Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier

“A Virginia gentleman was expected to be hospitable and generous, courteous in his relations with his peers, chivalrous toward women, and kind to his inferiors. There was a high standard of politeness: Jefferson once remarked that politeness was artificial good humor, a valuable preservative of peace and tranquility.”

This quote discusses the values of the Virginia gentleman, a social class inhabited by Lewis, Jefferson, and to some extent Clark. Later in the expedition, Ambrose points to this set of values to explain some otherwise baffling choices made by Lewis.

“When Jefferson or young Virginians like Lewis and Clark looked at an Indian, they saw a noble savage, ready to be transformed into a civilized citizen. When they looked at a Negro, they saw something less than a human, something more than an animal. Never in their lives did they imagine the possibility of a black man’s becoming a full citizen.”

This quote showcases the profound and tragic limitations of Lewis and Jefferson’s mentalities when it came to race. Their understanding of race could not reflect reality since they had been so irrevocably shaped by the ‘depravity’ of slavery. Even their comparatively charitable view of Indigenous people assumes the superiority of white American culture and assumes that Indigenous people will assimilate into that culture.

“In battle, what cannot be predicted is the enemy’s reaction; in exploration what cannot be predicted is what is around the next bend in the river or on the other side of the hill.”

This quote displays the military mindset that shaped the expedition from the beginning. The expedition birthed, in Ambrose’s words, the wholly American invention of the military naturalist, someone who could engage in battle, then study the battlefield looking for new specimens to record.