"One of the foremost historians of Lewis and Clark, Ronda grounds Finding the West in the insights and reflections he has gleaned from some twenty years of research and writing about this pivotal era. But above all else, Ronda's book is centered on stories and storytellers. As he writes: "This is a book about many storytellers. Their words are French-Canadian, Shoshone, New Hampshire English, Hidatsa, and Chinookan." Ronda documents not only the stories that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark offered about their "road across the continent," but also the large and important stories by and about the native peoples whose trails they followed and whose lands they described in their journals and reports and on their maps."--BOOK JACKET.