Once again, many trips to the library and late nights on the Internet yield evidence that ingenious and impromptu hoofcare--or perhaps untimely hoof problems--may have changed the course of history.
One of the most remarkable documents of American literature isn't anything like a Mark Twain novel or a Walt Whitman poem or an Arthur Miller play. It's the real thing, a day-by-day account of one of the bravest and most extraordinary undertakings in the young USA: Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's river and overland expedition to explore the west and see what was at the headwaters of the Missouri River--and beyond. And it was recorded in a journal covered in elkskin.
The journal survives today. Buried in the pages are beautiful drawings of fish, birds and antelope that had never been seen east of the Mississippi. But if you can read the script, it's also a heck of a horse story.
