A straightforward, red-headed Virginian, Clark took along his slave, York, because he had grown so dependent on him. Lewis suffered from what seems to have been occasional depression Clark, more emotionally stable, was robust. Lewis, 29, a former military officer and Jefferson’s private secretary for two years, was chosen by the president for the job Lewis selected his friend and former military commander Clark, 33, to go along into history. The leaders’ backgrounds and relationship are described early on. Burns’ cameras catch first impressions of the Missouri’s White Cliffs, sandstone formations that still rise today like ancient fortresses the Pacific (after first mistaking the Columbia’s wide gorge for the sea) the Continental Divide the three forks in the Missouri. Mountain ranges, rushing streams, thick forests, strong river currents and unimaginable waterfalls faced the explorers. Colors are startling, with blues too blue, trees too high, wide open spaces breathtakingly wide and open. And they do it in the best way: by recreating with cameras what the expedition saw. The filmmakers capture the imposing grandeur as it was first viewed. Writer Dayton Duncan, comparing the venture to the moon launch, observes that the moon-walkers at least had immediate and direct communication with their fellow man back on Earth these explorers, trekking through an uncharted void, had no way of contacting home base.īurns and Duncan splendidly convey the utter vastness and foreignness of these unknown 2,000 miles of the American continent. Staying with them through the winter and procuring horses from the Shoshone Indians, they continued the trek westward over the Rocky Mountains. Louis on May 14, 1804, Lewis and Clark, given $2,500 by the government and approximately four dozen men, headed up the difficult Missouri River by keelboat until November, when they encountered friendly Mandan Indians.
had bought for its $15 million and as a search for the (nonexistent) Northwest Passage, the supposed direct route to the Pacific. The already-planned expedition of the Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery, as Jefferson called it, was especially important to the nation - as an exploration of what the U.S. The United States had reached westward only as far as the Mississippi until the Louisiana Purchase, which more than doubled the size of the country.
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