Customer Reviews

A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific

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In the years between 1804 and 1847, Americans explored the Louisiana Purchase, the Rocky Mountains, took California from Mexico, and colonized Oregon. And the explorers and trappers called mountain men were instrumental in all those events.

Utley starts his account with George Drouillard and the legendary John Colter, both members of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and concludes his main story with Kit Carson's actions in the Mexican-American War. However, this book is not a collection of biographies. Utley does provide sketches for some mountain man, the events they are most famous for, and, sometimes, details of their deaths. He does not provide any real details about their gear or trapping and fighting methods. Utley concerns himself with a broader theme: how the travels of mountain men filled in the maps of the west, expunged certain geographical fantasies from the public mind, and drew people west.

Some of the mountain men here are famous. Besides Colter, we meet Jim Bridger, trapper, Army scout, guide, and establisher of the famous trading post named after him. We also, briefly, meet Hugh Glass who once swore to kill Bridger after he and another trapper left Glass for dead after Glass was mauled by a grizzly. Kit Carson's adventures with John Fremont are discussed.

But Utley also covers less well-known, but important, mountain men. The greatest explorer of all, Jedediah Smith, trapped beaver mainly as a means to subsidize his extensive wanderings. Atypically literate for a mountain man, he kept extensive journals and maps -- most of which vanished after his death. Utley considers another trapper, Joe Walker, the most accomplished of all in the mountain man craft and, as an explorer, second only to Smith. Others had less august reputations. Edward Rose, a trapper who lived for many years with the Crow, was frequently sought as an interpreter but never really trusted. Too often negotiations he was involved with broke down, and he was suspected of mischief for private ends. Old Bill Williams was known as an eccentric mountain man. Jessie Fremont, John's wife, even accused him of cannibalism.

In their quest for beaver pelts, before changing fashion, overtrapping, and substitution of nutria made trapping untenable, the mountain men not only added to geographical knowledge but served as agents, intentionally and unintentionally, for American expansion to the Pacific. They traveled to Spanish California and helped bring it into the Union by their settlements there and their actions in the Mexican-American War. But California was not the only Pacific territory whose national ownership was disputed. American mountain men, and this book is concerned with American citizens or those mountaineers who served American interests, competed with the English Hudson Bay Company in the Columbia River basin. Their knowledge inspired and guided missionaries and, later, settlers into what became the Oregon Territory. British interests there were supplanted, and some mountain men, like Joe Meek and Doc Newell, became important political figures in Oregon's early history.

Besides the broad story of mountaineers as the vanguard of American expansion west, there are other things of interest here. Taos, New Mexico and its importance to fur trading is covered. Utley talks about the little known 1823 punitive expedition against the Arikara. Writer Washington Irving shows up as an important source for this period of history.

Though it is not a main point of the book, Utley does talk some about relations between the mountain men and Indians. The attitudes ranged from racism to toleration to admiration. Some tribes, like the Blackfeet, were constant foes of the mountain men. Others, like the Shoshone and the Nez Perce (at least during the time of this history), were almost always friendly.

Utley uses his last chapter to wrap up the loose ends of some of his subjects' lives and the ultimate nature of their contributions to American development. Cartographer Peter Dana has the final say with an interesting chapter on how the book's extensive topographical maps, detailing the travels of various mountain men and the fur trade in general, were prepared from satellite photos.

Utley organizes the book along geographical lines and accounts of how particular routes of travel were developed. This leads to some confusion since he jumps back and forth in time. However, Utley's clear style and a well-done index help keep things straight. The footnotes are not only extensive but full of useful information.

For anyone who read and enjoyed Stephen Ambrose's great book on the Lewis and Clark expedition, "Undaunted Courage," this book is the perfect sequel. It picks up where Lewis and Clark left off, with Colter's and Drouillard's trips back up the Missouri River for trapping and further explorations in Blackfeet country, and continues through the great period of exploration and mapping of the American West leading up to the Mexican War and the California gold rush. This book has given me a whole new perspective on the history and geography of the West. I see that one reviewer found it a bit dry, but I think it depends on what you're looking for. If you want a collection of "wild west tales" of legendary mountain man exploits, you may be a little disappointed (although there actually are a few of those too), but if you'd like a deeper understanding of the geography and early history of the West, and a compelling picture of the Rocky Mountain region, the Pacific Coast, the Great Basin and the Desert Southwest before they were transformed by large-scale emigrant migrations, you'll love this book. I could hardly put it down. Utley does a great job of weaving the stories of individual mountain men together into a story of exploration and discovery that reads like a novel, and the excellent maps make it easy to follow the routes and place names.

True story of the perilous exploration of the American West by Trappers from Lewis and Clarke's time up through the end of the era with Jim Bridger and Kit Carson. A catalogue of the trappers that follow the rivers to find beaver and crossings to the west coast. Outcomes with Indians particularly tribes that were once powerful before the effects of smallpox and the incursions of man were evident, the dominant tribe being the Blackfeet who killed many trappers and contacts with the numerous tribes throughout the west. A virtual history of the beaver trade, how the trappers lived, encounters with Grizzly bears, western emigration, contacts with Mexican authorities, the Fremont explorations, Brigham Young led to the salt lake by Bridger. An enormous book that tells you almost the story of the rivers of the west and how important they were to the development of the US. The main question that stays with me after reading this book is how could these men endure such hardships so far from civilization dealing with hostile tribes, limited provisions and particularly medical emergencies? You also learn about the less known trappers that opened the west like J. Smith and the early explorers with Lewis and Clarke. Breaks a great myth that trappers trapped alone but instead traveled in brigades that offered some protection until the glorious rendezvous. Big book but a great reference on the west and all the major historical contributors of westward expansion.

