What would be your top 5 to 10 books a guy should read to learn more about the real history of the old west (as romanticized in TV and Movies)?

Here is real good starting place:

Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman: J. Evetts Haley ...

Also: "We pointed 'em North"........... It's the story of Teddy Blue

I'm not home now so i don't have the specific titles but find a good biography of Kit Carson. Amazing life spanning many significant events.

I like to read the books authored by the folks that were actually there. These were posted by folks here at the campfire that I found interesting.

https://archive.org/details/indianfightsfigh00bradrich

http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-e...f-john-charles-frmont-volume-1-rf1.shtml

Blood and Thunder, by Hampton Sides

link on amazon

Empire of the Summer Moon
by S.C. Gwynne

The story of Comanche Indians and the Indian wars of the nineteenth century.

curdog, that is one of the best I ever read. It's has many pages. "The Savage Frontier"-Moore. "The Buffalo Hunters"-Sandoz(a woman that writes like a man). "The West" An Illustrated History - Geoffrey C. Ward. "Triggernomitry"

That's the one! Thanks.

You mention Sandoz, Mari wrote "Old Jules", a biography about her father homesteading the upper Niobrara country in nw Nebraska.
A review of the book states
"A realistic biography, a rare find. On putting down this book one feels that one has read the history of all pioneering."
NY Times Book Review

Andrew, I grew up reading the Time-Life series The Old West.

http://www.amazon.com/Time-Life-Books-Series-Complete-Volume/dp/B000E6LHC0

There's the whole series which is more than you are looking for. I can't say that the series is without flaw, but IMO it is a good overview of the topic. I think you can get by easily without all of them. If you get five of these, you have the advantage of greater continuity than some of the other books mentioned or that will be. Not that those books aren't good.

The Gunfighters, The Indians, The Cowboys, The Soldiers and The Pioneers. Substituted for The Pioneers could be either The Frontiersmen or The Scouts. If you wanted to expand to ten books of the series, I'd go ahead with The Trailblazers, The Great Chiefs and The End and the Myth.

I tell you, there are some great books on the topic, but with either the first five or the expanded ten, I don't think you can do better for an overview of the whole topic.

Just one more...a great book on the guns of the old west is Age of the Gunfighter, by Joseph Rosa. Rosa is an Englishman and the foremost expert on James Butler Hickok. The book, which must be a dozen years old by now, is just an excellent treatise on the weapons of the classic period of the American West along with the periods immediately preceding and afterwards. I highly recommend it.

Personally, I think Sandoz writes more like a Democrat. No offense to you intended. Her writings usually contain some stuff that is not very well backed up.

No offense.

Some good ones mentioned already. Here are a few more:

Once They Moved Like the Wind, Cochise, Geronimo and the Apache Wars, by David Roberts

Jedediah Smith, by Dale L. Morgan

The Last Gunfight, by Jeff Guinn.

6000 Miles of Fence, by Cordia Sloan Duke and Joe B. Frantz

Borderlander, The Life of James Kirker, 1793-1852, by Ralph Adam Smith

The Texas Rangers, by Walter Prescott Webb.

Storms Brewed in Other Men's Worlds, by Elizabeth A. H. John

I believe you are taking about "The Gunfighter......... man or myth". I'm looking at it right now. Blue aka Rio7 sent it to me. I'll see if he will let me forward it to the OP.

Utah's Blackhawk War, by Peterson

link

Lots of folks like it. I found too many geographical errors in it to suit me.

It was written by a Yankee who came to Texas and never left the libraries where he did his research.

I sure wouldn't consider it "The authoritive account" it is made out to be.

link

Comanches: Destruction of a People. Fehrenbach

General Crook and the Western Frontier

link

Evolution of a State by Noah Smithwick

And Apache Campaign in the Sierra Madre by John Bourke
( as well as On the Border With Crook)

Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail by Theodore Roosevelt

Uncle Dick Wooton by Howard Conrad

On the southwest anything by J. Frank Dobie

As Mudhen stated Jedediah Smith by Dale Morgan

Catlins Notes and Letters on the North American Indian by George Catlin

Journal of a Trapper by Osborne Russell

Just a few off top of my head.

No, I'm talking about the book I'm looking at right now on my bookshelf about four feet away. Age of the Gunfighter, by Joseph G. Rosa, University of Oklahoma Press, 1993. I don't own the book you speak of, that I can remember, but Rosa is the author of more than one book. Once he starts on a topic is seems loathe to leave it, having at least three books about Wild Bill, that I can remember off the top of my head.

Thanks all. I just started reading A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn - the Last Great Battle of the American West by James Donovan.

It's interesting and will take me a while. Thought I'd poll the learned here to see if there are some I should be on the look out for in the future.

Triggernometry by Eugene Cunningham.

A lot of these titles are great books. I've read some of them. If you want a comprehensive look at the subject though, go with the Time Life books. Even the first five will really get you a good feel for it.

This is a bit later, but it's an interesting read considering the author: Lazy B by Sandra Day O'Connor and H. Alan Day. Tough people growing up on those western ranches.

Bury my heart at wounded knee, Dee Brown.

I live in Green Valley,Az a little south of Tucson. I live here by choice made many years ago and greatly influenced by writings of two men. The writings of Jack O'Conner who greatly influenced my going to Gunsmith school and J. Everts Haley who wrote 'Jeff Davis Milton - A Good Man With A Gun' which is one of the most honest depictions of western history as you can probably find. Milton did it all,he was a cowboy,ranger,Border Patrolman,Lawman and above it all gunfighter and man of impeccable character. It was from University of Oklahoma Press and from about 1950's so don't know if it is still in print.I have a soft cover edition published about 20 years ago. It is definitely worth finding and reading. Haley is one of the finest western historians I know and anything he writes is worth reading.

