Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier
2003 · book
From Stephen Ambrose comes a book on the most momentous expedition in American history & one of the great adventure stories of all time. In 1803 Pres. Th Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Cpt. Meriwether Lewis, to lead a voyage up the Missouri R. to the Rockies, over the mountains, down the Columbia R. to the Pacific Ocean & back. Lewis was a perfect choice. He endured great hardships & saw incredible sights, including vast herds of buffalo & Indian tribes with no previous contact with whites. He & his partner, Cpt. Wm Clark, made the 1st map of the trans-Mississippi West, provided scientific data on the flora & fauna of the Louisiana Purchase territory, & established the American claim to Oregon, Washington & Idaho. Ambrose has pieced together new information about weather, terrain & medical knowledge at the time to provide a colorfully realistic backdrop for the expedition. Lewis saw the N. American continent before any other white. Ambrose details native peoples, weather, landscape, science, everything the expedition encountered, thru Lewis' eyes. Lewis is supported by a host of colorful characters, 1st of all Jefferson himself, whose interest in exploring & acquiring the American West went back 30 years. Next comes Clark, a frontiersman whose love for Lewis matched Jefferson's. There are numerous Indian chiefs, & Sacagawea, the Indian girl who accompanied the expedition, along with the French-Indian hunter Drouillard, the great naturalists of Philadelphia, the Fr