Widely heralded as a lasting achievement, the University of Nebraska Press editions of the journals of Lewis and Clark now present volume 9 of the projected thirteen containing the complete record of the expedition.
In order that the fullest record possible be kept of the journey, Captains Lewis and Clark required their sergeants to keep journals to guard against loss of the captains’ own accounts. The sergeants’ accounts extend and corroborate the journals of Lewis and Clark and contribute to the full record of the expedition.
The bulk of this volume contains the fullest of the enlisted men’s records, the journal of John Ordway. As senior sergeant, Ordway was in command when the captains were absent from the main body of the expedition. He was also the sole member of the party never to miss a day in his journal; for several portions of the crossing, his is the only extant account. Ordway’s journal has never before been published with the other records of the venture.
Charles Floyd’s journal is tragically short, ending with his death near present-day Sioux City, Iowa, on 20 August 1804. Floyd was the only member of the party to die en route, and his journal—adding several details absent from the captains’ records—indicates that the record of the journey is poorer for his loss.
"The University of Nebraska Press has become the pre-eminent publisher of Lewis and Clark titles, including what is now considered the definitive edition of the journals edited by Nebraska history professor Gary Moulton."—John Marshall, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
"Moulton not only edited the transcriptions of the journal entries; he also provided a detailed index and oversaw a team of consultants who provided expert annotations on botany, zoology, astronomy, archaeology, linguists and medicine. As a result, readers can understand the expedition in its full context. It's no wonder that the series has received many plaudits."—Omaha World Herald
"[This edition] stands as one of the great accomplishments of American scholarship and scholarly publishing alike. The work of historian Gary Moulton and a team of some three dozen specialists working through the University of Nebraska's Center for Great Plains Studies with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the 13-volume Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition was published by the University of Nebraska Press from 1983 to 2001."—Gregory McNamee, Washington Post Book World
"The journey of the Corps of Discovery, under the command of Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, across the American West to the Pacific Ocean and back in the years 1804-1806 seems to me to have been our first really American adventure, one that also produced our only really American epic, The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, now at last available in a superbly edited, easily read edition in twelve volumes (of an eventual thirteen), almost two centuries after the Corps of Discovery set out. . . . This important text has not been fully appreciated for what it is because of two centuries of incomplete and inadequate editing. All three editions previous to this excellent one from the University of Nebraska . . . were flawed by significant omission. . . . Thus my gratitude to the present editor, Gary Moulton, and his assistant editor, Thomas Dunlay, for bringing what I believe to be a national epic into plain view at last. . . . For almost two hundred years their [Lewis' and Clark's] strong words waited, there but not there, printed but not read: our silent epic. But words can wait: now the captains' writings have at last spilled out, and fully, in this regal edition.
Lewis and Clark loom over the narrative literature of the West as the Rockies loom over the rivers that run through them. These Journals are to the narrative of the American West as the Iliad is to the epic or as Don Quixote is to the novel: a first exemplar so great as to contain in embryo the genre's full potential. The narrative writing about the West that came before Lewis and Clark seems fragmentary and slight; what came after them seems insipid and slight, lacking both the scale and the force of those Journals."—Larry McMurtry in the New York Review of Books
"Meticulously edited, with detailed (and absolutely necessary) footnotes, these volumes are a triumph of scholarly publishing. . . . One version or another belongs on most readers' shelves—and should accompany any road trip through the West."—Atlantic Monthly