Lewis & Clark Through Indian Eyes is a beautifully produced anthology of contemporary native American writings on the Corps of Discovery.

The contributions, from nine authors, are wildly uneven, ranging from patiently historic to impatiently histrionic. All the writers have ties to the original peoples who met the Lewis & Clark expedition in person as it trekked from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean and back again from 1804 to 1806.

Editor Alvin M. Josephy writes, "In all that time (since the expedition) a significant gap existed, which has never been adequately filled. The voice of the Indians themselves has not often been heard... The incalculable importance of native peoples to the success of the journey... has been fully described and interpreted, but almost exclusively from a white point of view."

The contributors were asked to answer one question: "What impact, good or bad, immediate or long-range, did the Indians experience from the Lewis & Clark expedition?" Josephy promised his authors the response to that question "would remain in the unfiltered voices of the writers, no matter the theme, tone, or decibel level."

"Hence the wide variety of style and content," he notes drily.

In the lead essay, "Frenchmen, Bears, and Sandbars" the late Vine Deloria, a Standing Rock Sioux, claims the expedition "was a routine venture now revered because we desperately need to have a heroic past, since that pleasure is denied to us in the present."

Deloria believes that overall the expedition made little impact on the Indians.

"I doubt if any winter counts, the Indian calendars recording the most memorable event of the year, even recorded the arrival of the expedition or their prolonged stay during the winter. There was no reason to suppose that the game would be hunted to extinction or that they would suffer epidemics and barbaric treatment by others following in the wake of the expedition."

In the end, he writes, "the passing of Lewis & Clark will become a minor event in some future rendering of Indian history."

Roberta Conner, Cayuse, Umatilla and Nez Perce in heritage, echoes this insight.

"Visitors to our museum on the Umatilla Reservation want to hear about two weeks two hundred years ago -- the snapshot of time when the expedition was in our homeland. This tunnel vision results from seeing the expedition as a lone event, one moment in time, rather than the larger act of premeditated expansionism that was embedded in the historical context."

"Against all odds," she continues, "our people are still in their homeland... we want to tell the whole story right up to today, and we want our fellow Americans to hear it."

Debra Magpie Earling, a member of the Salish tribes of Montana, notes that her ancestors offered the white men "white robes to rest upon and take with them on their journey...

"Though there is no record I can point to, no physical evidence I can submit as argument that a prophecy existed, I know from the old stories that my people foretold the coming of the white man."

Earling writes, "When the expedition moved on they left the Bitterroot friendship robes on the ground... In 1872, just sixty-seven years after Lewis and Clark had arrived in the valley, everything the Bitterroot Salish held dear would be taken from them."

There are tales of monstrous lightning creatures striding down the Missouri, and stories of tiny clay figures coming to life. Some of the tales and traditions related here are not widely known outside family or tribe.

Lewis & Clark Through Indian Eyes leaves the profound and unanimous impression that the early American peoples not only have persevered, but will continue to survive. Their story and their points of view are part of us, part of what it means to be an American.

We have much to understand and a long way to go before all native Americans, Indian and otherwise, can be fully reconciled to each other.

Aired Sunday July 2, 2006 at 10:55 am and Wednesday July 5, 2006 at 1:00 pm

Orders/Information:

Lewis & Clark Through Indian Eyes edited by Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. Knopf hardcover $24. ISBN 1400042674.

A timeline for the expedition: http://www.lewisclark.net/timeline/index.html