I second this recommendation, Milton was an early Tx Ranger, and may have been the first Border Patrolman (official title: "Mounted Hindu Inspector")

Sycamore

This is really a great book and written from the documents collected over the years by Walter Mason Camp, who compiled eyewitness accounts from survivors of the battle, both Indian and Cavalry.

It is interesting to see how the curators at the Little Bighorn Battlefield Museum, give little credibility to Donovan's work yet his research is based more on actual recorded depositions of battle survivors.

The Museum isn't without it's agenda either as they won't recognize the forensic work of Henry Weibert's collection of battlefield artifacts and what importance they play in the reconstruction of the battle.

Regardless of all the drama surrounding the battle, this is still one of the better books to read on Western History, as there has not been a single battle or individual more written about than George Custer and the Little Bighorn battle...

The true old west.........began with the Lewis & Clark expedition and was soon followed by REAL MEN such as John Colter and Jim Bridger and Fitzpatrick and Jedediah.

Kit Carson was a wuss who came much later. So were the indian fighters of 1840+.

Try 'Give Your Heart to the Hawks' by Winfred Blevins in order to fully understand this.

Not so fast SBH.



I think Smith only started in 1822, so he was 7 years ahead of Carson as a Mountain Man, and only 3 years ahead of him on the way to California. I'm not taking anything away from Smith, and Dale Morgan's book was a good one, but some of the stuff Carson pulled off was incredible.

Sycamore

I have a signed edition of the J Evetts Haley book, Cur. He and his wife were patients of mine for many years until their passing. Now that was one man who bemoaned the passing of the old ranching ways and loved the smell of cow schitt and and a hot iron on cowhide.

They have a library / museum in Midland dedicated to the old west. He also was a sworn enemy of LBJ, particularly after his book, 'A Texan Looks at LBJ'.

His son still has his old spread out west of Kermit where I hunted quail years ago.

He told me that the IRS audited him every year until either LBJ died or left office (I can't now remember which).


To the OP- I would also recommend 'The Oregon Trail'.

For sure 'Journal of a Trapper'

Out of print but Pistol Pete is good. The Little Britches series...at least the ones out west.

Another great book is 'The Original History of John Colter' by Burton Harris.

Much more has been respected about Jim Bridger than Jedediah Smith. Little is written specifically about Jim's pard Thomas Fitzpatrick. Jed has received more written frontier history cuz he was an expedition leader, but that's all. Of this group.....I'm going with Bridger as the (almost) epitome of a great Mtn man who did and saw almost everything a man could do in those days. Lived to be 76........but nobody thought to interview him deeply and take down his stories. Shame, too.

But even more so than Bridger.........John Colter explored and trapped the Rockies........much of it all by his lonesome........a couple decades before Bridger and his buds showed up. Colter was a member of the original Lewis & Clark expedition......and left it to go back into the hills. Tough-ass man. Do a web search on 'The Colter Stone' for some interesting quick history.

These great characters of the ooooooolllllddd west were there fighting Blackfeet looooong before the Custer's, Cavalry, and Comanche fighters mentioned above. The Kit Carson's and Daniel Boone's don't even hit my radar compared to Colter and Bridger.

The portion of western history I find the most interesting is the amount of goings on that was occurring before Lewis and Clark. 17th and 18th century stuff. Like the Vilasur expedition to Nebraska in 1721. Mendoza expedition out of El Paso 1630 into Texas southern plains. And that scoundrel La Salle.

Some of the best reading are translations and books by Herbert Eugene Bolton. Circa 1914..

Kaywoodie,

along those lines, a good one is:

Cabeza de Vaca's Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America

link

So many good suggestions here.

I would suggest getting a copy of Law West Of Fort Smith, A History of Frontier Justice in Indian Territory, 1834-1896." by Glenn Shirley, University of Nebraska Press, �1957 & �1968. It goes into great detail of one of the roughest and most dangerous areas of the Great American Frontier, up through the career of one of the most famous "lawmen" of that entire era, one Issac Charles Parker, aka "Hanging Judge Parker."

If you've read True Grit, by Charles Portis, or seen the two movies, True Grit, they'll come to mind often if you read this book.

Another would be The Arizona Story, Compiled From Original Newspaper Sources, by Joseph Miller, Hasting House Publs., �1952. Although the news stories re the Apaches are somewhat biased in today's light, there is no doubt that Arizona Territory for many, many years was a very dangerous place to live, not only because of marauding Indians, but desperados, bandits, freebooters, and cut throats.

Two others are Tularosa, Last Of The Frontier West, by C. L. Sonnichsen, Univ. of New Mexico Press, �1969 and �1980. Details the settlement of another very rough and dangerous area, southeastern New Mexico and portions of northwestern Texas from El Paso up into New Mexico.

A great read is Fifty Years On The Old Frontier, as Cowboy, Hunter, Guide, Scout, and Ranchman, by James H. Cook, Yale University Press, �1923. A truly fascinating read. Cook began "cowboying" when he was 14, trailing a herd of cattle from Texas up to Kansas, then Nebraska, and on to Wyoming. His exploits on the western frontier are incredible.

I also have the complete collection of the Time-Life western series and have always enjoyed reading of the many different types of people who came "out west" to settle the frontier. We often think of the old western frontier as just "cowboys, cattle drives, and injuns." So much more, especially all the various professions that helped open and settle the west.

So many marvelously interesting books out there, one can never read them all... but it's fun to try.

L.W.

Oh yes!!! Damn good stuff. The coolest thing about the later Spanish journadas is there were always two separate "official" journals kept of the trips. One military and one ecclesiastical. A cool check and balance. Things that meant nothing in a military light might be recorded elsewhere.

There was bunches of stuff going on. Not only by the Spanish and the French. But also by the British and Russians.

Spanish were actually scared schidtless of the Brits moving west of the Mississippi!! French were in Santa Fe in 1739 (Mallet Brothers) and Gil y Barbo captured a marooned English sailor from the orcoquisac Indians on Galveston bay in 1773.

