Wah-to-yah & the Taos trail: Prairie travel and scalp dances, with a look at los rancheros from muleback and the Rocky mountain campfire [Paperback]

Lewis Hector Garrard (Author), A.B. Gutherie Jr. (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 1972

In the bright morning of his youth Lewis H. Garrard traveled into the wild and free Rocky Mountain West and left us this fresh and vigorous account, which, says A. B. Guthrie, Jr., contains in its pages "the genuine article-the Indian, the trader, the mountain man, their dress, and behavior and speech and the country and climate they lived in."

On September 1, 1846, Garrard, then only seventeen years old, left Westport Landing (now Kansas City) with a caravan, under command of the famous trader Céran St. Vrain, bound for Bent's Fort (Fort William) in the southeastern part of present-day Colorado. After a lengthy visit at the fort and in a camp of the Cheyenne Indians, early in 1847 he joined the little band of volunteers recruited by William Bent to avenge the death of his brother, Governor Charles Bent of Taos, killed in a bloody but brief Mexican and Indian uprising in that New Mexican pueblo. In fact, Garrard's is the only eyewitness account we have of the trial and hanging of the "revolutionaries" at Taos.

Many notable figures of the plains and mountains dot his pages: traders St. Vrain and the Bents; mountain men John L. Hatcher, Jim Beckwourth, Lucien B. Maxwell, Kit Carson, and others; various soldiery traveling to and from the outposts of the Mexican War; and explorer and writer George F. Ruxton.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Hector Lewis Garrard (alias Lewis H. Garrard) returned in the summer of 1847 to his home in Cincinnati, where he studied medicine and perhaps law. One of the early settlers of southeastern Minnesota and a man of civic consequence, he finally went back to Cincinnati, where he died at the age of fifty-eight.

A. B. Guthrie, JR., Reporter, editor, and teacher, author of The Big Sky and The Way West, and winner of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Fiction, A. B. GUTHRIE, JR., needs no introduction to American readers. His enthusiasm for Garrard's book sets the reader on his way in full possession of the background.

Product Details

• Paperback: 318 pages
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press; Fifth Printing edition (June 15, 1972)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0806110163
• ISBN-13: 978-0806110165
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 4.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #824,742 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A young man's sojurn in the Old West, February 14, 2005

By 

Smallchief - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Wah-to-yah and the Taos Trail (W.Frontier Library) (Hardcover)

Lewis H. Garrard was an exuberant 17 year old tourist in the Old West of 1846-1847. He traveled down the Santa Fe Trail with a wagon train and stopped off at Bent's Fort on the Arkansas River of Colorado and spent a couple of months with the Cheyenne Indians and the traders and mountain men who lived around the fort. When Governor Charles Bent of New Mexico and twenty others were killed in Taos in an Mexican/Indian uprising he joined an informal expedition of mountain men to take revenge. His group arrived after the U.S. army had recaptured Taos, but Garrard was in Taos for the trial and hanging of nine of the revolutionary trouble-makers, even loaning the hangman several lariats when he ran short. "Wah-to-yah" is said to be the only account of the trial and hanging of the Taos revolutionaries.

Garrard was a lot more tolerant than most travelers, obviously enjoying the company of the Cheyennes and his extravagant and untutored White companions. He feels the need to express himself occasionally about moral issues and the lack of civilized values of the Indians, Mexicans, and other prairie dwellers - but his condemnations are rote rather than persuasive. Garrard, we imagine, probably shared buffalo robes with comely young Cheyenne women and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, as he did buffalo hunting, dog-meat feasts, and tall tale sessions with the mountain men. He also demonstrates a moral core, condemning the U.S war against Mexico and the wholesale hanging of the revolutionaries in Taos -- sentiments which were not popular in the West at the time.

"Wah-to-yah" -- the Indian name for the Spanish Peaks of southern Colorado -- is perhaps the best account you will find of a young man's adventures in the Old West of mountain men and unconquered Indians. It is similar to Francis Parkman's "The Oregon Trail." The two young men were in the West during the same year but Garrard's book is "the fresher, the more revealing, the more engaging, the less labored" in the words of A. B. Guthrie's introduction to "Wah-to-yah." Garrard is a likeable person; Parkman is not. Both were keen observers and good writers.

"Wah-to-yah" is on the short list of essential books about the Old West. It's easy and engaging reading. We need an annotated edition, however, which will tell us more about the many characters - some of them famous, such as Kit Carson -- Garrard meets and the places he visits and put the book in its historical context of its times.

Smallchief

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An eye-witness account of history with some priceless commen, August 16, 1998

By 

WD Wright (Savannah, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Wah-to-yah & the Taos trail: Prairie travel and scalp dances, with a look at los rancheros from muleback and the Rocky mountain campfire (Paperback)

I read the book because Bernard DeVoto spoke highly of it in "Year of Decision, 1846". I was not disappointed with this eye-witness account of life in the Rockies and would recommend it to anyone interested in living history. One can be critical of the book. Some of the flowery descriptive prose does not sound like it came from the mouth of a 17 year old, but even if a "ghost writer" did some of the work, the kid kept the notes and did live the story. Garrard's observations on Indian life, mountain men, Taos women compared to well-bred Eastern women, and his comments about Jim Beckwith, a black mountain man are priceless as were his views on the hanging of the Taos rebels. This story would make an excellent film.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars To read this book alone is to miss its true significance, January 22, 2001

By 

Kenneth G. Ramey (Paso Robles, CA 93446) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wah-to-yah & the Taos trail: Prairie travel and scalp dances, with a look at los rancheros from muleback and the Rocky mountain campfire (Paperback)

Garrard's book, besides being of particular interest, ties in with others about the west that combine to inform the reader as no other way can. The language used by such a young author is remarkable, but we must recall that usage changes with time. It helps to keep a dictionary handy. The first person account puts the reader not only on the trail, but in Cheyenne teepees and Bent's Fort where so much of the history of the west, and of those who opened it, came together. Susan Magoffin's book (Down the Santa Fe Trail, and into Mexico) is of another trip along the same route six months apart, and lends a womanly and complimentary view to that of Way To Yah. For those who found Garrard's book less than five star value, I say, read the book again. Often when I do this, appreciation of the work is enhanced. The more one reads of Santa Fe and those who traveled it's trail, the greater will become their respect for Lewis who opens to us the eyes of a young man thrilled with his situation, and who expresses himself as honestly as anyone I have had the joy to read. We are fortunate that he lived to weave into the fabric of the west his wonderful tale. Susan Magoffin reveals another side of the "trail" in her book, both of which combine to inform the reader while revealing truths of a time unfortunately past. Fascinating reading and a must for anyone seriously interested in the Santa Fe trade. Susan died at home, age 26. Lewis and she each wrote just one book.