When the explorers Lewis and Clark asked the Shoshone woman Sacagawea and her husband, French trapper Toussaint Charbonneau, to be interpreters on their expedition, the couple brought their two-month-old son Jean Baptiste along. But the rest of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau's story has been largely untold--until now. Educated in St. Louis by Captain Clark, Jean Baptiste went on to live in a royal palace in Europe and to speak many languages. But, truly his parents' son, he returned to the American West, living out his life as a trapper, scout, and explorer.
When the explorers Lewis and Clark asked the Shoshone woman Sacagawea and her husband, French trapper Toussaint Charbonneau, to be interpreters on the...
In her provocative new book, Laurie Winn Carlson questions the larger aims of the famed Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806 and sees it as part of a broad range of schemes to wrest the American West from the claims of established European powers. If American ships were already plying the waters off the Pacific Northwest coast, why, Ms. Carlson asks, was it necessary to send these two intrepid explorers overland-except as a demonstration of American reach, and perhaps as a ploy to tempt the Spanish to attack the expedition, thus provoking a war with Spain in Florida and the West. Ms....
In her provocative new book, Laurie Winn Carlson questions the larger aims of the famed Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806 and sees it as part of...