The Lewis and Clark Chronicles; Part Four – Continental Divide to the Pacific

These Chronicles could have been authored by Thomas Jefferson. Instead, both the official and personal narratives of the expedition have lived through many iterations. The latest being those published to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the expedition. But, unfortunately, until now, the narrative of their expedition has never been told as Captain Meriwether Lewis intended it to be. Himself a fellow captain, Joseph Groth as a boy also trapped beaver, hunted deer, caught catfish and trout, canoed border lakes, and became an expert rifleman. Then too, he gathered gooseberries and chokecherries on his family’s homestead. Later, he traced Lewis and Clark’s route from his paternal great-aunt’s homestead near Bismarck, North Dakota, to his maternal great-aunt’s homestead near Moscow, Idaho, and on to the Pacific. That interest was reawakened when he found a letter to Captain Meriwether Lewis in Albert Gallatin’s papers at New York University, and decided to transcribe the original handwritten journals. In doing so, he discovered these Chronicles. He has annotated them to include brief sketches of the members of the expedition, background information about the Native American Indian tribes they encountered, and the current place names of the geographical land marks the Captains discovered and named in honor of members of their expedition. Today, sadly, none of those place names remain named as the Captains originally intended. Anyone reading these Chronicles will agree with historian and author Stephen Ambrose when he famously said, “The journals he [Captain Meriwether Lewis] wrote are among his greatest achievements and constitute a priceless gift to the American people.”