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A New Vision Of America Lewis And Clark And The Emergence Of The American Imagination, James P. Hendrix Jr.

Great Plains Quarterly

When Lewis and Clark awakened in St. Louis on 24 September 1806, one suspects that they felt quite well rested. They had just slept in regular beds for the first time in 864 days. As men who "had forgotten the use of chairs ... they must have had a way of standing and a look in their eyes," Bernard De Yoto imagines.¹ Now was the time for reverie, and celebration, as the capital of the Northern Louisiana Territory welcomed back explorers who had been given up as lost.

Two days later, as the initial fanfare began to subside, Clark …