SOURCE: “‘The Writingest Explorers’: The Lewis and Clark Expedition in American Historical Literature,” in Voyages of Discovery: Essays on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by James P. Ronda, Montana Historical Society Press, 1998, pp. 299-326.

In the following essay, Ronda surveys the publication history of the Lewis and Clark journals, detailing scholarly as well as public reaction to the various editions.

On September 26, 1806, just four days after returning from the Pacific Coast, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark settled into a rented room at Pierre Chouteau's and “commenced wrighting.”¹ Journal entries, scientific observations, ethnographic notes, and detailed maps—a virtual encyclopedia of the West—needed to be examined, catalogued, and arranged for further study. Surveying the literary remains of their expedition, Lewis and Clark surely would have agreed with historian Donald Jackson that they were the “writingest explorers” the West had yet seen.² The struggle to understand the meaning...