This is ideal follow-up reading to Stephen Ambrose's "Undaunted Courage" since it details how the Rocky Mountains were penetrated and paths were found to the Pacific Coast, preparing the way for emigrant trails, in the four decades following the Lewis and Clark expedition. Some participants in that venture feature indeed in the early chapters of this work, some meeting horrific fates at the hands of Indian tribes. Mr.Utley structures his very readable narrative around the lives and careers both of individual Mountain Men and of more formal explorers and he is very successful in explaining how each new item of information on river systems, mountain ranges and watersheds was haltingly, and sometimes even wrongly, integrated step by step into an overall understanding of the geography of the American West. A major strength of the book is the collection of coloured, computer-generated maps which complement the text splendidly and which, far more effectively than conventional maps, convey the complexities of the terrain traversed in these amazing journeys. Mr.Utley carries his scholarship lightly and the story is told with fluency and grace. A most enjoyable book and an ideal vade-mecum for anybody planning a holiday in the Western United States.

Not only is this a good follow up to Ambrose's "Unduanted Courage", but also to Bernard De Voto's "Across the Wide Missouri". Utley gives a very well documented and descriptive look into the lives of many of our famous mountain men and how they shaped and formed the early American West. Starting with John Colter, he interweaves his way through the life and times of Jedediah Smith, Ewing Young, Bill Sublette, Kit Carson, John Fremont and others. From early fur trappers, traders, explorers and cartographers, Utley does a most commendable piece of work in this book. I enjoyed it immensely.

This is a serious work that gives a complete
chronicle of every detail you could ever want
to know about how the mountain men lived
their perilous lives.
Color maps are a very helpful addition too. It
amazes me how so many books like this
actually leave out any pictorial illustration.
I do wish they were reproduced with the state boundaries
superimposed over them to give you a better idea
where the locations are. (Yes of course those states
weren't founded yet, but we are reading this book at
a time after they WERE; it would help immensely to
know what state the Green River runs through, for example....)

Author Utley appears to have a profound love for the
subject about which he reveals no end of knowledge.
It would be a little difficult to recommend this though
to the casual reader, mainly because Utley doesn't attempt to
reach out to a wide audience. He assumes
a predisposition to the subject, making this book
perhaps not an easy introduction to the mountain men.
There is nothing at all wrong with that, but I feel the
need to take off one point (from what would otherwise
be a sure five-star grade) for his focus on concrete detail,
at the expense of placing the subject into a larger context,
to give the broader significance of what the mountain
men did and what it meant for the country as a whole
-- how their accomplishments shaped our attitudes towards
the idea of westward expansion, and changed (if at all) our
symbolic image of ourselves as a people. Maybe
they didn't change our attitudes about ourselves
at all.

At his death in 1971, historian Dale L. Morgan was beginning work on what he planned would be the definitive one-volume history of the fur trade. While that project will have to wait for another, Utley has written a marvelous history of the fur trade by concentrating tangentially on the geography of the industry. The result encapsulates knowledge of the lower half of the continent, omitting the Canadian forays south and west from Hudson's Bay and the Great Lakes, but encompassing the explorations from Lewis and Clark through to the completion of the Warren map. For the reader, the development of the subject (historical geography) is contextualized through solid maps, excellent narratives, and commendable attention to "what came next", such as Joseph Walker's settling in Oregon. Utley's books are classics in the scholarly field of Western American history; this one is a marvelous contribution to Western American geography as well. I highly recommend it, to general readers as well as scholars.

A Life Wild and Perilous is a thorough and scholarly work of the mapping and settlement of the West. However, it is not dedicated exclusively to the mountain men and how they opened the path to the Pacific, which is the stated premise of the book. I recommend this if you are interested in the efforts of fur business and the military in opening the West, but not as a description of the life of the mountain men. At the times, the detail and prose bog down the narrative, but this book is educational nevertheless.

My son's 4th grade social studies unit last year covered the Oregon Trail and westward expansion. I caught his enthusiasm and found this book to be an exhaustive, informative, and interesting work. It fills in a large gap in American history- the time between the Lewis and Clark expedetion, and the settling by pioneers of the Oregon and California territories. The mountain men were not just trappers, but were truly instrumental in determining the topography and geography of the West, and so gathering the knowledge that allowed emigrants to populate the area. A trip to the Grand Tetons this summer was enhanced by having read this book, as that area was of great importance to the fur trade and to westward expansion with the discovery of South Pass. Although the author's literary style is not as compelling as that of Stephen Ambrose, I still found the book interesting and worthwhile. The maps were valuable as well.

Robert Utley's "A Life Wild and Perilous..." is a wonderful story of just about the most iconoclastic Americans produced by this country of ours.

The Mountain Men were risk takers, rugged individualists, optimists and American patriots rolled into one (although being patriots did not interfere with some of them taking Mexican or British citizenship when it would help them settle in parts of the West that were not ours before the Mexican-American War).

Utley begins right after the Lewis and Clark expedition, when two of those intrepid expedition members returned to the new lands in search of beaver pelts. The story progresses through the fur trading companies, the likes of Jim Bridger, Kit Carson and ends shortly after the time of Charles Fremont. By the time of the Gold Rush, the mountain men had spent their moment, the victims to changing fashions (beaver pelts were in demand for men's hats primarily) and over trapping as well as growing popular interest in settlement and exploitation of the land.

This book is mostly a chapter examination of the doings of the most famous of the mountain men. Their hard life in the open, scrapes and alliances with natives (many had Indian wives and families), habits of trade and merriment and their epic journeys from there to there are explored in well written and at times riveting detail.

Utley has added to an understanding of the American West by bringing back to life the men who established trade routes, guided the first settlers and importantly mapped and explored the great interior lands of the American continent. This is a great and interesting story told well.