I always felt the story of the Talon children from the ill-fated La Salle expedition would make an awesome movie!

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fta60

KW,

So just exactly who gave horses to the northern plains indians?

Who knows??? mebbe they had em all along.

Personally, I know nothing of the exploration and development and constant land exchanging of the southwest. Grew up in southern New Mexico, been to Taos and Santa Fe and many NM pueblos and much of west Tejas. But this locational aspect of frontier American history doesn't much excite me. It's pretty complicated.

The old-timey history of the northern rockies area exploration and settlement.........does.

And even more so than reading about it.........it's neat to visit, explore, and hunt in western Wyoming, Idaho, and southern Montana in the exact places written about.......the same places as the old-timey mtn men did.

Places named after 'em such as Ham's Fork, Smith's Fork, Ft. Bridger, Green River, Black's Fork, Fontenelle Crk, Bridger Mtns, Colter Pk, Colter's Hell, Yellowstone, Three Forks, Sublette Range, Absaroka Mtns, Bear River, Jackson's Hole, Pierre's Hole, South Pass, Sweetwater River, Togwotee Pass, the Tetons, the Great Salt Lake.......and last but not least........one of the most memorable..........Two Ocean Pass. They called Bridger a liar for describing a place where a creek split and one fork ran to the Pacific Ocean and the other to the Atlantic.

Last I heard, the horses really got out in 1680, with the Pueblo rebellion in Northern New Mexico, and the horses spread fast first to the southern plains, then to the northern plains. The sioux were pedestrians for a long time. The comanches had a head start on them.

Sycamore

When a party of men from ft St. Louis ventured inland in 1685 they met a band of Jumano Indians whom they took for spaniards. These guys were from out in the Pecos country and this particular contact was made prolly around present Victoria Texas ! They were mounted (1685), riding Spanish saddles. Dressed as spaniards to some degree and spoke fair Spanish. They stated they were on their way to a big trading fair at the "ranchiera Grande" village. This particular spot was around monument hill outside La Grange Tx. Another such village was up close to where the Little River runs into the Brazos, Robertson/Milam co line.

Another note. Henri Joutel traded a single steel needle to a hasinai (Caddoan) for a horse over in the Neches river country 1686. Not far from present Louisiana border.

I also liked two stories from Francois de la Harpe's exploration of the upper Red River. The French governor ( I believe it was Cadilliac) told him there were reports of unicorns in the country. When de la Harpe got to the Nasoni village west of present Texarkana, they had spitted what researchers think was an entire elk over a fire in preparation of a feast for the French.

Another story was he left the Red River and struck north. When he reached the Canadian river he met a hunting party of Osage. He asked if the river ever had more water in it. They told him they had never seen much more water in it! LOL!
This was all circa 1710!

Very interesting stories. Thanks so much for sharing.

+1

Another good one with lots of documentation is John Bourke's "On The Border With Crook".

Jim Bridger huh? Stripbuck, I don't know how much you know, but I know how much a lot of these guys know about western history, and it's a lot. Calling Kit Carson a "wuss" is not too endearing. He was a short statured fellow who stood tall in the old west.

StripBuckHunter, I concur on hunting in all the old locales in the mountains. I'm currently re-reading "Uncle Dick Wooton". Most all takes place around that Raton / Bents Fort/ Trinidad country. Like it there!

The thing is to realize that any book you read is gonna give you only part of the story, and that part will likely be skewed towards Europeans. Not being PC, just relating fact.

Also, as a general rule, the more accurate the history is, the duller it will become. Using the War Between the States as an analogy; sure everybody knows about the battles, but the outcome was more about logistics and supply, and far more soldiers died of infectious diseases than ever got whacked by a bullet.

Case in point; Texas. The Texas Rangers were largely irrelevant as a source of Indian mortality, Adobe Walls was an inconsequential skirmish involving a relative handful of participants, and until the coming of the railroad the economy of Texas from Indianola and San Antonio west was quietly rolling along on poorly armed and largely defenseless Mexican ox-carts. It was no accident that when Oliver Loving took the Comanche arrow that would kill him on the Pecos River (the incident that inspired Gus's death in Lonesome Dove), it was Mexican freighters with ox-carts that found him staggering across the high plains and brung him in.

The most accurate take on West Texas history is probably the recent "Comanche Empire", but being more comprehensive, better researched and more factual it ain't as exciting a read as some others. Cholera and a persistent drought did more to bring down the Comanches than anything else but as late as 1873 they still traded more than 30,000 head of Texas cattle to the Army in New Mexico.

Anyways, more must-read books...

The memoirs of Noah Smithwick ("The Evolution of a State") has already been mentioned, available entirely on line.....

http://www.lsjunction.com/olbooks/smithwic/otd.htm

Also free online, Josiah Gregg's excellent and informative memoir of the Santa Fe trade "Commerce of the Prairies"....

http://www.kancoll.org/books/gregg/

In which you'll find New Mexico Mexicans, skilled with lance and bow and arrow, serving as guides clear to Missouri, and Pawnee raiders, coming down from Nebraska on foot, to take horses and scalps from Comanches. It was mostly our guys who looked at things in terms of "pioneering" and "discovering", all the locals had been quietly traversing the continent for generations.

Two books I would add; "RIP Ford's Texas", the collected memoirs of Ranger Captain John Salmon Ford. Ford likely survived more combat with Plains Indians and Mexican bandits than any other White man of his era, and wrote about it in detail. Like Smithwick, if he hadn't actually existed he would seem improbably remarkable, like a character in fiction, and like Smithwick, the charitable and often admiring account he gives of his enemies may surprise you.

The other is "A Journey Through Texas", by Frederick Law Olmstead: A detailed, no sh&t, eyewitness transect through Texas east to west circa 1857.

