Bram Büscher

22 September 2024

Since late August, I have been in the USA on a short one-month (left-over) sabbatical from @SDC @WUR to do a big research trip: traveling across the entire continental USA. Starting in Washington D.C., my colleague Jim Igoe from the University of Virginia and I have traveled the full length of the Lewis and Clark heritage trail all the way to Washington state, where we are now. Nearing the end of the journey, I wanted to write down some initial reflections, although it’s going to take a while to let it all sink in.

The goal of the trip was to gain a deeper understanding of the historical development of the westward colonial settlement of the USA, how this relates to biodiversity conservation, and how this has, over time, resulted in highly uneven forms of geographical development. While an enormous undertaking, the Lewis and Clark (L&C) trail provided an excellent entry-point. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were the two army captains sent by President Thomas Jefferson on a journey of ‘discovery’ that took place between 1803 and 1806. This journey plays a major role in the American historical imagination, and along the entire length of the trail are many (!) historical sites, monuments, interpretive centres, statues and info boards that provide details on the L&C journey, their relations to native Americans and the natural environments they traveled through. By paying close attention to these, having conversations with people in these sites, and relating all this information to current socio-geographical patterns and issues, including especially native American reservations, protected areas and other conservation sites and actors, the trip has more than lived up to my (rather high) expectations. Some first reflections and insights:

1. By following the L&C trail, we followed several major rivers, including the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Missouri, for very long stretches. This was completely logical back in L&C’s days, but much less so later on, of course, with the advent, first, of the railroads, second, of cars, highways and the Interstate system, and third, air traffic. Going overland following the rivers gave me a deeper appreciation of geographical patterns that ranged from the boundaries of (current) states, shifting boundaries between settlers and native Americans and the painful and unimaginable violence done to the latter, and the historical importance of the north-south continental divide. While many (myself including) often think of the east-west divide in the US, the early origins of European colonial settlements were equally influenced by the north-south continental divide. We crossed the north-south (Laurentian) continental divide around the border between South and North Dakoto, above which rivers flows to the Hudson Bay. This was a major route into what are now the northern states of the US for the fur trade, which were already quite well known by many trappers before L&C passed these areas;
2. The dominant historiography of L&C along the trail is one of adventure, exploration and discovery, with tremendous emphasis on the heroism of the ‘corps of discovery’ that L&C led. The amount of people currently involved in curating the trail and all the information around it – (amateur) historians, enthusiasts, citizens, the National Parks Service, etc – is incredible. I knew that a lot was written about L&C, but the sheer amount of information, including the work done on (re)creating elements, tools and symbols of the journey (including the ships they traveled on!), is something far beyond what I imagined. This ‘iconization’ of L&C and their journey certainly plays a major importance in the historiography of the US and was given a particular boost around the bicentenary in 2003-2006, when a large group of people re-enacted the entire journey along the lines of how L&C must have done it.
3. In this historiography, the role of native peoples is, at best, highly contradictory. While a lot of attention goes towards the ‘Indian’ tribes that L&C met, the narration of their roles is often done firmly within the context of the heroism of L&C’s journey, as the start of the ‘manifest destiny’ of the USA becoming a nation from Atlantic to Pacific (something that was anything but preordained at the time). By visiting several reservations, including Lake Traverse/Sisseton, Standing Rock, Fort Peck and Nez Perce and talking to people there, this iconized historiography is swiftly turned upside down and (actively) marginalized histories come to the fore. While in general it is quite easy to find a wealth of information by indigenous and native scholars and peoples on both L&C and general US history, along the trail we often had to actively search for this and several times leave the ‘official’ trail to find it;
4. There is a lot of attention for the natural history work that L&C did and how their descriptions of plants and animals allow us to compare biodiversity patterns then and now. Reading these descriptions while traveling alongside the trail is often quite shocking, especially when comparing it to the major areas of extraction in North Dakota and Montana or the many areas along the Ohio river focused on fossil, sand and other material extraction, transportation and the many nuclear energy plants.

Much more to say, but I first need to properly analyze my data and then see where I want to take it. First, however, we need to get to the Pacific Ocean to finish the trip, after which we will travel to Toronto for some presentations and discussions at/with colleagues at University of Toronto. York University and University of Guelph!