Exhibit offers a personal glimpse into the Corps of Discovery
RON COWAN The (Salem) Statesman Journal | Posted: Tuesday, December 27, 2005 12:00 am
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - There are 450 stories in "Lewis and Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition" at the Oregon Historical Society, thanks to 450 remarkable artifacts, 200 of which have some personal connection with the famed explorers who first visited the Oregon territory in their journey of discovery in 1805-06.
Letters, diaries, watches, telescopes, plant samples, a dried woodpecker, a branding iron and even a sewing kit are included, but these are things that transcend the mundane nature of their description.
"What it really does is humanize these men, this woman, this child," Lewis and Clark scholar James Ronda said, referring to Sacagawea and her child, who accompanied the Corps of Discovery.
"There is an intimacy, a directness to these objects. In every object there is embedded a story."
"You just cannot get closer to the Lewis and Clark expedition without seeing the personal artifacts they carried on the expedition," said John Pierce, the executive director of the Historical Society.
There actually are 650 artifacts being circulated by a variety of institutions and owners, although after 200 years some are too fragile to be in the exhibit at every stop, such as the plant exhibits that the explorers gathered.
Some of the items are rotated out between different showings, with at least 450 on display at any time.
Some of the objects are tragic, such as the shaky script of Meriwether Lewis' letter written after his first two suicide attempts, when he was under suicide watch. Lewis eventually did take his life at a Tennessee inn.
However, most items recall the nature of the men, the times, the contrasting cultures of the American Indians and the explorers and the epic achievements of the expedition that opened our minds to the West and brought a nation into being.
Most memorable in its way is William Clark's hand-drawn 1806 map, the first to show the Rockies, the Cascades and the rivers of the West.
"This is one of the most enduring consequences of the expedition," Ronda said.
The map, which was not published until 1814, made the trip west a tangible reality to the public, especially because Lewis never wrote his planned book and his journals weren't published until many years later.
Most exhibits are about a treasure, an idea or a celebrity; this exhibit is about all three, making what Ronda, a consultant to the organizers, called a "high-wire act."
With its dioramas, a film and video, images and objects from both 19th century and later times, this is an exhibit that gives depth and meaning to events and people that changed the course of history with the expedition.
Why we should care?
"This is the first diplomatic, official contact between the United States and Native Americans," Ronda said. "We are still putting that story together today.
"It's also a part of the first American thrust into the United States.
"It's a global moment. It's a scientific moment. It's the first American entrance into the West."
This is the fifth stop of the landmark exhibition and the only stop on the West Coast. It is here through March 11.
The exhibit shows how Indians not only had rich and diverse cultures, with social structures sometimes echoing Anglo ways, but they also had complex trade routes and rituals of diplomacy that the explorers could learn from.
The entrance to the exhibit self-consciously seeks that balance, with a bust of Jefferson sitting next to a Wishram Indian sculpture.
The exhibit opens by setting the time and place, with examples of the tools, supplies and weapons taken on such an expedition including the scientific instruments used by President Thomas Jefferson, who sent the explorers on their way. There also is Clark's rifle and powderhorn and Lewis' watch and telescope.
An 1802 map in the exhibit, imagining what the West looked like - no mountain ranges, a river passage - is what Ronda terms the "conjectural geography" of the time.
In another part of the exhibit, looking at the two types of diplomacy of the time, the Jefferson Peace Medal, given to Indians en route, is juxtaposed with a Sioux combination peace pipe/tomahawk.
The exhibit is laid out along the timeline of the expedition, from the preparation, through the first encounters, the winter spent with the Mandan tribes, an exploration of Lewis and Clark's relations back home, an exploration of Indian culture and the importance of women through the winter at Fort Clatsop in Oregon.
Among the items brought back by Lewis and Clark are specimens of ponderosa pine and salal preserved on paper, a woodpecker captured and sent back live and a Rocky Mountain sheep horn.