More later,
Birdwatcher

Another interesting footnote of early exploration deals with the Freeman-Custus expedition of 1806. The Red River expedition. Prez Jefferson considered it of the same importance as the Lewis and Clark affair!

One of the items this expedition would try to locate was a large meteorite reported to be in the possession of some native tribe. Well the expedition got off to a rocky start when the Spanish authorities met them close to present New Boston Texas and forced them to turn around. ( gov. Wilkerson of Louisiana ,the scoundrel, had secretly warned the Spanish of the expedition. With the hopes of starting a military confrontation between the US and Spain).

The meteorite was later located among the Comanches by a trading party under a Mr. Glass and Mr. Schamp(sic?) who obtained it and brought it back to natchitoches! Interesting story. Wish I knew more about this! Guess I'll need to read up!

Josiah Gregg's Commerce of the Prairie should be required reading for any student of old west history!!!

Where "Empire of the Summer Moon" excels is its accounting of the White side of the Frontier, I forget which Indian captive it was that was returned, only to die as a result of the interminable intercine feuding among the mostly Scots-Irish settlers.

"Empire" starts out explicitly stating the false but popular concept that the Tonkawas were "always losing". In reality you'll find that the very survival of this small tribe was remarkable and that the Comanches regarded them with a fear and dread that bordered on hysteria, in part because Tonkawas famously ate the Comanches they killed.

Point of fact, Quanah Parker had wanted to go after the Tonkawas who were so effectually guiding the cavalry to their encampments but was overruled by the disorganized rabble of young men, who opted to go after the buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls instead.

If you read Stephen Moore's excellent and exhaustively researched four-book "Savage Frontier series you'll find that man-for-man Placido's Tonkawas, who RAN thirty miles to join the Texians gathered to intercept the Great Comanche Raid at Plum Creek, killed several more Comanches than the Texians did and took possession of most of the livestock captured during the skirmish.

You'll also find in Moore that Parker's Fort, wherein Cythia Parker was famously captured in that brutal raid perpetrated largely by Comanche and Waco teenagers, had been an active base for forays by Ranging Companies against local Indians, including an attempt to inoculate them with smallpox.

Gwynne, misses all this, basically he gives a well-written rewrite of Texas pop history.

Other's MMV,
Birdwatcher

I remember the story of the tonkawas capturing the Comanche at Webbers prairie (Noah Smithwick's Evolution of a State) and they borrowed a wash pot from "Puss" Webber. Built a fire and cooked the Comanche in her pot! All
Natives present dined on his remains!!!!

Karankawa's, Commanche, Lipan Apache, Mescalaro Apache, Southern Cheyenne, Tonks, Kiowa's...no doubt Texas had some of the most savage natives on the continent.

"Pop history"? lol Sounds like it. Every account I've ever read had the Commanch following a Medicine Man who had assured them he had special magic that would make them impervious to the Buffalo rifles they so feared. They beat him after taking a lot of casualties. ...and quit.

No doubt more than one white captive died after being returned. Just the physical differences between white and Indian cultures would be a shock to the system, probably as much one way as the other. Cynthia Ann Parker, whom you mentioned, didn't last long after her repatriation to East Texas from the Commancheria. Perhaps she is of whom you speak.

Indeed, and part of what I got from it is the expansion of the cotton trade. By that era the slave-grown cotton industry had reached such an output that finished cotton from New England and even Lancashire UK cotton mills, then shipped to St. Louis and hauled laboriously across the plains, could STILL undersell locally-grown Mexican cotton.

TONS of goods hauled in those wagons. Likewise TONS of trade goods hauled by flatboat every year to Bent's Fort, in that case largely traded for thousands of buffalo robes harvested for market by the Plains Indians themselves.

The other thing I recall from Gregg was his statements that newbies on the plains started out expecting to see an Indian behind every rock, and were armed accordingly. The reality was most often quite different from that.

Reading what it was like to sleep out at night in the midst of a prairie wilderness however, ya can't help but feel a sense of sadness that we missed all that.

Birdwatcher

I remember him stated that Indians were waaaay down on the list of causes of death on the trail. Disease and falling asleep and falling under your wagon had the Indians beat! LOL!

Ethan! Louis Jurchereau de st. Denis wrote that on their way back to natchitoches 1716, lipanos attacked their party at the present day mouth of onion creek at the Colorado river (just east of Austin). They( the Lipans) had covered themselves with buff robes in an attempt to deflect the fusil balls!

A damned buffalo hide before it is worked and made pliable enough to wear or wrap around you might indeed deflect some lower powered loads.

Larry McMurtry has lots of detractors but one of the things he stresses in his fiction and which I believe to be true, is the hazard of crossing watercourses. People were constantly having to ford streams and rivers and lots of folks in those days didn't know how to swim. A horse in a team or the one you were riding getting spooked could signify the end in those days.

Nope, that was Isha-tai (spelling?). I forgot, another area where Gwynne excels is he follows what happened to the Comanche in the reservation era. Isha-tai, fine salesman that he must have been, became heavily involved in reservation politics, IIRC actually ran against Quanah Parker in tribal elections more than once.



Nope, not talking about the famous trauma cases (Matilda Lockhart also being an example). In this case the former captive had to flee with her kin to Houston and died of exposure-related causes en-route.

To add perspective, by 1860 the population of Texas was about 600,000. Moving close to Indian Country was about like visiting Border Mexico today, most people simply didn't do it and by then only a tiny fraction of Texans were subject to Indian Raids. Most were far more at risk from the bad element among other Texans.

Which is probably why there was never a response to Indian raids proportionate to the actual Texas population. That was left largely to the Army and to a tiny handful of Rangers. Nothing like the massive state-wide voluntary mobilization of manpower that came with secession for example.

