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Vol. 25:3 ISSN 0160-8460 Fall 1997
On the Document Trail of Lewis and Clark
by Roger A. Bruns, Acting Executive Director
Ken Burns' recent documentary film on PBS, Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, stirred for me various thoughts - from the story itself, one of the most compelling in American history, to the challenge to the film maker in creating a visual representation of a subject for which no contemporary film images or photographs are available. Mostly, though, I thought about the documents.
I thought about Lewis and some of the others painstakingly recording, for over 2½ years, data and observations from every part of the perilous journey. I thought of the extraordinary difficulty of preparing the detailed maps recording for the first time the bends and turns of the river. I thought of the simple but accurate sketches of the animals, birds, wildlife, and American Indians, and of the plant leaves that the explorers carefully pressed and saved for posterity.
It was surprising to me that the Shoshone guide, Sacagawea, was an early document preservationist. It was she, after all, who, according to Lewis, once "caught and preserved" some of the journals that had tumbled out of one the boats rollicking in the rapids. In an elemental sense, we can count her in the long line of archivists and records conservators who perform such valuable service every day across the county, though mostly on dry land.
Ken Burns himself remarked how "precious" and "vivid" the film makers found the explorers' journals. Here, in their own words and in their own hands, he said, were first-person descriptions of the wondrous sights. When Burns and his colleagues shot the documentary, the journals were, he said, a "thrilling visual resource." "Our lenses moved in," Burns recalled, "and almost microscopically surveyed the landscape of their recorded experience." Burns picked out single, powerful phrases: "O! the joy;" "visionary enchantment;" and the simple, yet determined, "we proceeded on."
I began to think how the story of what happened to the documents rivals, in a way, the history of this marvelous expedition. That these materials should have survived the trip is remarkable in itself. That they should have survived two centuries and be available to writers such as Stephen Ambrose, who recently authored the best-selling Undaunted Courage, and to film makers such as Burns is also remarkable. It is a testament that something went right. Whose combined efforts should we applaud?
Check the film credits. Notice the lists of archival institutions that are preserving the materials; notice the lists of archivists who helped the film makers in their research. Also notice the acknowledgment to Professor Gary Moulton, University of Nebraska.
Moulton began his own journey of discovery when he undertook the daunting task of transcribing and editing the journals of Lewis and Clark. The twelfth and final volume will be sent to the University of Nebraska Press early next year.
When completed, the project will have published the journals created by the two captains and four of the enlisted men; other textual materials; 128 maps; botanical photographs including 240 of the plants Lewis pressed and saved along the journey. Moulton himself identified 11 of the plants in the records at Kew Gardens, the Royal Botanical Gardens in London.
On November 10, 1997, various individuals involved with the filming of the documentary attended a viewing with President Clinton in the East Room. It was in that room that Meriwether Lewis worked two centuries ago as President Jefferson's private secretary - "a nice connection," according to Moulton.
In his remarks, President Clinton praised the work of Moulton and others who helped enrich understanding of one of America's most central historical events. The President said, "That is a very precious gift to our future generations." Indeed.
