Across the Wide Missouri
by Bernard DeVoto
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Book Summary Information
Author: Bernard DeVotoEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-09-01
ISBN: 0395924979
Number of pages: 480
Publisher: Mariner Books
Book Reviews of Across the Wide Missouri
Book Review: Wagh!
Summary: 5 Stars
Across the Wide Missouri
Mr. DeVoto has a passion for this subject and a passion for the characters that live in it.
Here are some excerpts from the book:
"There were few delicate feeders in the mountains...The river tribes liked the green, putrid flesh of buffalo drowned while crossing the ice and hauled ashore weeks later, `so ripe, so tender, that very little boiling is required.' They ate the kidneys raw... the white man would eat the liver raw as soon as it was taken; he seasoned it with the gall or sometimes with gunpowder...he had no more tableware than his belt knife - gravy, juices and blood running down his face, forearms and shirt. He wolfed the meat and never reached repletion. Eight pounds a day was standard ration for Hudson Bay employees [but often eat twice that amount]...melted fat was gulped by the pint. Kidney fat could be drunk without limit...Hump and boss boil in a kettle, cracked marrow bones sizzle by the fire...Camp is pitched by a small creek or a rushing mountain river...Here is the winesap air of the high places, the clear, green sky of evening fading to a dark that brings the stars within arm's length, the cottonwoods along the creek rustling in the wind. The smell of meat has brought wolves and coyotes almost to the circle of firelight. They skulk just beyond it; sometimes a spurt of flame will turn will turn their eyes to gold...Horses and mules crop the bunch grass at the end of their lariats or browse on leaves along the creek. The firelight flares and fades in the wind's rhythm on the faces of men in whose minds are the vistas and the annuls of the entire West."
If you are yearning for a dry narrative of the fur trade, this is not your book. This book gives you a feel for the land and a feel for the kinds of men involved in the fur trade. It gives you a feel for the hardships that they faced, the cutthroat business practices of the trade and how instrumental these men were to opening up the west for settlement. He does not sanitize history or historical figures. He presents the good and the bad of both the individual fur traders and the various Indian tribes that were most closely linked to the fur trade.
As it turns out, this is not a simple story to tell or to organize into a linear narrative. There were many different characters and crosscurrents cutting through the entire period. He weaves this story together with the sinew provided by the movements of a few of the most important mountain men: Jim Bridger, Tom Fitzpatrick, Joe Meek, Bill and Milton Sublette and Kit Carson.
He runs another colorful thread through the story made of missionaries. These are clearly the most foolish, most spiteful and most disagreeable people in the narrative. Some of them are also the most well-intentioned and tragic characters in the grand story. Of the missionaries' desire to convert the Nez Perce and Flathead Indians to Christianity, he says, "[Nez Perce] were superior Indians, they made no trouble, they liked and admired white men...Their desire for instruction in the mysteries was genuine and paramount, as clean as the desire of these Christians to give them what they wanted. Both desires were simple and altogether hopeless...The Indians receiving instruction were men of the age of polished stone...They tried, both Indians and whites. There they stood, the seekers and the bearers of truth...the sincerity of these Indians' desire for religious instruction could not be doubted." And yet this first wave of missionaries met with frustration, failure and murder.
But the primary and repeated organizational thread that runs through this story is a fascinating and completely unlikely man named William Drummond Stewart. This man won the respect and deep friendship of all the great mountain men. He was kind, generous and good humored. Captain William Drummond Stewart of the British Army "was in his thirty-seventh year. He was the brother of Sir John Archibald Stewart, eighteenth of Grandtully and sixth baronet, and was next in succession to him...He went through the Hundred days with his regiment and fought at Waterloo." He traveled the prairies and the mountains in comfort, elegance and style. He was as tough, as adventurous and as skillful as any of the mountain men. Yet there was not even a hint of royal superiority about him.
Mr. DeVoto is a magnificent writer. If you are looking for an outstanding overview of the fur trade, this is your book. He also provides fascinating notes in the appendix and an extensive bibliography for those who are interested in further reading.
Summary of Across the Wide Missouri
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize. Across the Wide Missouri tells the compelling story of the climax and decline of the Rocky Mountain fur trade during the 1830s. More than a history, it portrays the mountain fur trade as a way of business and a way of life, vividly illustrating how it shaped the expansion of the American West.
Like many U.S. historians, cultural critic Bernard DeVoto believed that the American character was rooted in the experience of westward expansion. Unlike those who championed the civilizing graces of the agrarian frontier, however, DeVoto drew inspiration from the mercenary, imperial designs of the fur trade. Originally published in 1947, Across the Wide Missouriis arguably the best known of his studies in American history, examining the rise and fall of the U.S. fur dynasties in the 1830s. The book chronicles the competition between John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, an "opposition" group of trappers (including Jim Bridger and Kit Carson) descended from the earlier entrepreneurial activities of General William H. Ashley. Devoto specifically narrates the major expeditions and the daily experiences of the Western divisions of these companies, which scoured the northernmost regions of the Rocky Mountains for beaver. He contends that, by exploring the recently charted Northern plateau, fighting off interlopers, and setting up trade networks, the loose confederation of trappers, traders, and Native Americans shaped the materialism that typifies modern American society. In his densely detailed description of the company "rendezvous," DeVoto shows how the activities of trading, partying, and resource pooling created a shared experience for competing cultural and economic parties on the frontier. While the centrality of the fur trade in the development of the American character may strike some readers as overemphasized, DeVoto's thesis still carries much relevance for modern American studies. --John M. Anderson
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