THIS VAST ENTERPRISE

The famous transcontinental expedition “depended on more than Lewis and Clark.”

Not that journalist/historian Fehrman neglects to provide vivid portraits of the Corps of Discovery’s co-captains. He depicts Lewis, secretary and confidant to President Thomas Jefferson, as brilliant but volatile, a superb natural historian prone to fits of anxiety and outbursts of rage at his men. Clark comes across as a shrewd judge of character and situation; the portrait of his complex and evolving relationship with his enslaved “body servant” York, who wins some measure of dignity and respect during the arduous two-year journey, is one of the book’s highlights. York is one of the several subordinate expedition members given chapters foregrounding their experiences; others include capable, virtually unflappable Sergeant John Ordway and Sacajawea, the pregnant Shoshone teenager who proved a far more useful guide and translator than her “husband,” a dissolute trader who bought her from the Hidatsa tribe that had captured and enslaved her. Fehrman also provides the perspectives of various Native American leaders, including Black Buffalo of the Lakota and Piahito of the Arikara, who both sought to establish friendly relations with the Corps despite their tribes’ misgivings. Native suspicions were well founded: One of the key concepts driving Jefferson’s commission of the expedition, Fehrman demonstrates in a sharp analytical passage, was what he called “our right of preemption,” a tangled concept that claimed to respect Natives’ “right of occupancy” but was designed to open the door for “purchases” of Indigenous land. The book’s wide-angle perspective is appropriate, since Lewis and Clark favored a more democratic decision-making style than was usual on a military expedition, and the inclusion of multiple Native points of view makes it clear how complex and fraught the team’s mission was. Fehrman’s approach gives added depth to his chronicle of the breathtaking natural wonders encountered and extraordinary hardships overcome on the Corps’ transcontinental trek.

A valuable fresh look at a storied moment in American history.