This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen magazine #106 (June / July 2003). The magazine is available on newsstands and by subscription.

Out of the myriad of colorful historical characters, Daniel Slosberg could have chosen Thomas Jefferson as his alter-ego — or perhaps Meriwether Lewis or William Clark. Instead, it was a relatively obscure long-haired fiddler and boatman who seemed to speak out through the centuries, striking a responsive chord.

For an hour at a time, Slosberg "becomes" Pierre Cruzatte, the French-Indian navigator for Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition across the newly acquired Louisiana Territory. And his one-man show, "Pierre Cruzatte: A Musical Journey Along the Lewis and Clark Trail," is not your usual school assembly.

Bearded, long-haired, and wearing a fur hat and an eyepatch, Slosberg/Cruzatte stomps, hollers, saws away at his fiddle, careens through the room, dances a jig or two, and generally gets up in the kids' faces.

Slosberg tromps back and forth across the stage, a map of the United States drawn by hand on rawhide strung in a frame behind him. He tells his audience how the expedition went off in search of the Northwest Passage on orders from President Thomas Jefferson. About eating freshly killed bear livers and how they met and danced with Indian tribes and they taught them to play jew's harp.

He also plays the music that Cruzatte would have played for his expedition buddies. He twangs out "Soldier's Joy" on the jaw harp. He fiddles "Devil's Jig" while pounding out the beat with his moccasins, "…. as I learned from my father."

Slosberg does all this while playing the fiddle at chest level, not tucked under his chin. The whole presentation is as authentic as Slosberg can possibly make it. A guy like Cruzatte wouldn't have had a chin rest on his fiddle. "Holding it down like that, as soon as I come out, people see I'm not a violinist. And also it's easier to sing that way and to dance around that way, too. And it allows me to get more in people's faces. It serves a bunch of purposes down there."

Formerly a musician with the Aman Folk Ensemble, Slosberg settled down from the road in 1994 to raise his family. He got a master's degree in English from California State University in Northridge and became a teacher and administrator in Santa Monica. He also plays with the Turtle Creek contradance band.

The day after Ken Burns' documentary "Lewis and Clark" aired on TV in 1997, the art teacher at Slosberg's school asked him if he knew that the expedition had a fiddle player along.

"I think I said something like, 'Who are Lewis and Clark?' " Slosberg said, laughing. "She couldn't remember the fiddler's name, but she thought it sounded kind of French. That kind of piqued my interest. I had always imagined, if I thought about Lewis and Clark at all, these two white guys gritting their teeth and going across the country. That they had a French fiddle player with them got my curiosity going."

This is an excerpt from an article in Dirty Linen #106 (June/July '03). Read the full text in the magazine, available via subscription or on newsstands and in bookstores.