Now, astronauts in canoes.

That's how the legendary exploring team of Lewis and Clark has been described.

The pair had ventured into American territories not yet mapped to provide details about the culture and geography of the land as the United States expanded.

While the expedition is one of the country's most renowned tales, in a new book, author Craig Fehrman strives to retell the narrative from a previously obscured perspective.

He joins Walter Isaacson to discuss the new information uncovered from centuries-old archives.

Thank you, Biana and Craig Fehrman.

Welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me.

So you got this new book, This Vast Enterprise, which is about the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Let me start by just asking, why did you decide to write this?

- Well, I wanted to write an adventure story, and I don't think there's a better adventure story in American history than Lewis and Clark.

Of course, the flip side of this is that there've been a lot of good books written about them.

So what I did at the start was I went back to their journals.

They left more than a million words behind, which as a historian, you couldn't ask for better primary sources than that.

And when I read those journals, I kept noticing these human details that I felt like other accounts had overlooked.

I wanted to write a book that told the adventure story, but also captured the humanity along the way.

And the journals were really the best resource I had for that, although I did find some new stuff in the archives too.

as opposed to just doing it through a book.

And I think that's a really important point.

And I think that's a really important point.

And I think that's a really important point.

And I think that's a really important point.

And I think that's a really important point.

And I think that's a really important point.

But as writers, we can sort of choose who gets biographical treatment.

And so, although I wanted you to feel like you were in the canoe with Lewis and seeing things from his point of view, I also wanted you to feel like you were in the canoe with John Ordway, who was a working class soldier who did a lot of the hard work that the captains weren't doing because they had other jobs.

And so, it just felt like the best way to make this story work and to make this story feel human was to use that biographical lens, but then move it around.

So, we get, you know, Lewis's point of view, but we also get Ordway's or Sacagawea's.

It just made the story feel fresh and more fun to me.

But did you have primary sources or good material on some of these lesser-known characters?

What I had is those journals.

Like I said, a million words there.

So, there are a surprising number of those words about York or about some of the Native leaders that Lewis and Clark met with.

It's just a matter of what do you pay attention to.

So, one detail that really stood out to me was early on when they were still in St.

Louis before they'd left, Clark just has one sentence where he says York commence sawing with a whip saw.

And that's sort of a throwaway line unless you take the time to really examine it.

What's a whip saw?

Well, that's how you turn logs into planks and planks were really important to them in this time period because winter's closing in, it's snowing, it's sleeting, they have to get roofs on their forts to be able to make it through the winter.

And so they chose York, even though a whip saw is a very difficult tool to use.

And from that one detail, you can sort of understand how skilled York was and how he was trying to find his place in this sort of rowdy group of explorers.

So the primary sources were often the ones that have always been there.

It's just reading them differently and noticing all the human beings that are documented by the captains.

So tell me more about York, because by the end of your account, he's even getting to be a voting member of the expedition.

- That's right.

His arc is both inspiring and heartbreaking in the way that American history sometimes is.

Because from the start, the captains empowered him to do a lot of stuff.

He carried a rifle.

He was the fifth named person in the journals to bring down a buffalo.

And he was also a really good swimmer, which might seem like not that important of a detail, but a lot of the men on this expedition, even though it was a river mission, could not swim.

So I found a new letter from Clark where Clark talked about how good York was in working the boats.

And that sort of helped me understand that York was one of the essential people when they were facing Whitewater Rapids, especially.

- Well, wait, wait, tell me about his background.

We don't quite know, where does he come from?

Is he enslaved?

- Yeah, yeah.

He was an enslaved person and he was what was called a body servant.

So he grew up alongside Clark and his job was sort of making Clark's life easy and comfortable.

So he would, you know, pack his saddlebags or lay out his clothes, but that was his life before the expedition.

he was able to do those other things, get the rifle, face the rapids.

And so he was really able to establish himself.

And although the other soldiers didn't like him at first, there's plenty of proof in the journals of that.

By the end of the expedition, they had sort of become a team and they were all realizing that they were working together and doing something great together.