It was about 1860 that the Comanches took up rounding up Texas cattle in a big way. Imagine for a moment how un-opposed you have to be to actually walk off (literally) driving a herd of cattle; ten miles a day leaving a trail so obvious even a Yankee could follow it.

By the 1870's, with the decline of the buffalo, MOST "Commanch" were living a sort of pastoral economy, camps surrounded by cattle herds. By 1874 MOST of the surviving "Commanch" were living on reservations in Oklahoma.

That summer perhaps a hundred of their young men still out actually held a sort of sun dance, a Northern Plains custom previously unknown to the participating Kiowa and Comanches.

After this ad-hoc spiritual affair, born of desperation, the disorganized group largely disbanded. Some went home, others, overruling Quanah Parker's desire to go against the fearsome Tonkawas, opted to go against the buffalo camp at Adobe Walls instead.

They weren't the first nor the last group of mounted cavalry to make the mistake of going up against entrenched riflemen. Indeed, the rifle ruled Plains combat, had ever since the Eastern Tribes first brung 'em out there in numbers maybe a hundred years before.

Birdwatcher

Not to hijack Teal's thread, but there is an incredible amount of western history in Kansas City. If you like the cowboy era, Wichita or Fort Worth is probably more intensive in that specific area, but for an array of western history...cowboy plus fur trade, Indian, southwestern, commerce of the prairies, steamboats, railroads, War Between the States, Indian Wars, etc., I don't know if Kansas City can be beaten. Perhaps the biggest thing is the Immigration aspect. So many trails originating in and around Kansas City.

When I was a kid, there was what I'd characterize as a strip mall...shopping center. Kind of a forerunner of the mall as we know it today, in Mission, one of the towns making up KC metro. It was Mission style as is a lot of the stuff in KC. It had these ultra-cool inset tiles with scenes depicting the west in the area. Wagons, frontiersmen, bull whackers and the like. At some point, they got covered over, broken or something. I was up there a few days back and spied either one remaining or one they had reproduced.

Yup! Very true! Henri Joutel stated that the first thing that wore out at Ft. St. Louis were there shoes! They went to making ersatz mocs made out of green buff hides. They had to stand on water for hours to get them soft enough to remove from their feet!

I have a copy of Undaunted Courage by Ambrose and really enjoyed the parts of it in the middle that detailed the actual expedition into the west. The encounters with grizzly bears from their journal entries were very entertaining. They were warned by the Indians as to the fierceness of the bears, but did not believe them. Didn't take long for that to change. Also their description of the land, masses and herds of wildlife and the dealings with the indian tribes.
AB

...and the fact they were guided halfway across the Continent by an illiterate teenage girl carrying an infant. When they happened to encounter a couple of her brothers later on they were golden, and got directions for the rest of the way.

without a doubt. they gained tremendous respect for her bravery, and invaluable presence.

Another vote for the journals of Lewis amd Clark. There were several members that kept journals but I like the one by Patrick Gass the best. He was more consistent in day by day writing.

Here's a book about an expedition in the mid 1800's through the old west. I've posted a link to it here at the Campfire a few times in the past. Maybe some will find it interesting. http://mtmen.org/mtman/html/sage/index.html

"... Introduction to Rufus Sage's Rocky Mountain Life

Rufus Sage wandered in the Rocky Mountains from 1841 to 1843. He travelled extensively in the major fur trapping regions, and associated with trappers, traders, indians, hunters, and soldiers.
He published his journal of his travels in 1846. Unlike many contemporary journalists, Sage provided detailed descriptions of the everyday activities of the "mountaineers".

Bibliographical Information
Author: Sage, Rufus, 1817-1893.
Title: Rocky Mountain Life, or, Startling Scenes and Perilous
Adventures in the Far West, During an Expedition of
Three Years.
Published: Wentworth & Company, Boston, 1857
Notes: Originally published as "Scenes in the Rocky Mountains",
by Carey & Hart, 1846."...


If you don't feel like reading the entire book, at the above link scroll down to the bottom of the page where it says "Bookmarks - Links to interesting sections of the text".

"Life In The Far West" and "Adventures In Mexico and the Rocky Mountains" George F. Ruxton. Ruxton has road named for him at Manitou Springs CO.

Another one that just occurred to me that hasn't been touched on I think is titled "Beyond the Hundreth Meridian" about John Wesley Powell's expedition down the Colorado River.

Links below to a pair of books dealing with the famous meteorite and the Freeman-Custus expedition. Going to get Flores , Anthony Glass Journal of an Indian Trader first! Looks like a very interesting read!

http://books.google.com/books?id=hP...tput=html_text&source=gbs_navlinks_s

http://www.tamupress.com/product/Journal-of-an-Indian-Trader,979.aspx

I recently received FIREARMS, TRAPS AND TOOLS OF MOUNTAIN MEN A GUIDE TO THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TRAPPERS AND FUR TRADERS WHO OPENED THE OLD WEST. Despite the length of the title this appears to be a stellar work written by Carl P. Russell. There are separate chapters on axes, rifles, knives, traps and firestarters. Great descriptions on how things were made and used abound. This book is truly a text and I am enjoying it greatly.
Thanks to all of you who have made suggestions, my list is growing and I will soon be making another big order to Amazon.

mike r.

Also extremely important was the fact that Lewis & Clark were able to get horses from Sacajawea's brother and his Shoshone tribal members. Without those horses, the very strong odds of Lewis & Clark ever getting on beyond the Rocky Mountains were very slim.

L.W.

Mike! That book is an old stand-by! Good book! I think my old dog-ears copy is over 30 years old!

Yes, a very interesting book. I've had a copy for about 30 years or so. It's from the University of New Mexico Press, �1977, Alfred A. Knopf Publs. �1967, if anyone is searching for it.

