Until 20 years ago, one could count on Hollywood to produce at least one film every few years dealing with early American history. John Ford gave us Drums Along the Mohawk in the 1940’s, and Disney gave us the Swamp Fox in the 1960’s. Such movies may have given the public only “popular” history (before the 20th century was there any other kind?), but they still carried the benefit of giving people (young people especially) a desire to learn more about what they saw on the screen.

These thoughts crossed my mind as I read David Lavender’s book on Lewis and Clark. I hope I don’t trivialize the two men by saying they would have been ideal subjects for a good four- or five-part Disney serial. They were cast in the heroic mold and, therefore, were perfect for that kind of presentation. Lavender is, in the words of one critic, the “ultimate authority” on Lewis and Clark. His book will tell most readers all they could wish to know and then some about the explorers Thomas Jefferson sent to survey the Louisiana Purchase. Like their journey, reading it can be both tiring and fascinating. At 444 pages, it’s a pretty long haul. But it’s worth it.

How does one begin to do justice to the story The Way to the Western Sea presents? The journey proper began in St. Louis in 1803. It lasted three years and covered approximately four thousand miles. They journeyed by water, by land, on horseback, and on foot through areas well-traveled today—Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon—but then known only by the report of a handful of British and American traders. There were rivers to explore (among them the Missouri, Columbia, and Snake), mountains to cross, new animals and plants to catalogue, Indian tribes with customs to observe and dialects to study. In addition, there was a region to map for the purpose of determining what part really belonged to America (as well as what part might some day be ours). More important, there were treaties to make for future trade with the Indian tribes. The idea was to reconcile them not only with the Americans but, much more difficult, with each other, without antagonizing any of the parties concerned.

Such was the expedition. What about the two men themselves? They were, as Lavender points out, both alike and different. Both were over six feet tall, loyal to each other and to their country, disciplined, and resourceful. Each had to go through a crash course in studies (medicine, surveying, botany) that must have been foreign and irksome. Both submitted without complaint.

As for their differences, Lewis was melancholy and given to great swings of mood. Clark was comparatively even-tempered. He was more the frontiersman than Lewis (though Lewis was hardly a neophyte). Whatever the similarities and dissimilarities, they made a strong team in the wilderness. I cannot recall one time in Lavender’s book that he reports a quarrel between them.

Together they led a band of just over 30 people (including the Shoshone squaw Sacagewea and her baby) across half the continent. Nature, in the form of the Rockies and the Great Falls of Missouri, to mention two notable obstacles, did not always cooperate. Neither did the Indians.

Jefferson had instructed Lewis and Clark to maintain peaceful relations with the Indians, and for the most part they did. Sometimes it was not easy. The Ankara despised the Mandans and the Hidatsas, who in turn distrusted them. The Nez Perce feared the Blackfeet. They all had misgivings about the Sioux. As for the Shoshone, the one trade item they really wanted from the Americans was guns, ostensibly to kill buffalo, but (one suspects) also to kill the Sioux. In addition to these intertribal conflicts was the antagonism, mostly from the Sioux, toward the Americans. This, however, had nothing much to do with the newcomers’ white skins. In fact, the Sioux already had excellent trading relations with the British. The Sioux simply feared that the intrusion by the Americans might jeopardize these trade relations; consequently they showed themselves perfectly willing to resort to double-dealing and outright treachery to protect their interests.

But whatever difficulties they had with the Indians, Lewis and Clark kept to the letter of Jefferson’s orders and, with the exception of a skirmish with some Blackfeet who tried to steal their horses, avoided battle. They had enough on their hands battling the new and demanding land. That challenge required brains, ruggedness, and a steady heroism. Smaller men with baser motives would not have measured up. We can be thankful that Lewis and Clark got there first. We can be equally thankful that David Lavender has written such a memorable account of their exploits. Now if Disney is just listening.

[The Way to the Western Sea: Lewis and Clark Across the Continent, by David Lavender (New York: Harper and Row) 444 pp., $22.95]