Thomas Jefferson and the West: The Lewis and Clark Expedition

Pages Agreg-Ink consacrées à The Lewis and Clark Expedition

Ouvrage de base recommandé:The journals of Lewis and Clark, Bernard DeVoto (editor), Stephen Ambrose (Foreword). Mariner Books

 

 

Search inside the book: fonction d'Amazon qui permet de faire une recherche dans le livre

Bibliographie

Biographies

Quizz

un quizz pour revoir les dates clés de l'expédition (par Sissou)

Context

Pre-1803 Chronology

Land Ordinance of 1785 (excerpts)

The Northwest Ordinance (1787)

The Louisiana Purchase

"This little event, of France's possessing herself of Louisiana … is the embryo of a tornado which will burst on the countries on both sides of the Atlantic and involve in it's effects their highest destinies."
April 1802

 

The Presidential order:

Washington D.C., June 20, 1803 To Meriwether Lewis Esquire, Captain of the first regiment of Infantry of the United States of America.

The Object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river & such principal stream of it as by it's course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent for the purpose of commerce.

President Thomas Jefferson

 

The Expedition

(from http://www.monticello.org)

 

Misc.:

Séquence pour le lycée professionnel: Discovering Lewis and Clark (Académie de Créteil)

 

Bibliography

 

Web sites:

 

Sujets de réflexion

  • Les Corps de la Découverte dans la mission d'exploration Lewis et Clark
  • Translations dans les Journaux de Lewis et Clark
  • Connaissance et méconnaisance dans les journaux de Lewis et Clark.
  • Attentes et Découvertes
  • The Corps Of Discovery As The Reflection Of The American Identity
  • "By the time President Jefferson sent the captains up that muddy river and out of sight, the young nation already had a constitution, but it lacked an epic. It had a government but no real identity. Lewis and Clark helped invent one." (Walter Kirn, Time, July 2003).
  • Confrontations - Attentes et découvertes
  • The L&C expedition as "a literary pursuit"
  • Geographic myth and the L&C expedition
  • L&C, aventuriers ou conquérants ?
  • Jefferson, L&C et les indiens
  • Evaluate the significance of the L&C expedition
  • L&C and the Jeffersonian enterprise of liberty
  • L&C and the myth of the frontier
  • The building of an American identity
  • Spreading American democracy over the West
  • Agrarianism and the pursuit of the Enlightenment
  • Les Corps de la Découverte dans la mission d'exploration Lewis et Clark
  • Translations dans les Journaux de Lewis et Clark

Quelques citations

  • "If the captains failed to persuade the Indians to become the children of a distant father, it was because the Indians still had to accept American guns while rejecting useful gifts">>>>> Ronda, Lewis and Clark among the Indians.
  • "Trade and diplomacy, commerce and sovereignty, were all parts of the engine that drove American expansion and guided the L&C expedition" (James Ronda, Lewis and Clark among the Indians).
  • The expedition as "the first report on the West, on America over the hill and beyond the sunset, on the province of the American future" (Bernard de Voto)
  • "By the time President Jefferson sent the captains up that muddy river and out of sight, the young nation already had a constitution, but it lacked an epic. It had a government but no real identity. Lewis and Clark helped invent one." (Walter Kirn, Time, July 2003).
  • Discuss this vision of America : "A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye" (Jefferson in 1801).
  • Discuss this summary of the expedition : "The success of the L&C expedition became a fiction treated as a fact transformed into history that created a myth." (T.P Slaughter, Exploring Lewis and Clark, 2003).
  • Discutez cette affirmation de James P. Ronda en mettant l’accent sur la relation entre « lives and cultures » d’une part et « things » de l’autre :
    “Just as Lewis and Clark explored the lives and cultures of native people, so too did Indians explore Jefferson's travelers and the things they carried with them. What happened from the Missouri to the Columbia was mutual discovery, shared moments of exploration encounter.”
  • Commentaire de l'entrée du 31 mai 1805: “Struggles for the West were--and still are--not just about who should own and occupy the land but also about what the land should mean, the kind of lives that should be lived there, and, ultimately, the kind of stories it would hold.” (Colin G. Calloway, One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark, 2003, p. 13).
  • Discutez cette affirmation de James P. Ronda à propos du Corps of Discovery : “This is not the age of Lewis and Clark. This is the age of Cook and Vancouver.”

 

Dernière mise à jour le jeudi 6 avril, 2006