Several references have been made here about "Bent's Fort," on the upper Arkansas River in what today is southern Colorado. Bent's Fort was an extremely important fur trading post dealing both with the central Rocky Mountain fur trappers and the trappers from the southern Rocky Mountains of New Mexico, etc. It was instrumental too in the freight trade from Westport, on the Missouri River near what today is Kansas City, to Santa Fe.

Check around and see if you can find a copy of Bent's Fort, by David Lavender, Doubleday and Co, Inc. Publs., �1954. You won't be disappointed.

L.W.

Currently re-reading "The Old Santa Fe Trail" Stanley Vestal. "The Taos Trappers" David Weber. "Narrative of the Adventures of Zenas Leonard" by ZL.

David Weber history Dept SMU, is one of THE authorities on colonial North American Spanish History! Very thorough author.

Howdy EE.

Not to start a fight....but those injuns were wusses compared to the Gros Ventres that Jim Bridger enjoyed killing with his flintlock in today's western Wyoming and SW Montana. The scene from "Centennial" where Pasquinel had the arrowhead cut out of his back is based on Bridger's own situation. TOUGH.

http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk266/dfly57/geocache/bth_20070317-300px-Jim_Bridger.jpg

http://www.america101.us/trail/FtBridger_files/shapeimage_3.png

http://media.smithsonianmag.com/images/James-Bridger-5.jpg

As the story goes, John Colter fought with a group a Shoshones (or was it Flatheads) against a Gros Ventre tribe in the very early 1800's after his separation from L & C. And the Gros Ventres noticed him in the skirmish as a white man. From that day on..........they were aggressive and viscious and murderous toward all white men.

If you've ever seen the ridiculously stupid movie "The Mtn Men" with Heston and Keith...........the scene where the Blackfeet chase Heston naked into a beaver dam with him killing the one with the spear in his "run for life" is based on John Colter's own story. Colter showed up naked and starving at a crude fort on the Missouri 300 miles downstream. Resupplied........and then went back for more. Now that's TOUGH.

Wow.

Plus.....'ol Jim had a song written about him, LOL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53-utjVZPtA&feature=player_detailpage#t=8

BW,

The OP requested info about western history........not the life story of Texas. Texas is and has always been a tame southern state, not a wild western one.

Never been anything wild and woolly about it except the size of its boundaries and the size of the egos of it's residents.........which appears to have gone unchanged over the last 400 years.

If you read about the history of Washington state Goggle Murray Morgan three of his books are currently listed on Amazon, all three are worth the read. They are Skid Road the story of the settling of Seattle and some of it's more notorious characters, Puget's Sound dealing with the settling of Tacoma and the South Sound all the way down to Portland and the third book The Last Wilderness dealing with the settling of the Olympic Peninsula.

Some of the stories related in the books are hilarious. one story in particular is in The Last Wilderness it is the story of the Great Elk Hunt out of Port Angles at the beginning of the last century. It tells the story of one of the Elk Hunters, the gentleman in question decided to participate in the hunt he was dressed in Red he even painted his shoes and rifle red, he also took mule or a donkey on the hunt, it was also painted with red stripes like a zebra, to carry his Elk out.

On the opening morning of the hunt he was shot and killed so they loaded him on the pack animal to bring him out and someone shot and killed the mule on the trip out.

Ole Gabe could not write but his name is all over Wy. Some say he had pards that could write who did it for him. He was in lots of encounters and seemed to try to help his fellow Mountain men and Soldiers. He took Caspar Collins around to the Indian tribes to meet Crazy Horse and a few other Chiefs. The Sioux liked the Little Solder Chief, as his dad, Colonel William Collins was the Big Soldier Chief. I do these stories on my wagon trains. historictrailswest.com Great thread. Thanks to all of you that have suggested titles of books. Strange Man Of the Oglala by Mari Sandoz is a good read about the Indian battles of Crazy Horse.

Rufus,

good suggestion. the book you recommended is actually a biography of Powell, by Wallace Stegner ( a good bio, by the way) Powell's own book about his trip(s) is Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons.


Sycamore

My point with the Sacajawea comment of course was to highlight the fact that this whole exploring/discovering/pioneering ethos seems to be a peculiarly American conceit. We called it a howling wilderness etc. etc, to everybody else it was just where they lived.

I'm recalling the doomed Santa Fe expedition of 1840 (??) A bunch of Texans were looking for a trade route between the Texas settlements and Santa Fe and got hopelessly lost. One guy who saw them was a literate Texas Delaware Indian named Jim Shaw, then about twenty and on his way back from one of several trips to New Mexico. He said he could tell they were lost but feared to approach them in case he was shot for being an Indian, Lamar being president of the republic at the time. Yet another case of our guys making a huge production of what was not extraordinary to everyone else.

Anyways, a general rule of thumb for Western History is; for anywhere an American set foot, a rifle-carrying member of one of our Eastern Tribes had been there twenty years earlier, and a Frenchman packing 200 pounds of gear (trade goods going out, furs coming back) on his back with a tumpline had been their eighty years before that

From your neck of the woods, here's one of Catlin's more famous portraits, circa 1832, of a prominent Blackfoot Indian, then about age fifty...



Of course the Indians in these portraits knew they were being painted for posterity, a message to the world and to future generations if you will. Turns out this guy was a collector and perhaps wanted everyone to know it: He showed up for his sitting carrying the scalps of eight White trappers (see, the Blackfeet didn't use the raised middle finger back then, and I doubt Catlin woulda painted it even if they did )

Birdwatcher

Keep 'em coming Birdy. Good stuff.

Yes I believe even Francois Larouque was in the Yellowstone country in 1805 parleying with "les Sauvages".

And the main purpose of the ill-fated Vilasur expedition of 1721 was to check on reported French incursion among the Pawnee and Otoes in present Nebraska. As a side note, Archeleveche, the purported assassin of La Salle back in Texas, had earlier turned himself in to the Spanish authorities. He was the. Banished by the Spanish to the Santa Fe area. He was on the Vilasur expedition and was one that was killed in the battle with the Pawnee!!

