American West

An epic account of the American West depicts the tragic destruction of the Native American way of life and covers major events and key figures

Richard Slotkin Author of *Gunfighter Nation Dee Brown's The American West is popular history at its best: well and vividly written, with a clear and sympathetic eye for both the landscape and human characters of the ranchers, settlers and Indians of the West.

Auteur

Dee Brown (1908–2002) was a historian, librarian, and author. He is the author of numerous books, including Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and The American West.

Texte du rabat

Fully illustrated, this epic narrative brings to life the American West during the exciting years from 1840 to the turn of the century. Interweaving the stories of Native Americans, ranchers, and settlers, Brown re-creates the triumphs and the tragedies of the times. Sharply drawn profiles focus on Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, Wyapp Earp, and others. Photos & maps.

Résumé
By the author of "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee", this work portrays life in the American West from 1840 to the turn of the century. It interweaves stories of native Americans, ranchers and settlers, profiling figures such as Geronimo, Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp.

Échantillon de lecture
CHAPTER 1

Westward March

"Thare is good land on the Massura for a poar mans home."

This theme, penned in an 1838 letter from Arkansas to Tennessee, appears with its variations as the moving spirit of western migration. The frontiersman who scrawled out the good news from the banks of the White River probably had no conception of the wide reach of land between his few acres and the Pacific shore. He dreamed no dream of empire. His eye was on the good land he had found, where a "poar man" could prosper.

To settlers on the bottom lands of the great midwestern rivers and on the forested fringes of the Great Plains, the West of the 1830s was a rumor of indefinite obstacles. Known in its parts by a few trappers and explorers, it was grasped as a whole by no one. The sources of its great rivers, the extent of its mountain ranges were a matter of vague conjecture by geographers, who often depicted the continental features as they "must be" rather than as they were. These maps of the literate were only a little more useful than the rumors of the semiliterate.

The great desert and the "shining mountains" stood as a barrier to the settlers who had flowed across the Alleghenies. Even the approaches to the mountains were forbidding. Between the western edge of settlement and the Great Divide lay the treeless plains, where wind and alkali dust accompanied fierce storms, and tribes of Indians roamed in search of buffalo.

Beyond the horizon of the settlers were the trappers and traders, less concerned with rumors, correcting the maps while they read them. "The Rocky Mountains," wrote trader Joshua Pilcher in 1830, "are deemed by many to be impassable, and to present the barrier which will arrest the westward march of the American population. The man must know little of the American people who supposes they can be stopped by any thing in the shape of mountains, deserts, seas, or rivers."

That same year the company of Smith, Jackson and Sublette, fur traders, demonstrated that the plains, at least, could be crossed by wagons "in a state of nature." In April 1830, a caravan of ten wagons and two dearborns left St. Louis and crossed to rendezvous in the Rocky Mountains. Twelve cattle and a milk cow were driven along "for support." Grass was abundant, and buffalo beyond requirements, so that the expedition returned, rich in beaver pelts, with four oxen and the milk cow.

"The wagons," wrote the partners, "could easily have crossed the Rocky Mountains over the Southern Pass." Actually, they agreed, the route from the Pass to the great falls of the Columbia River was easier than the eastern slopes, except for a "scarcity of game."

Two years later, the steamboat Yellowstone ascended the Missouri to Fort Pierre on behalf of the American Fur Company, and so demonstrated a second practical means of western travel. The desert was vulnerable by land or water. The way was open for the "poar man" with his family and household goods to find good land "on the Massura" -- or beyond.

The settlers came. They were not stopped by anything. They came, first, for good land; and when gold was discovered the gold-hunters joined the ranks of the land-hungry. First a trickle, then a torrent, the migration westward became a phenomenon in American history unique in numbers and distances. For fifty years the westward migration continued, until the good land from the Missouri to the Pacific was peopled, and the frontier was declared to be past tense.

Crossing the plains and mountains, easy for the professional fur traders and explorers, offered greater obstacles to the land-seekers, amateurs in the business of travel in a tree-less, water-poor wilderness. The emigrants carried more than "twelve cattle and a milk cow." Hunting buffalo was a new experience. The overlanders had not the contempt for difficulties bred by familiarity into the mountain men. Men and women loaded their children and their goods into wagons, and on horseback. Most found a canvas-covered wagon the best vehicle. Wide tires kept the wheels from sinking into the sand. During the travel season, May to September, lines of these prairie schooners stretched from the Missouri River to the Snake.

For settlers with no baggage or little money, the luxury of a prairie schooner was abandoned in favor of carts. Many people simply walked across the plains, pack on back. There were instances of persons starting the journey pushing wheelbarrows. To all of the emigrants the trip was a series of new, strange, and often terrifying incidents.

Trail customs became standardized by experience and force of circumstance. Every well-run wagon train formed a corral of vehicles at the end of the day's journey for protection against Indians, and to provide a fenced enclosure for livestock.

All Western rivers could be forded at some point. At an easy crossing, the stream was shallow, and the ox teams simply pulled the wagons through. At deeper crossings, oxen and cattle had to swim; the wagons were converted into crude boats. Accidents at fords were common, and many an emigrant ended his journey swept down the river.

Mountain trails were also an impediment to travel. Space between the water's edge and canyon walls was sometimes barely enough for wagon wheels. When the cliffs pressed too closely, wagons waded to the other side, or used the streambed as a road. At one point on the Mullan Road (in Montana), regarded as an improved route, the St. Regis River had to be crossed nineteen times in six miles.

The average emigrant was not wealthy. By contemporary account, "His tone was dim, not to say subdued. His clothes butternut. His boots enormous piles of rusty leather, red from long travel, want and woe. From a corner of his mouth trickled 'ambeer.' His old woman, riding in the wagon, smoked a corn-cob pipe, and distributed fragments of conversation all around." (So many of them seemed to come from the Pike country in Missouri that the place achieved lasting fame in an overland ballad.)

Many of the first pathbreakers wrote letters home, and prepared itineraries for neighbors and kin who were to follow. "Guides" were published for the aid and comfort of the emigrant. Advice in such literature was based on tragic experience.

"Build strong wagons, with three-inch tires held on by bolts instead of nails."

"Obtain Illinois or Missouri oxen, as they are more adaptable to trail forage, and less likely to be objects of Indian desire."

"Every male person should have at least one rifle gun."

"Of all places in the world, traviling in the mo…