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Lewis And Clark At Fort Clatsop: A Winter Of Environmental Discomfort And Cultural Misunderstandings, Kirk Alan Garrison

Dissertations and Theses

Members of the Lewis and Clark expedition did not like the 1805-1806 winter they spent at Fort Clatsop near the mouth of the Columbia River among the Lower Chinookan Indians, for two reasons. First, the environment west of the Rocky Mountains was unlike anything they had ever experienced or imagined, and it had such a powerful effect on the whites as to negatively influence their attitudes regarding the western landscape, and to prejudice the explorers against the peoples living in that environment.

Second, the cultures of the Lower Chinook Indians and the whites were so different that often neither group …