I'm glad someone knows what I'm talking about. Not being home to touch these books leaves my memory at a disadvantage.

Finished a little book on "The Boy Captives". Story of Clinton and Jeff Smith. Captured in 1871 in Comal county Texas by a party of apache/Comanches.

As Clinton stated he had no real idea of geography but apparently after his adoption into one of the Comanche bands, they traveled just about everywhere. All over the southwest and as far north as what he thought was Wyoming and Montana. Said they had constant run ins with the Blackfeet. They even hung out with Shoshone, Cheyenne, and assorted Sioux bands. He even felt they visited Utah several times!

Very interesting read!

I've got a book called "the journal of Lews and Clark"

Very informative on there trip to the west coast.

Virgil B.

Ya, the other popular misconception we have is that somehow the Indians were nailed in place, like those tribal names on maps. Yet when our guys traipse all over the Continent we account it nothing remarkable.

I believe its Brumwell in "White Savage" (a Robert Rogers bio.) who gives an account of a British Redcoat in the F&I War captured by Indians on Lake Champlain in Upstate New York. Subsequent to his capture he was hauled down the Ohio and then to Mississippi and back, the occasion being his Ohio Country captors visiting kin among the Choctaws.

IIRC the Cherokees themselves have it that there were Cherokees living in Mexico as early as 1745, it is known that Cherokees were in Texas by around 1805 and that by 1825 Cherokees were entering into agreements to protect Mexican settlements along the Rio Grande from hostile Indian raids. Sequoia himself died in Mexico while on a mission to locate Mexican Cherokees. Delaware show up prominently in Texas of course, and so do Shawnees, and again most infamously as professional scalp hunters in Mexico and our Southwest.

A notable example of a wandering Delaware Indian of that era being the extraordinary Black Beaver, of whom Randolph Marcy wrote in 1857....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Beaver

�had visited nearly every point of interest within the limits of our unsettled territory. He had set his traps and spread his blanket upon the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia; and his wanderings had led him south to the Colorado and Gila, and thence to the shores of the Pacific in Southern California. His life had been that of a veritable cosmopolite, filled with scenes of intense and startling interest, bold and reckless adventure. He was with me two seasons in the capacity of guide, and I always found him perfectly reliable, brave, and competent. His reputation as a resolute, determined, and fearless warrior did not admit of question, yet I have never seen a man who wore his laurels with less vanity. The truth is my friend Beaver was one of those few heroes who never sounded his own trumpet; yet no one that knows him ever presumed to question his courage"

He would later make his fortune in the cattle business.

More on the travelling front: We can go for sure as far back as Squanto, legendary friend of the Massachusetts pilgrims, who had previously been to England and back, presumably in the company of English fishermen fishing along the coast of the New World.

Specific to the West, IIRC Crow Indians from Montana at least once accompanied Kiowa raiders into Mexico far enough south to encounter parrots and monkeys and I suppose I should mention the two Nez Perce guys who (in the late 1830's?) independently made their way from Northern Idaho down the Yellowstone and Missouri to St Louis on what appears to have been a fact-finding mission.

The all time champion native wanderer I have read mention of I cannot seem to locate. Some years back Muzzleloader magazine published an account from I believe an 18th Century Englishman among the Natchez. The Englishman was describing a Natchez Indian who, curious to see what there, had travelled alone clear up the Missouri and then over the mountains to the coast of the Pacific Northwest, where he encountered Russians. The whole journey taking a few years IIRC. Upon his return the man then ascended the Ohio and travelled overland to the coast of New England and back. Like I said, I lost the source now but it is plausible.

Birdwatcher

I kinda went through this topic a little fast but I didn't see anyone mention A.B.Guthrie's books, The Big Sky and The Way West. I really enjoyed both.

I believe you may be referring to the Englishman, William Bartram.

Also La Salles trusted native was a Shawnee named Nika. He was killed with la Salle. Evidently Nika and the Cavelier had no issues making themselves understood among the natives!

Another francais in the area a long time was Hneri de Tonti. Or Iron Hand as known among les Sauvages. He lost his hand to a short fuse Grenade in Sicily. Had it replaced with a brass ball. He came down the Mississippi with. La Salle in the early 1670's and established a post among the Quapaw at the mouth of the Arkansas river. Known as "Arkansas Post. The natives in this area (mostly Caddoan dialect speakers) had the lucrative salt trade all tied up with the other Sauvages.

It was actually Arkansas Post that the survivors of the ill-fated La Salle expedition were trying to reach. On their eventual return to Canada. But believe it or not de Tonti was out searching for them as well!!! Eventually he contracted a fever and died upon his return to the post. Henri Joutel and the other La Salle survivors did reach Arkansas Post and were returned to Canada!

The Pawnee were actually known for years as the "plains Caddo!" All the same linguistics group. An interesting practice of the qua paws was they built "sleeping" towers some 40 and 50 feet in the air where they could catch the summer breezes to blow away the mosquitoes!!

I also read "The Boy Captives" and wondered about the vast distances the boys traveled while living with the Indians. I questioned some of their recollections as being how kids often overestimate numbers and distances. Especially considering they were thrust into a completely alien world and did not know the country at all. Interesting story for sure and a glimpse into Indian life.

If I had to pick a book or two to get started on Western History, I start with Lewis and Clark and move into the fur trade. "Undaunted Courage" by Ambrose is pretty good and easier to read than the actual journals when it comes to descriptions and where they are actually at. For the fur Trade "Across the Wide Missouri" by Bernard Devoto is good.

For every factual book written on the subject, there is probably twice that many that are mostly bogus and just a story of yarns or "my side of the story is what really happened" type that has very little basis on truth except that the wannbe hero wanted to create a legend for himself.

