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River of Promise

Lewis and Clark on the Columbia

David L. Nicandri, Foreword by Clay S. Jenkinson

$18.95$29.95

River of Promise focuses on often-overlooked yet essential aspects of the Lewis and Clark expedition: locating the headwaters of the Columbia and a water route to the Pacific Ocean; William Clark’s role as the partnership’s primary geographic problem-solver; and the contributions of Indian leaders in Columbia River country. The volume also offers comparisons to other explorers and a provocative analysis of Lewis’s 1809 suicide. Originally published by The Dakota Institute.

Watch the Author’s Hour interview with Terry Tazioli.

Listen to David Nicandri on the Thomas Jefferson Hour.

Illustrations / maps / notes/  bibliography / index / 376 pages (2009)

ISBN 978-0-87422-414-6 Hardbound (Original Dakota Institute ISBN 9780982559703)
ISBN 978-0-87422-415-3 Paperback (Original Dakota Institute ISBN 9780982559710)

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Description

In the many published accounts of the Lewis and Clark expedition, historians have tended to undervalue the explorers’ encounter with Columbia River country. Most narratives emphasize Lewis and Clark’s adventures through their journey to the Bitterroot Mountains but have said little about the rest of their travels west of there. River of Promise fills a significant gap in our understanding of Lewis and Clark’s legendary expedition.

Historian David L. Nicandri shifts the focus to an essential goal of the explorers: to discover the headwaters of the Columbia and a water route to the Pacific Ocean. He also restores William Clark in his role as the primary geographic problem-solver of the partnership. Most historians assume that Meriwether Lewis was a more distinguished scientist than Clark because of his formal training in Philadelphia and superior writing skills. Here we see Clark as Lewis’s equal as scientific geographer, not merely the practical manager of boats and personnel.

Nicandri places the legend of Sacagawea in clearer perspective by focusing instead on the contributions of often-overlooked Indian leaders in Columbia River country. He also offers many points of comparison to other explorers and a provocative analysis of Lewis’s suicide in 1809, arguing that it was not a sudden event but fruit of a seed planted much earlier, quite possibly in Columbia country. Originally published by The Dakota Institute.

“When considering the Lewis and Clark Expedition and all the attention it received just a few years ago, it is hard to imagine that anything can or should be said about the subject — at least for a while. It is a pleasant surprise, then, to find much that is new and important in David Nicandri’s River of Promise: Lewis and Clark on the Columbia.”—Mark David Spence, Oregon Historical Quarterly

 

 

Recognition

[Nicandri’s] unique experience indirectly informs much of the book, which is equally concerned with enlarging scholarly understandings of the expedition as it is with reinterpreting stories and events associated with locally celebrated sites along the Columbia River drainage. This twin effort, and the skills Nicandri honed in the study of local histories, has been strengthened by the application of literary analysis. The result is a level of intellectual creativity that allows River of Promise to range, in the course of a single page, from minute details about the missteps of a packhorse in the Bitteroot Mountains to the narrative tropes and grand imperial concerns of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century exploration.”—Mark David Spence, Oregon Historical Quarterly

“Nicandri provides a number of clear and convincing arguments…[demonstrating] that the Columbia River country brought out the worst and some of the best in Lewis and Clark, and it is there that many important new interpretations and understandings are still to be found.”—Mark David Spence, Oregon Historical Quarterly

Read an excerpt on the Discover Lewis & Clark website: https://lewis-clark.org/members/meriwether-lewis/a-solitary-hero/

 

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Hardbound, Paperback