It is true, as Denis Vaugeois writes on page 105, that “history is
written not only in great events, but in the bits and pieces of lives
and destinies, even those of minor players.” One might even concede
that it is sometimes written “mainly in the fate of minor players.”
At the same time, it is incumbent on the historian to integrate the bits
and pieces into the theme stated in the title, and present a narrative
balancing the requirements of chronology and topicality.

The title implies that this book is about the role played by the Lewis
and Clark expedition in opening American eyes to the possibility of a
continental empire. The real theme, however, is the critical
contribution made to the success of the enterprise by the expedition’s
Canadien guides, interpreters, boatmen, and hunters. Had Vaugeois
carefully knit his analyses of the Canadiens’ diverse skills into the
chronology and events of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, he might have
kept the reader with him and enlarged our understanding. But he does not
do this. He throws helter-skelter into his account such matters as
extended treatises about Jefferson’s attitude toward African-Americans
and Indians, his relationship with Shirley Hemming, the slave revolt in
Haiti, David Thompson’s and Alexander Mackenzie’s expeditions, and
the Canadiens who served Francis Parkman and John James Audubon. The
introduction contains a short, makeshift summary of the two-year tour of
“The Corps of Discovery,” as the Lewis and Clark expedition was
called. That is followed by a disjointed, episodic, book-length
treatment of the expedition for which the brief summary does not provide
context and support. Most of those without intimate prior knowledge of
the enterprise will scratch their heads in puzzlement and set the volume
aside in frustration.

This is a really unsatisfactory book. It is repetitive and discursive,
fractured both in form and content. Explanatory “footnotes” appear
as sidebars, cluttering up the text, altering the length of the printed
line, and disrupting the scanning rhythm of the reader’s eyes. Indeed,
given the medley of material incorporated into the text, one wonders
what the criteria might have been for choosing the information
appropriate for sidebars.