I've watched the first two episodes of the this show. I don't know which is more appalling: the ridiculous costumes, characterizations, and "settings", or the startling disregard for "fact" in telling this "history."
To cite a few examples, perhaps the creators should recognize there is a proper way for a rifleman to carry his powder horn if he intends to use it. They might recognize that scruffy beard and "frontiersman" and not synonymous. There are perfectly good and fairly accurate renditions of Fort Mandan and Fort Clatsop already in existence that they could have used instead of the weird and completely inaccurate examples they depicted for Lewis and Clark's winter quarters. They might actually have them raise the proper flag over their forts as well.
When it comes to the telling, the "general" William Henry Harrison was actually 21 years old at the Battle of Fallen Timbers--younger than William Clark. When a map of the Louisiana Purchase is shown, it should not cut off part of the Missouri River--the Purchase was the western drainage of the Mississippi River; so all the Missouri and its tributaries qualify. Lewis and Clark did not walk to the Pacific from Fort Mandan; they actually left a tributary of the Missouri River almost 1,000 miles further along their route. They were not led to the Pacific by Sacagawea (as they called her!), they didn't scale 14,000 foot mountains (there aren't any in Montana or Idaho), they didn't eat their pack horses, and if there were 2,000 American muskets at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, the few men of Lewis and Clark's command didn't have the largest arsenal the frontier had ever seen.
This series is low budget, lazy, and a gross distortion of "history." There's a great story to be told, and the History Channel is NOT telling it. Unless you just like to see how much they get wrong, don't waste your time. You'll actually know less when you finish than you did before you started.
