Many reviewers on this site, and the daytime host of Turner Classic Movies have said, this is the only Hollywood movie that has been made about the Lewis and Clark expedition. They have all been misinformed. This film is so lacking in historical accuracy that I am surprised the heirs of Lewis and Clark (perhaps there aren't any) have not sued the producers for slander. Nothing except the heroism of Sacajawea and the general route of the expedition are portrayed even remotely realistically. Many reviewers have pointed out errors; I will just add a few more: No one in Washington knew there were mountains between the source of the Missouri River and rivers flowing to the Pacific (Jefferson thought an all water route could be developed), the only serious Indian difficulties were met with the Blackfeet, Birchbark canoes were strictly a Chippewa product and western tribes mostly used the much more rugged dugout canoes as they had a ready supply of very large tree trunks for raw material (Idaho, between the Missouri and Columbia Rivers is still a lumber supplying country today), very few Americans knew what a buffalo was in 1806, Judith, not Julia, had her name immortalized in Montana natural features, the explorers were sending back to Jefferson reports and specimens along the way as they proceeded west but it took some time to get a finished narrative to him and some of the crewmen got their reports published before Clark's (Lewis never did finish his). And of course, most notably, Sacajawea was firmly in the familial arms of her French fur trader husband (who was a skunk) for all or most of the trip, even having a son by him on the trail; and it was very unlikely that William Clark had any romantic interest in her. She was a teen ager at the time, and I thought the 34 year old Donna Reed did a good job of playing a teen aged Indian girl, even if no one else did. Also, there actually was an incident when a boat (actually 2 boats) was pulled up around a portage on rollers on track. So we are still waiting for the movie, but there has been some non-fiction work done that is pretty good, entertaining and worth watching.
Review of The Far Horizons
