Resumo de Undaunted Courage

Many of the popular accounts of the Lewis and Clark Expedition tend to be overly patriotic and somewhat myopic, but Stephen Ambrose?s highly acclaimed work avoids this in its opening chapters. Undoubtedly, the expedition was one of the great achievements of North American exploration, but many patriotic American treatments tend to dwell glowingly on the events of the undertaking in themselves, almost assuming that the expansion of the US to the Pacific was virtually a fait accompli because of the expedition and a major step of ?manifest destiny.? Nothing could be farther from the truth. The broader context was the whole developing geopolitical situation of the North American continent and President Thomas Jefferson was strongly aware of this when he instituted the expedition, shortly after his purchase of the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803.

At the start of the nineteenth century, Spain had only recently relaxed its nebulous West Coast claims that once stretched from California as far as the present Alaska Panhandle. With the detailed charting of Captain George Vancouver, and the energetic explorations of the North West Company, based in Montreal, there was a strong British claim to the entire Northwest. In 1801, Alexander MacKenzie of the North West Company, who (in 1793) was the first white man to travel overland to the Pacific Coast, had published his journals, suggesting strongly that the British Crown lay claim to a vast stretch of the coast between the Spanish settlements in California and the Russian claims in Alaska. Both Jefferson and Meriwether Lewis, then acting as the President?s personal secretary, had read MacKenzie?s book shortly before the purchase of Louisiana, and the accomplishment of the bold Scot was only one piece in a mosaic that Jefferson grasped only too well. Jefferson realized that if the United States were to remain only in its territory east of the Mississippi, it could be cut off by the claims of stronger European powers.

In 1803, over 80% of American citizens lived in the tidewater areas of Atlantic coast, and many viewed even the territory west of the Appalachians as a remote wilderness, even though this area was receiving enough settlers to see the creation of new states, like Kentucky. Jefferson, however, had familiarized himself with the ambitious speculations of the European powers as they related to the continent, particularly those of the British Empire, and he was willing to take bold and far-reaching actions to launch the infant nation on a westward expansion beyond the Mississippi.

Ambrose gives a very articulate discussion of this important background and then proceeds with a narrative of the events of the expedition itself. In a sense, much of Ambrose's narrative is a reconstruction of subject matter that has been part if the American experience for last two centuries, and rehashed many times, but he combines a scholarly knowledge and a captivating writing style with the authority of firsthand experience. He and members of his family have covered virtually every square foot of the expedition route themselves over the years, and Ambrose can speak from the vantage point of firsthand observation when describing geographical features.

Ambrose? account is richly detailed. The personal friendship between Lewis and Jefferson, fellow Virginians separated by a generation in age, is portrayed. Although the two leaders of the expedition differed in their personalities, the strong rapport between Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and their ability to co-ordinate activity and motivate their men were great strengths of the undertaking. After they assembled the resources of the expedition and travelled to St. Louis, they journeyed up the Missouri, which was known to the white man only as far as the Mandan settlements in what now is now North Dakota. The rest was terra incognita, and the teenaged Sacajawea, a Shoshone married to a French Canadian, assisted them greatly in the second year of the journey, as they moved up the Missouri through what now is Montana. Disappointment awaited them on the westward side of the Continental Divide, because all they could see were more mountains, with no easy river route, although they found a feeder river into the lower Columbia and proceeded to the Pacific Coast.

After wintering uncomfortably in a temporary shelter that they named Fort Clatsop, near the present city of Astoria, Oregon, the expedition retraced its steps and separated briefly on the east side of the divide before reuniting and making a speedy return journey down the Missouri. Here they regained contact with a westerly moving American civilization that had almost forgotten them. Although the undertaking was immensely risky, only one member died of appendicitis and was interred on the banks of the Missouri. Relations with the native peoples were predominantly very positive in this earliest encounter between white Americans and the great tribes of the northern plains and mountains. There was a testy encounter with the Teton Sioux on the way westwards, uncomfortably relations with the coastal people at Fort Clatsop, a skirmish with the Blackfeet on the return that left two warriors dead, but contacts with the Mandan, the Shoshone and the Nez Perce enabled the expedition to survive.

Stephen Ambrose presents an excellent late twentieth century examination of this very important episode in the history of the United States, an episode the launched the great tidal wave of American territorial claims and settlements that stretched to the great western ocean.

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