- Tell me about that moment where he's allowed to vote on what the expedition is gonna do.

- It's such a powerful moment.

And I think what makes it even more powerful is that I was able to see that there had been previous votes, that Lewis and Clark as leaders made a choice to really embrace a democratic ethos.

They wanted to empower the men and bring the men close.

So they did that multiple times during the expedition, but York didn't get a say.

It was only on their last winter when they were at the mouth of the Columbia River near the Pacific Ocean, this time they included York in the vote.

And so in that arc where he doesn't get a vote, but then he does, you can see that he was able to sort of change the perception of him and he was able to make some choices for himself.

The reason I ask about that, and maybe I'm over-reading this, is that that arc you talk about, where he finally gets to vote, he finally gets included in the narrative, that's also the arc of American history around that time, right?

I think that's true.

It would take a while for it to apply to other people beyond just York.

One thing that's interesting about the expedition is it was sort of a miniature society.

Once they got far away from American society, they had to make their own rules and form their own bonds.

And so in that system, York was able to do more and to be respected more.

Of course, the tragic part of it is that once they make it back to America, York says to Clark, and we know this from one of Clark's letters, York says, "Because of my immense services, I think I've earned my freedom."

Clark denies that request, and the end of York's life, unfortunately, is tragic.

Why?

Well, because Clark wouldn't free him, and then Clark moved to St.

Louis.

Clark got a very important government position that he would hold under five different presidents, where in St.

Louis, he was negotiating treaties and acquiring land.

And so, because he and York had this close bond, he made York come with him.

York's wife was still back in Kentucky, where York and Clark had been living previously.

And so, York said, "I think I've earned my freedom."

And I went back on this expedition?

How much would it cost for somebody like York to buy his freedom?

The math checks out.

York was right.

He had earned his freedom, but it was still Clark's decision, and Clark decided not to grant it.

Yeah, but what I don't quite understand, even from reading the part of it, 'cause I kind of like Clark by the end of the book, tell me what was going through Clark's head when he says, "No, I'm not gonna free this slave."

Well, I would say I like Clark too, and we don't have to pick just one way to feel about Clark.

We can admire how he took care of his soldiers while feeling real disdain for how he treated York.

But I think one thing that's interesting about the journals is that there aren't just details about York, there are details about how Clark saw York.

And you can see Thomas Jefferson in Notes on the State of Virginia would write about how owning a slave would warp the person who owned the slave.

And I feel like Clark's journals are sort of the example that bear out Jefferson's theory, that Clark was very possessive of York, that when York would excel, Clark would get weirdly jealous, even though he was still York's owner.

So I think it's really hard for us from our vantage to understand the process of slavery and what it did to people on both sides of this toxic equation.

I think Clark was just jealous and didn't want York to have that autonomy, even though York believed he had earned it.

One thing I learned from your book, because I like the history of technology and, you know, economic factors, is that land is really important.

That's a theme of your book.

Explain how that weaves into the book.

Well, it's so important.

And one thing that was fun about those rotating perspectives is I could show how land looked a little bit different to everybody else.

To somebody like Lewis or Clark, land is an imperial object.

They're thinking, where's America going to go next?

But the regular soldiers who were going along to them, land was just what they didn't have.

They wanted to be farmers, they wanted to be wealthy.

They didn't come from Lewis and Clark's background.

So when they saw this beautiful land that they were passing, and of course the native people who lived there and who loved the land themselves, they saw the land differently as well.

So I was really, by focusing on land, I found all these small moments in the journals that again, they were always there for people to notice.

It just, it matters what lens you bring to understand it.

- You refer to it or you say that the perception of this is that there are astronauts in canoes.

A beautiful metaphor, especially now that we're going back to space.

Well, what's so fun about this is that Lewis and Clark were kind of Artemis II of their time in many ways.

It's not just that they were going somewhere where people didn't know what exactly they were going to find.

It's that the whole country was obsessed with this.

And so I tried to really track this closely.

Lewis and Clark were viral news.

