Fort Clatsop Visitor Center

Part of our visit to Fort Clatsop, shown yesterday, included a wander through the nearby visitor center. Interpretive information leads through the journey of the Corps of Discovery and highlights what life might have held for the 31 voyagers as they moved through uncharted lands.

The Lewis and Clark expedition would surely have met a different fate without the help of Native Americans along the way. Native American dugout canoes like the one shown here aided the Corps in their travels. Impressed by the vessels, Sergeant Gass wrote:

The natives of this country ought to have the credit of making the finest canoes, perhaps in the world, both as to service and beauty; and are no less expert in working them when made.

The exhibit was enhanced by copies of the incomparable photographs of Edward S. Curtis taken in the Pacific Northwest a hundred years later. If you’re not familiar with the work of Curtis, use the link to get to know him better.

5 thoughts on “Fort Clatsop Visitor Center”

  1. Because of our age, our canoeing days are over because our canoe is just too heavy for us to lift. I’d be tempted to try again if I could use this one! I often wonder if the natives of our country were still paddling as their bodies aged? Perhaps we live longer now yet I question whether or not we could have kept up with them at any similar age?

  2. I’m guessing the native Americans who assisted Lewis and Clark (along with their descendants) came to decry that assistance when they realized or experienced what was trailing along behind those two: genocide and confiscation of ancient lands by the white eyes.

  3. I wonder how much of this history children are learning nowadays. Just looking at Edward Curtis’ self portrait makes me want to see more of his work.

  4. Gass had a background in carpentry, so his journals do tend to make note of things like how something’s built, something that one of the other journals might have overlooked because of the writer’s personal interests. It was wise of Jefferson to insist on several different writers making notes in journals.

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