Bitterroot : the life and death of Meriwether Lewis / Patricia Tyson Stroud.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stroud, Patricia Tyson, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lewis, Meriwether, 1774-1809.

Lewis, Meriwether.

Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806).

Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Explorers--West (U.S.)--Biography.

Explorers.

West (U.S.)--Discovery and exploration.

West (U.S.).

West (U.S.)--Description and travel.

Discoveries in geography.

Travel.

West United States.

Genre:

Biographies.

Authors' inscriptions.

Physical Description:

viii, 371 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2018]

Summary:

"In America's early national period, Meriwether Lewis was a towering figure. Selected by Thomas Jefferson to lead the expedition to explore the Louisiana Purchase, he was later rewarded by Jefferson with the governorship of the entire Louisiana Territory. Yet within three years, plagued by controversy over administrative expenses, Lewis found his reputation and career in tatters. En route to Washington to clear his name, he died mysteriously in a crude cabin on the Natchez Trace in Tennessee. Was he a suicide, felled by his own alcoholism and mental instability? Most historians have agreed. Patricia Tyson Stroud reads the evidence to posit another, even darker, ending for Lewis. Stroud uses Lewis's find, the bitterroot flower, with its nauseously pungent root, as a symbol for his reputation as a purported suicide. It was this reputation that Thomas Jefferson promulgated in the memoir he wrote prefacing the short account of Lewis's historic expedition published five years after his death. Without investigation of any kind, Jefferson, Lewis's mentor from boyhood, reiterated undocumented assertions of Lewis's serious depression and alcoholism. That Lewis was the courageous leader of the first expedition to explore the continent from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean has been overshadowed by presuppositions about the nature of his death. Stroud peels away the layers of misinformation and gossip that have obscured Lewis's rightful reputation. Through a retelling of his life, from his resourceful youth to the brilliance of his leadership and accomplishments as a man, Bitterroot shows that Jefferson's mystifying assertion about the death of his proťǧ is the long-held bitter root of the Meriwether Lewis story"--provided by publisher.

Contents:

ch. 1. An unexpected proposal

ch. 2. Early life

ch. 3. The threat of war

ch. 4. Jefferson's choice

ch. 5. Cocaptain

ch. 6. Doctrine of discovery

ch. 7. Underway

ch. 8. The teton Sioux

ch. 9. Fort Mandan

ch. 10. A "darling" project

ch. 11. Across the Rockies to the Pacific

ch. 12. The return

ch. 13. Unspeakable joy

ch. 14. Philadelphia interlude

ch. 15. A classic cast of characters

ch. 16. Land of opportunity

ch. 17. Honor questioned

ch. 18. Defamed

ch. 19. Jefferson's letter

A selection of plants collected by Meriwether Lewis.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Kennedy fund bookplate; inscribed by the author.

ISBN:

9780812249842

0812249844

OCLC:

990257534