One of my favorite soldiers that I write about is a guy named John Ordway who lived in New Hampshire.

So I went back and read all the old New Hampshire newspapers to see how often Lewis and Clark were showing up in these newspapers thousands of miles away because John Ordway's family would have been reading those newspapers too.

So in the same way, we were all obsessed with Artemis II and looking at those pictures on social media, John Ordway's family and people all around America were tracking this expedition.

At a certain point, they kind of went radio silent.

They went on the other side of the moon in the 1804 version, but then they came back and had such a wonderful story to tell.

Let me read something you wrote.

I love this sentence.

You say of Mary Weather Lewis and William Clark, "For Clark, it was the sunset that soothed them.

For Lewis, it was studying the sunset, extracting information and then using it to build theories and explanations."

- Expand on that.

- Well, this again is those multiple points of view, right?

Even Lewis and Clark, we sort of think of them as a unit, but they had very different points of view.

So when I was reading their journals, Clark doesn't get enough credit as a writer and a thinker in my opinion.

And he would write about sunsets just in this very beautiful and poetic way.

And so in a Clark chapter, I would have him, you know, noticing and sort of reveling in the natural beauty.

But then when we get to a Lewis chapter, I noticed that Lewis would describe what was happening, but then he would describe, well, why did it happen?

What does the sunset mean?

What can we understand about climate or weather from the sunset?

And I think they just had different minds.

I think Clark would notice natural beauty and it would sort of calm him down and he would use it to ground himself.

Whereas for Lewis, it would be noticing the natural beauty, but then explaining it.

For Lewis, it was really the act of observing and understanding that made him feel peaceful in the world.

And so even though we think of Lewis and Clark almost as one word, this amazing team, they were very different men, and I tried to capture the individual humanity of each person in this book.

- Well, as school kids, when we all were fascinated by this expedition, the character we learned about was Sacagawea, the Native American guide.

We think of her as a sort of a passive guide.

In your book, you portray her as much more of a strategist.

Would the expedition have succeeded as well without her?

- I don't think it would have, because she was essential at multiple points.

She was helping them gather plants, of course.

She was helping them notice landmarks.

That's kind of the school version, but she was also a very valuable translator.

And she was somebody that Lewis used.

When he met the Shoshone for the first time and the Shoshone were thinking about not sticking around, Lewis needed the Shoshone because they had horses who were gonna help them get through the Rocky Mountains.

And so Lewis said, "Sakajewea, "we have a Shoshone woman coming.

"It's worth sticking around to see her."

But the other thing I would say is that Sacagawea wasn't just important for the expedition, she was important for the arc of her own life.

Because she'd had a very difficult life.

One thing I try to do in my book is emphasize that she was a slave.

She was somebody who was owned by a white trader, she was beaten, she was impregnated by him, all when she was 13, 14 years old.

It's a really dark story.

But once she met Lewis and Clark, she realized that they protected Native women, that they looked out for Native women.

And so every time she was being a tour guide or finding plants, she was sort of saying to Lewis and Clark, "I can help you.

Can you help me?"

And they did help her.

They worked together.

They got her back to the Shoshone.

Sacajawea was able to see the Pacific Ocean too.

One of the great scenes is her reunion during the trip with her brother.

KMO 8, I think it is.

And it's a moving scene in the book.

Let me read what you write.

You say, "Sacred Jewaia began to run, and when she reached him, they embraced.

She began to cry, quietly at first, and then not, until she was sobbing."

Why was she crying?

Well, she was removed from her people in very brutal circumstances.

They were hunting for buffalo on the plains, but the Shoshone did not have muskets the way other nations did.

So raiders from another nation captured her and some of her family ran away and escaped.

But as a 13, 14 year old, she didn't really know, was my family killed during this raid?

Did my family escape?

All she knew was that she had been kidnapped and enslaved and now had to live hundreds of miles away.

So when she made it back to meet the Shoshone, a small detail in the journals is Lewis and Clark note that the Shoshone people had their hair cut very short, which was a traditional sign of mourning.

