 About the Film
Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of
Discovery is the recounting of the dramatic and
historically significant story of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition of 1804 to 1806.
To convey both a chronological understanding of the
expedition's epic journey and a vibrant sense of immediacy,
the film combines a strong third person narration with off
camera readings from the journals kept by Lewis and Clark
and several of the other men. The journals, filled with
mundane and extraordinary details of each day's occurences
have been called "among the glories of American history,
classics in the vast literature of discovery and
exploration."
Contemporary newspaper accounts, government documents,
letters, and oral-tradition stories from various Indian
tribes will round out the narration. To provide historical
context and interpretation, on-camera interviews of
scholars, writers, descendants of expedition members, and
representatives of the Indian tribes will be interspersed
throughout the film. Stephen Ambrose, author of the current
best-selling biography of Meriwether Lewis, is a consultant
on the film and one of the principal on-camera interviews.
Mr. Ambrose will also be in attendance at the Lewis &
Clark Experience.
The vast, varied, and breath-taking land that the
expedition traversed and inventoried is, in itself, a major
character: rolling woodlands, treeless prairies, seemingly
endless mountains, dormant volcanoes, dense Pacific forests,
and the mighty rivers flowing through them.
Through the use of live cinematography, the filmmakers
intend for their audience to discover and experience the
majesty and diversity of the western terrain, just as Lewis
and Clark did.This is juxtaposed visually with careful use
of archival material such as paintings, maps, and drawings
and pages from the journals themselves.
In the film we will meet not only the two famous captains
and the remarkable president who conceived their expedition,
but also the other members of the Corps of Discovery: young
army men from Kentucky and New Hampshire, French-Canadian
boatmen, an African-American slave, and Shoshone woman named
Sacagawea, hired as an interpreter, who brought along her
infant son.
We will also encounter the numerous Native American
tribes sho learned from the captains that they now had a new
"great father" far to the east: the Teton Siou and Arikara,
Mandan and Hidatsa, Shoshone, Salish and Nez Perce, the
Walla Walla, Chinook, Clatsop, and Tillamook. These peoples
and their customs, we will learn through Lewis and Clark's
descriptions and interviews with tribal members, were as
varied as the landscape they inhabited.
And we will come to appreciate the expedition's multiple
tasks and accomplishments -- for geography, zoology,
ethnology, Indian diplomacy -- as well as its crucial role
in taking the United States' initial steps toward becoming a
continental nation.
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From the Makers of the
Film
The film's producer and
director is Ken Burns, the award-winning documentary
filmmaker.
The film's writer and
co-producer is Dayton Duncan, the honored author and film
producer.