Customer Reviews

Etienne Provost: Man of the Mountains

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After reading numerous books and articles on the fur trade era, it was a pleasure to come across this biography of Etienne Provost by Jack Tykal. Although known by many during his time and mentioned in scholarly works of western history, Provost still remained obscure and almost forgotten as time passed by. This is a well done report on his life and the influence he had on others in his day. Starting out in the fur trade circa 1815, he then endeavored in the Sante Fe trade in the early 1820's. From there he trapped in the Salt Lake area, attended the first mountain rendezvous of 1825, acted as guide to numerous governmental and private expeditions, etc. The man was just about everywhere and did what most men only dream of. A well researched book and a great bibliography.

Ah, the fickle finger of fate. Etienne Provost, who was trapping in the Rockies by 1817, attended the first rendezvous in 1825, established the route from Taos to the trapping grounds in the northern Rockies, and knew and was respected by most of the trappers in the West, has fallen to obscurity over the years. His name (partially) only survives today in Provo, UT, which was named after him.

Provost was born in Quebec in 1785 and first came to the Rockies with the Chouteau-DeMun expedition in 1815. He and the others in this expedition were arrested by the Spanish in 1817; their furs were confiscated, but they were released. After residing in Missouri for a while, he returned to New Mexico. He met William Ashley in 1825 and went with him to the first rendezvous at Henry's Fork of the Green. For the next 25 years he made a number of trapping excursions throughout the west, from Utah to the Crow country. He accompanied John Fremont in 1839 to the upper Midwest. He apparently left the mountains for the last time in 1848 and retired to St. Louis, where he died two years later.

Tykal is a superb and dedicated researcher. He has combed the literature tracking down references to Provost in his attempt to make the sometimes sketchy portrait of the man as complete as possible. Tykal has written a very informative and admirable biography of Provost, who spent more time in the mountains and saw more of the West than most others of his era, yet is now destined to dwell in the ranks of the obscure and forgotten. Perhaps Tykal's handsome book will change that, but it looks unlikely. A shame. Highly recommended.

Because most Mountain Men were illiterate, little of their history is left but the writings of a few to describe what happened during their tenure. Etienne Provost is one of those constantly mentioned-in-passing figures whose contributions to the development of the Rocky Mountain fur trade and initial commercialization of the West have long been intimated at, but never adequately reported.

In 1989 Jack Tykal published what has to be the most complete rendering of this man's most amazing life. Born in Montreal, Provost moves to St. Louis and enters the Santa Fe trade at its inception. He then becomes part of the Taos trapping scene working north into the Great Basin and is credited by some with discovering the Great Salt Lake. While many of Utah's natural features that were named after him were renamed by subsequent settlement, the City of Provo, Utah still preserves his name and yields a clue as to the areas Provost frequented.

The events of Etienne's life represent a looking glass into the Rocky Mountain fur trade. It would have been very difficult to find a person closely associated with the beaver trade in the American West who did not know or was not aware of him as he was almost everywhere. He subsequently leaves active trapping for an interim management position with the American Fur Company and remains in their employ until the demise of the trade in the 1840s. Afterwards, because of his knowledge of the geography and substantive skills in leading and managing expeditionary efforts, he is a much sought after guide for scientific and exploratory expeditions mapping remote areas of the frontier.

You will enjoy this work. Through Etienne Provost, Jack Tykal not only delivers an insightful understanding of the American West, but provides a concise rendering of one of the early West's more interesting and most colorful participants.