By Elliot Boswell
Professor Mark Eifler, chair of the history department and recent recipient of a grant from the Oregon Council for the Humanities, went on sabbatical last semester to work on his upcoming book on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The Beacon sat down with Eifler to discuss marathons, globalization and of course, Lewis and Clark themselves.
You recently took time off for sabbatical. How did you keep yourself busy?
A: Well, two things primarily. I worked on a book on the Lewis and Clark expedition and I exercised a lot; in fact, I ran - well, walked - the Portland Marathon.
Did you finish the marathon?
A: Ha, no, I made it about 18 and a half miles, which means I quit right near UP. But you're supposed to have four months training and I only had two, so I'm going to ace it next time.
Let's talk about your book and research. What prompted it?
A: Well, the last thing in the world that I ever wanted to do was write a book on Lewis and Clark, as there are thousands of them and most are boring. But I stumbled across something 30 years ago, this reference to a British connection to the Lewis and Clark expedition. Then 10 years ago I was struck by the Russian activity in the Pacific Northwest at the time, and an old friend and advisor of mine said Don't forget the Spanish presence, a whole web of connections that had never really been looked at.
So for about the last 10 years, I've been doing serious research, and there's this whole story here that really needs to be told, a story that could redefine how we look at the American West.
Q: What is it about the West should we reconsider?
A: We as a country have this whole myth of isolation about our history - that is, our history up 'til about World War I - and it's just that: A myth.
You see, we see the early West as this blank slate, sort of a precursor to the idea of Manifest Destiny, but there was all this international presence there before Lewis and Clark ever set sail, which Thomas Jefferson and other men of the era saw.
Today we see the West as a place of unique American activity, filled with fur trappers, settlers and cowboys but many of those cowboys, for example, worked for ranches owned by British companies and investors. Jefferson's aim with Lewis and Clark was to claim it (the West) before anyone else could, even though it had already been claimed by other nations, such as Spain, Britain, and Russia. For example, the Indians already had European goods, even Chinese goods, when they first encountered the Expedition. And the fact that we, even now, don't want to think about the fact that we were not the first ones to claim the American Frontier has a lot do to with the feeling of American exceptionalism.
Q: So in a sense, you're trying to debunk this myth.
A: Yes, exactly. We have a conception of ourselves as being self-sufficient and independent of the rest of the world, even in our early days, when the reality is in fact much different. The Frontier was really the early steps of globalization; sort of a "Globalization 1.0."
And this is a theory that hasn't been written about before?
A: No. It's astounding how many connections and close calls there were for Lewis and Clark.
The Spanish sent out at least four expeditions out to arrest them, and maybe as many as 12, so desperate were they to prevent the American government from taking land that they (the Spanish) wanted to claim as their own. Another moment for all this came when Lewis and Clark just missed an encounter with a Russian ship at the mouth of the Columbia River.
On March 23, 1806, Lewis's journals record a storm from off the Pacific, so they decide not to send out the hunters and scouts that day.
The captain of the Russian ship also kept a journal, and his says that on March 23, 1806, there was a storm at the mouth of the Columbia that prevented them from sailing up it.
Imagine! If some of the Expedition's hunters had been outside the fort, they would have seen a Russian ship right at the mouth of the river!
The captain sends back a message to St. Petersburg emphasizing the urgency of holding their stake in North America, but the czar tells him that because of Napoleon's threatening moves in Europe, they couldn't spare any resources. What if Napoleon hadn't moved for even a year or two more? The West Coast might've looked very different.
Q: Why hasn't any of this come to light?
A: For a couple of reasons, really. Lewis and Clark left incredibly detailed journals, but they do not talk much about the international situation because they did not contact the agents directly. Over the next few decades Lewis and Clark are essentially forgotten. Late in the nineteenth century the idea arises that the American West is a unique place, unconnected to the rest of the world. When Lewis and Clark's journals are then brought back by western historians, they already have a belief in the West as being cut off from the rest of the world, and the journals don't seem to contradict that. As a result, the story of Lewis and Clark becomes one isolated from global connections.
Q: What is your book going to read like?
A: Well, I wanted to write for a general audience. I received a grant from the Oregon Council for the Humanities to give a series of talks on the subject of my research, which gave me a chance to gauge public interest.
I gave at least 30 of these talks, from around the Portland and Salem area all the way over to little towns in Eastern Oregon, where sometimes there'd be more people in attendance then were actually residents in the county, which was wonderful to see.
Of course, it'll (the book) have all the academic trappings it needs, but over the last eight or 10 years, the research has been validated by other historians.
Was the writing process a difficult one? Or were you able to breeze though it?
A: The first chapter was a bear, in lieu of a less polite word. I had no idea how to start it, how to draw the reader in effectively and all these little stylistic decisions, so I ended up skipping it and writing the entire book without an opening chapter.
But last weekend I finally sat down and wrote it (the first chapter): it starts when Lewis and Clark are about to step off the known edge of the world into the blank spaces on the map, and then it sort of bounces around and makes all these connections around the globe.
I wanted to make the internationalism evident from the get-go, as the West has been so neglected as an international arena, which should force us to look at the entire nation differently. It was never simply an isolated world that we moved into first; it was always part of a much larger story.
