Captains Clark and Lewis and at least four others in the party each kept a journal, making entries on many days during the journey. They are full of stories of daily labors, incidents, adventures, and discoveries; they have character and immediacy, and they are the primary resource for the history of the expedition.

"The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition are not just a daily log of one of history's most significant journeys. They are also a treasure of American literature, in company with Moby Dick, Leaves of Grass, Walden, and Huckleberry Finn. ... Woven through the Journals are many important lessons. ... The writings of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and their subordinates can be read on many levels: as adventure narrative, as travelogue, as scientific field notes, as history-making, as essays, and as a report to the President, which was their original purpose. But they can also be read as American folk literature... full of flavor and wonder, humor and quaintness, windows not only into the time, but also into the minds and personalities of the authors themselves. And like most great American literature, they remain unread by most Americans, even though there is not an American whose life hasn't been affected by the expedition and its outcomes." -- James Alexander Thom, in Author's Note to Sign-Talker.

"These journals are a national literary treasure. Lewis and Clark's exploration of the western two-thirds of the continent was our epic voyage, their account of it is our epic poem. Sitting before the nightly campfire, using a quill pen that had to be dipped into the inkwell every other word, balancing their leather-covered journals on their knees, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark described the day's events, as well as the land and its people and its flora and fauna, in a prose remarkable for its terse, sharp imagery, tension, and immediacy." - Stephen Ambrose.

Abridged Journals

Five journals by expedition members survive, totaling something like one million words. The complete journals fill nine volumes. There are many different abridgments printed in single volumes. You can choose a version with "corrected" spelling, punctuation, and grammar, or not. The unaltered accounts offer excitment and vividness lacking in the revised versions, and I strongly urge you to try it, although some people find the irregular spelling an obstacle to understanding. Their spelling is often phonetical and is a guide to how they sounded when they spoke.

One abridgement of the journals that I recommend is The Journals of Lewis and Clark, Frank Bergon, editor (Penguin Books, 1989). It is not "corrected" and is small a paperback you can take hiking or in a canoe. Another good choice for a pocket-sized edition is The Journals of Lewis and Clark, edited by John Bakeless (Signet Classics, 2002). Also notable is The Lewis and Clark Journals An American Epic of Discovery. Gary E. Moulton, editor (University of Nebraska, 2003), a large hardback abridgement of the complete journals in 13 volumes prepared by Moulton, described below. The introduction by Moulton is an excellent short history of the expedition). Other abridgements are edited by Anthony Brandt (National Geographic, 2002) and Landon Y. Jones (Ecco Press, 1999).