Rating  - Relive one of the greatest journeys of all time
With trips to the summit of Everest now quite routine, there are no more places on the surface of the Earth left to explore. The greatest feat of exploration of the past century was the manned landing on the moon. However, it was more a feat of technology than a voyage of discovery. In the nineteenth century, the greatest feat of exploration in North America was the journey of the corps of discovery, where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led a small expedition up the Missouri river and over land to the Pacific ocean. Sent by President Jefferson shortly after the Louisiana Purchase, their mandate was to map, gather scientific data on the wildlife, search for a Northwest passage to the Pacific and to make contact with the native American inhabitants. Amazingly, they did all three, being more successful than even the greatest of optimists could have foreseen.
Retracing their journey and interspersed with dramatic reenactments, this tape is truly history in action. With no possibility of relief arriving for years, they were required to live on what they could carry as well as what they could find on the land or obtain from the natives. What was most interesting about the tape is the descriptions of their relationships with the various tribes they encountered. Truly, without the active assistance of several tribes, they would have starved to death or have been forced to turn back. In fact, a Shoshone woman named Sacagawea traveled with them for most of the journey, carrying her infant son every step of the way. It is a tribute to Lewis and Clark that they kept such accurate and honest journals. From them, we can learn what happened, and there is no hint of personal embellishment in their writings. In hearing these accounts, you cannot help but wonder if the native tribes understood that their world had changed forever, and of course not for the better.
I have traveled most of their route by vehicle, and when you move up the mountains, you cannot help but be impressed by how difficult it was for them to move over them by horseback. Keep in mind that they were also carrying extensive munitions, goods for trade and other miscellaneous necessities. Furthermore, there was only one fatality among the members of the corps, and that was most likely appendicitis, something that no medical person on the planet could have successfully treated.
The journey of Lewis & Clark irrevocably changed the social structure of half of what is now the continental United States. This tape is an accurate historical account of their adventure and should be a requirement for graduation from high school.
Rating - An experience in its own right
This film makes history live. The Core of Discovery expedition was more than a century and a half before my birth and yet, this film made me feel as if I were a member.
Like other Ken Burns films, it is long. However, like other Ken Burns films, it encouraged me to take my time. I watched the 4 hours one segment at a time in the evenings with dinner over the course of almost two weeks. And what a viewing!
I never knew that the Lewis and Clark expedition was a military expedition. I never knew that Lewis and Clark where military officers and that they took a platoon of soldiers with them. I never knew that they took plant and animal samples, including sending a live ground hog back to Thomas Jefferson.
I never knew that the expedition was called the Core of Discovery or that these two incredible military officers took so many soldiers such an incredible distance over the course of years and lost only one, who was lost to a disease that most likely no one could have cured at the time. I never knew that they drew the first map of most of the United States, using only dead reconning and were accurate to withing 40 miles of the actual distance despite their primative instruments and a distance of some 4,000 miles! I never knew these men were so incredible. And, I never knew that Merriweather Lewis was so incredibly depressed that he died, "I'm sorry to say," by suicide.
This film is so personal, I felt the tears that the historian on the film displayed when he told of Lewis' death. He died more than a century before my birth and yet, by the time I was finished with the film, I felt pain for his death, anger at York's difficulty gaing his freedom and sadness at the passing of the Shoshone Indian lady guide Sakajeya.
Films like this might actually make me like history, a topic I learned to hate in elementary school. I wish there were more historical films like this one. I wish I were on Ken Burns' staff. I'd love to do research like this. I'd love to bring life not only to history, but to the people who view it. What a great film!
Rating - A must have for amateur historians.
Wonderful, great, stunning, visually stimulating. Pick the words. All are appropriate. As a compaion to Undaunted Courage, this video is as good as it gets.
Rating - Lewis and Clark review
Ken Burns has done it again! Lewis and Clark is wonderful just as I figured it would be. I am never dissapointed when I watch a Ken Burns film.
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