Good reads!!! Read em both while in high school! I felt he way west a bit draggy, but I reall enjoyed the big sky!!! I think it the cornerstone book for western fiction! Guthrie really blazed a trail for later writers!!!

Specific to the fur trade era, its been decades since I read it but I'm recalling Westering Man: The Life of Joseph Walker is a particularly good read.

Still not on board with you BW. Your knowledge of some land areas of the young USA is obviously superb. But.......ever seen the Popo Agie River?

You and KW continue to view Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and New Mexico as western USA. We Rocky Mtn State folks consider these eastern and southern states. They are not the same thing. You and I are speaking different languages. Waaaaaaaay different ones. Texas might be west to a Louisianan.....but it's east to me.......no different than Florida is.

Another thing to consider is winter climate when ranking accomplishments. There is absolutely no similarity between a western Wyoming winter and a Sante Fe or Taos one. Not to mention an Amarillo one. The mtn men of Wyoming were much tougher people than, say, Kit Carson. That's why he stayed south, LOL. Read the story of Colter living in a snow cave and getting snow blindness. He didn't have sunglasses. He learned to rub a line of charcoal under each eye.......like modern day athletes do.......from the northern indians.

Perhaps your "rules of thumb" apply to eastern and southern states. Don't agree at all that they apply to the northern rockies.

Nobody suggested here that L & C or Colter or Bridger were the first white men to see the places mentioned. The terms 'exploration' and 'toughness' don't come with a timing priority. They did, however, have the most important and the most lasting impact to the mapping, indian cultures, transportation routes, and overall development of the west. Just ask the mormons.

A Canadian trapper or two might have wondered thru previously, but the documented impacts in the form of written (even by others) journals and such that documented key knowledge of life in the Rockies and what it took to survive are solely owned by the aforementioned white men.

Your Catlin portrait is neat.......but that Blackfoot could have whacked those white men in the days of Ashley's Expedition....which was I believe 1823 or so. Colter and L & C were there almost two decades before then.

And lastly, of course the indians were indeed there first. Flatheads, Crows, Mandans, Blackfeet, Shoshone, Cheyenne, etc. And yes they lived there first. And yes they were an extremely hearty and tough-ass people. But no......there was no 'everybody else' as you state. Not Mexicans or Spaniards or French Canadians. That's why it's called 'conquering', LOL. What the hell else was there to conquer.....jackrabbits and coyotes and grizzly bears?

Great thread with many great reads listed.

This could grow tedious but its about history so here goes...



<"Shrug"> Relatively unimportant WHAT anybody considers anywhere as long as we are talking about the same place. ESPECIALLY as the Frontier was constantly moving, peopled on both sides by highly mobile individuals all from somewhere else. Weren't Colter originally from Pennsylvania?



Logical then to start with Eskimos?



I always thought Mexican girls had something to do with it. Anyhow IIRC Mr Carson killed a bully in a duel as a young man while living up in them Rockies, overwintered there. Then came south, later on he successfully rounded up the Navahos with minimal bloodshed AND, at the First Battle of Adobe Walls successfully extricated his mounted force when faced with about the same odds as Custer faced with scarcely the loss of a man. All the while inflicting significant casualties on said Indians.

But, did he ever overwinter in a snow cave? I believe he preferred to use pretty senoritas as a source of heat, I do recall too that a pretty young Indian woman was the cause of that early duel up at the Rendevous.

Whom did the 19th Century Rocky Mountain fur trappers "conquer" anyhow? I believe the majority or at least a good part of 'em WERE Indians (the Iroquois being especially prominent) or mixed-bloods.

Anyways, we do have photos of remarkably tough Indians, more so than of remarkably tough White guys, Blacks or Mexicans it would seem. Maybe because proportionately more Indians in that period were still living a lifestyle where extraordinary toughness was the expected norm.

This here is Satank, voted one of the Kiowas Ten Bravest, seen here around age seventy, and still actively raiding. Prob'ly about as tough as it is humanly possible for a seventy year-old to be. Shortly after this photo was taken he was called into a meeting, detained at gunpoint, chained and forcibly loaded into a wagon by the Army to be sent to Texas to stand trial for murder.



Throwing a blanket over his head, Satank chewed the flesh off his hands enough to slip the manacles, stabbed a guard with the man's own belt knife and was shot while making a break for freedom.

Two more famous tough guys; this time Northern Cheyennes. Little Wolf, about forty in 1868 when this photo was taken, is standing, Dull Knife, then about sixty, is seated. Dull Knife of course got that name as a young man when a grizzly charged the camp. Putting himself between the bear and his people he dispatched the bear with said instrument.



Ten years after this photo was taken these men led the famous breakout from the Oklahoma reservation and the subsequent running fight of the Northern Cheyennes to Nebraska. Splitting the band, Little Wolf evaded capture and made it to Montana. Dull Knife's group was cornered in the Sand Hills and taken to Fort Robinson.

What followed was the famous mid-winter breakout, in the middle of the night in a blizzard in Nebraska. Dull Knife was about seventy when he led that action.

Point of interest, in the later reservation years Little Wolf, while drunk, shot and killed another Cheyenne who had been bothering his daughter. This was an unthinkable offense for Little Wolf who IIRC was then keeper of some tribal sacred objects with all the obligations that entailed.

For several days he sat out on a hill in plain view so that the relatives of the dead man could come out and kill him. No one did.

After that he spent the remaining twenty years of his life in a sort of self-imposed isolation with his wife.

Birdwatcher

I agree and at times confusing to read.

I was searching for a good Texas history book and Lonestar: A History of Texas was highly recommended. I am only about 30% into the book and became sidetracked with a copy of Empire of the Summer Moon, only about 20% into that book.

I have bookmarked Kit Carson and Lewis and Clark titles and look forward to reading those.

I guess I would do well to turn off the tv and get off the computer and read, if I wait until I hit the sack I only get through a few pages a night.