Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West: Meriwether Lewis Thomas Jefferson and the Opening

Stephen E. Ambrose presents a comprehensive account of Lewis and Clark's exploration of the Louisiana Purchase. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead an expedition up the Missouri River to the Rockies, over the mountains, down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean, and back. Lewis and his partner, Captain William Clark, created the first map of the trans-Mississippi West, gathered scientific data on the flora and fauna of the Louisiana Purchase territory, and established the American claim to Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Ambrose incorporates previously unknown information about weather, terrain, and medical knowledge of the period to contextualize the expedition. The narrative features Jefferson, whose interest in exploring and acquiring the American West spanned thirty years; Clark, a frontiersman devoted to Lewis; numerous Native American chiefs; Sacagawea, the Native American girl who accompanied the expedition; the French-Indian hunter Drouillard; naturalists from Philadelphia; French and Spanish fur traders from St. Louis; John Quincy Adams; and other prominent political, scientific, and military figures of the era. The work combines high adventure, politics, suspense, drama, diplomacy, romance, and personal tragedy.