So Sacagawea shows up and is excited.

She says, I made it back to my people.

But she sees these short haircuts and we can only imagine what must have been going through her mind.

Who's dead?

Is my family dead?

Did my family die during that raid?

It's just an overwhelming amount of uncertainty.

So then for her to finally find her brother, but also to see that his hair is cut short, that that means, you know, possibly her parents have died in this.

She just, in that moment, sort of had to confront both wonderful news, my brother is alive, but also heartbreaking news, other people might not be alive.

It's just a lot for anybody to handle.

And, you know, she had amazing strength as a human being.

Could she have at that point left the expedition, returned to her people?

And why didn't she do so?

I believe she could have because Lewis and Clark needed those horses so badly.

Without those horses, the expedition never would have made it to the Pacific Ocean.

So I think if her brother had said to Lewis and Clark, "You don't get the horses unless my sister stays with us," I think Lewis and Clark would have made that trade and figured out a way to keep Charbonneau happy later.

But she didn't want that.

Now, why did she not want that?

I don't have an answer for that because she didn't keep the journals, but I can make some inferences.

And I know that the Shoshone people often talked about the ocean.

They would sometimes call it the great stinking lake.

So given Sacagawea's curiosity and resilience that she has showed throughout her life, I wonder if maybe she just wanted to see the ocean, that we should think of her as an explorer too.

You devote your entire first appendix, I think it is, to an oral history or an interview with Wolfcalf, who was an indigenous teenager who met Lewis.

And you say of the discovery, "That's the most important thing I found in my five years of research."

First of all, why?

And then secondly, it's an oral history.

Does it have spin the way written history does?

- That's a great question.

And I think it was important just because my assumption coming into this book was, you know, I would be able to read the journals differently, but I probably wouldn't find new archival stuff.

But I was wrong.

I found a lot of new archival stuff, including about Lewis and Clark.

But what makes this interview so important is that it was an interview with a native person who actually participated in the raid.

And his version in the interview contradicts what Lewis wrote and what other historians have wrote.

Now, in terms of oral history versus written history, they absolutely, you know, any form of human communication is gonna have spin in it.

I think that's just, that's how we communicate as humans.

So my job as a historian is to evaluate the different sources and try to figure out what makes the most sense.

I never really thought of it as an opposition.

Oral history is right, written history is wrong or vice versa.

I thought of it as a conversation where I could sort of bring these sources together and also really good scholarship.

There was a book by a man named John Ewers who worked for decades at the Smithsonian.

And he spent a lot of those years interviewing Blackfoot people.

And so I could rely on his sort of ethnographical research, the interview from Wolfkaff and then Lewis's own journal entries to sort of understand it.

The other thing I would say is that, when my kids are in school, their teachers always say, "Show your work," right?

And I think we as historians should do that too.

So in that appendix you mentioned, I print Wolfkaff's interview, I print Lewis's journal entry, and I invite readers to sort of read these primary sources and come up with their own interpretations, because history is a conversation.

So in that appendix I tried to share the primary documents and say, you know, this is how a book like this gets made.

In about a month we're going to celebrate our 250th anniversary.

Tell me, out of this book, what inspiration do you think we should take from the Discovery Corps?

- Well, I think Lewis and Clark is actually one of our best stories to think about America's founding.

Even though they set out about three decades after 1776, that gap is instructive because America in 1776 didn't have the power or ambition to do this big act of foreign policy.

It took decades and it took a dreamer like Jefferson to be able to do that.

What Lewis and Clark were able to do though, is that they were able to offer the best parts of America, the confidence, the swagger, the orientation towards the future, but also some of the downsides of America, where they overstepped or maybe they tried to interfere in foreign politics that they didn't quite understand.

I think the thing that inspires me the most about Lewis & Clark, though, is that they tried.

They gave it their best shot.

They tried to do something ambitious, just like those people in "Artemis II," and they were able to come back with an amazing story that we as Americans today still love.

- They were our astronauts in canoes.

- Thank you so much for joining us, Craig.