Customer Reviews

Lucien Maxwell

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

 

 

In American literature no group has stood more for rugged individualism, raw adventure and independence than the Mountain Man. There were only several hundred of these people and most have been forgotten. For the most part they were illiterate and left no significant record. Fabled Lewis and Clark explorer John Colter is a good example. Almost nothing is known of this man. After the fur trade ended, most fell on exceedingly hard times and simply disappeared. I am a student of this period so it was with a great deal of interest that I pursued Harriet Freiberger's work on Lucien Maxwell.

This is a roughly written work but Harriet does a remarkably good job of piecing together the high points of Lucien's life from the limited information available. Like any good biographer she forms a strong, positive bond with her subject and after reading this work there is little wonder why. What I especially appreciated was her effort to correlate Maxwell's life experiences with what was going on in the United States as Manifest Destiny drove the frontier westward to ultimately engulf Lucien toward the end of his life.

What an amazing life it was! He was born and raised in Kaskaskia, Illinois only a few years after the Louisiana Purchase. He was related to the fabled Chouteau Dynasty that founded St. Louis; Pierre Menard, an early Upper Missouri explorer and fur trader and later Lt. Governor of the new State of Illinois, was his grandfather and David Jackson (Jackson Hole, Wyoming), key partner in the firm of Smith (explorer Jedediah Smith), Jackson and Sublette lived across the Mississippi in St. Genevieve, Missouri. Lucien's cousin founded Galveston, Texas. Moses Austin, founder of Texas, was also a neighbor. To say the least, he was influenced by the right stuff. Most importantly Maxwell was highly educated for the time, attending St. Mary's, a Franciscan school in St. Genevieve.

A few years after the opening of the Santa Fe Trail he moves 600 miles beyond America's then Mississippi frontier to Santa Fe, Mexico and engages in the fur business. He connects with Kit Carson, who proves to be a lifelong best friend, and accompanies John Fremont and Carson on three of their remarkable Western explorations. In California at the start of the US war with Mexico, he convinces Carson to obey the orders of General Kearny and saves Kit's military career. He marries Luz Beaubian daughter of the huge Beaubian and Miranda Spanish Land Grant and his brother-in-law is killed during the famed Taos Revolt. Settling at Rayado on the Santa Fe Trail after the war, he purchases a controlling interest in the Grant and pursues a ranching career that was hugely successful. Employing hundreds of people while providing a home for both Apache and Ute on the 2 million acres he controlled, his wealth accumulated rapidly. Seventeen thousand head of cattle and thirteen thousand sheep, supplanted by gold and other mining operations, made him a millionaire before that term was invented. At 52 he sells out at the peak for $1.5 million and moves his entourage 200 miles south to Ft. Sumter, abandoned 2 years earlier after the Navaho concentration camp, Bosque Redondo, is closed by the US Government. He dies on this Pecos River enclave at age 57.

This is a wonderful story about a most remarkable man who carved an epic life out of empty wilderness. Charles Goodnight and John Chisum were friends as were Kit Carson, General Kearny, Governor Charles Bent, Ceran St. Vrain, Uncle Dick Wootten, John Fremont and all the other movers and shakers who brought the northern Mexican frontier into the American orbit. He founded banks, ranches and mining operations and once drove thirteen thousand sheep from Bent's Fort in southeastern Colorado to Sacramento, California, selling them to the 49ers working the California gold fields.

Big boots, indeed.

I give this an A simply for being a compilation of interesting historical facts and a life story that I've never seen published elsewhere. Perhaps one has to have a strong interest in Western and New Mexico history to appreciate this story, but years after I read it, I still flash back at random times to the bittersweet life of Lucien Maxwell as told in this book. He was kind of a Citizen Kane, rising to great power and influence and then finishing up his life on quite a down note -- except for a big difference: Lucien didn't need to get a life, he had one. This is a fascinating part of American history, when soldiers, traders, trappers and settlers from the young United States began to mix it up with Spaniards, Mexican natives and local pueblo people who in the early 1800s had already been living more or less settled lives in New Mexico for over 200 years. If you are interested in this period of history, you might want to read "Wah-to-yah & the Taos trail: Prairie travel and scalp dances, with a look at los rancheros from muleback and the Rocky mountain campfire" - yup, that's the title. It is a first-hand account of another Frenchman who at the age of 18 came to New Mexico in 1848 on a lark, traveling down the Santa Fe Trail, through Lucien's turf and then stepping into a dramatic chapter of American history during the takeover of New Mexico by the U.S. Army, the assassination of the first U.S. governor, hanging of culprits, etc.

I hate to give this book such a low rating but it was incredibly dull. This is coming from a relative of the subject! The title might lead you to believe the author will paint a tale of two persons and compare the sides, but in fact she tells you in the first few pages that she sees him as a visionary. There is nothing in the book that would suggest the subject was a villain at all. I have a great interest in Mr. Maxwell and I could not bring myself to finish this book - and this was my second attempt.