The Fate of the Corps: What Became of the Lewis and Clark Explorers After the Expedition by Larry E. Morris

The later lives and deaths of America’s intrepid explorers

I’ve read a few books recounting the 1804–1806 expedition of Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery across America to the Pacific Coast and back. Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage is an excellent summation of the voyage, and the original 1814 published account of the journey, edited by Nicholas Biddle and Paul Allen, certainly yields many interesting details. The most complete account to date would be the 13-volume edition of the Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition edited by Gary E. Moulton, which you can either buy for a few hundred dollars or read online for free. Following up on all of these accounts of the expedition, Larry E. Morris’s 2004 book The Fate of the Corps takes a unique and interesting look at the Corps of Discovery by asking what happened to all these guys after the expedition was over?

In addition to Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and the men they assembled for the journey, the scope of Morris’s study includes Clark’s slave York, as well as Native American guide and interpreter Sacagawea and her French-Canadian husband Toussaint Charbonneau, both of whom joined the expedition in midstream. Morris considers 34 people to be the core of the Corps, and he investigates each of their post–expedition lives. Along the way, many other recognizable historical figures who associated with Corps members are brought into the narrative, including Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Stephen Austin, Sam Houston, and about a half dozen U.S. Presidents. Lewis and Clark’s team members took up a variety of roles after the Corps split up—fur trappers, farmers, soldiers in the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War, lawyers, politicians, and more. In learning about the lives of these Corps members, one learns quite a bit about the broader history of 19th-century America, Western expansion, and Native American relations.

While the lives many of these figures led were quite fascinating, their deaths are often equally intriguing and sometimes poignantly tragic. The best-known case is the death of Lewis himself, who exhibited signs of mental illness and committed suicide (or, as some argue, may have been murdered). Clark, on the other hand, lived a longer life in which he held important political positions in the West and also served as the guardian of Sacagawea’s children. Morris examines Clark’s attitude toward Native Americans (somewhat progressive for his day) and his problematic relationship with his slave York (not the least bit progressive).

I recently read Robert M. Utley’s 1997 book A Life Wild and Perilous, a history of “mountain men” that covers similar subject matter and several of the same individuals as Morris’s book. I found Utley’s storytelling very confusing and rather boring. Morris, on the other hand, really brings these characters to life. The biographical scenes are lively, often exciting, and sometimes moving. Morris’s accounts are grounded in fact, but they don’t read as simply a relentless barrage of facts. Morris does jump around quite a bit, chronologically and geographically. There a lot of life threads intertwined here, which can sometimes be disorienting. Unlike Utley, however, Morris assists the reader by providing a useful chronology up front and an appendix that recaps the pertinent details of each member of the Corps. As a result, you come away from this book knowing exactly what happened to these men and woman (except in cases where nobody knows exactly what happened to these men and woman). When there are conflicting views among historians about the ultimate fates of, for example, Lewis and Sacagawea, Morris explains the pros and cons of each side’s arguments.

If you want a history of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, this isn’t it. Read Ambrose or Biddle’s books. If that’s not enough to satisfy your interest, however, and you’d like to follow the ripple effects of that landmark journey through subsequent American history, then Morris’s The Fate of the Corps is a great read that will tell you everything you want to know and more.