Across the Wide Missouri

Rating:
Summary: Magnificent storytelling - and all true
Review: A very romantic view of the subject by a master wordsmith. Reading, no, experiencing this book affected me very deeply, and I have since delved deeply into DeVoto's writing and his life. The reviewer who found this book to be poorly written has greatly different standards than do I, because this writer thinks it is a gorgeous book. I am fortunate to possess a first edition with many of the color paintings, captions for wich were the original purpose of the project. A must for anyone who wants to truly feel the early western experience.

Rating:
Summary: Opinionated Author Clouds Some Good History
Review: DeVoto's "Across the Wide Missiouri" is good history in search of an even better editor.

I learned some valuable things about the Sioux migration, trading between tribes on the plains and White/Indian ecomomic relationships of the fur trade, but DeVoto is too front and center. He jumps back and forward of the period under study in the book and goes into what I can only describe as historical diatribes every once in a while.

The book is very readable in spite of these faults and his pictures of Whitman, Spaulding & company add real flesh to people that are often overlooked or treated as one demensional.

Two thoughts about editing: At the time "Missouri" was written, in the mid 40's, DeVoto was unquestionably the expert in the field and so he probably edited his own work. Not the best situation. Maybe he should have edited an updated edition of Chittenden's "The American Fur Trade of the Far West" instead and published a collection of historical essays on the period under his own name.

As someone interested in the west I am glad I read it but will only be recommending it to a select few and maybe only parts of the book to others.

Rating:
Summary: Magnificent storytelling - and all true
Review: The best historical writing combines the quality of scholarship with that of literature, and that's what we have here. First published in 1947, this book is a deserved classic. It's the story of the Rocky Mountain fur trade in the latter half of the 1830s, a time of outrageous characters and extraordinary deeds, set against the finest landscape. DeVoto resolutely refuses to judge people of the 1830s by the standards of a later century. This is what infuriates the "politically correct". But DeVoto is surely right - any other approach might tell you something about the historian's own time but would shed little light on the period under study. Instead DeVoto's honesty brings his characters vividly to life. That doesn't only mean the fur trappers. He has a detailed and discerning knowledge of the Plains Indians, and appreciates the cultural, linguistic and indeed political diversity of the various nations. The Native Americans emerge as striking individuals in their own right. The book has been called romantic. Well, DeVoto is certainly keenly aware of the romantic quality of his epic tale, but he doesn't romanticize things. He's much too good a historian to make unprovable assertions. Always he has the evidence to hand, and if he repeats a tall tale, it's only for the pleasure of the telling and he's careful to point out when the source can't be trusted. His depth of research combined with a keen eye for the relevant detail make for a highly readable result. What all this adds up to is an elegy for two lost ways of life - that of the fur trappers and that of the Plains Indians, who managed to be friends and enemies at the same time. But both were swept away by outside forces that were huge and irresistable - Manifest Destiny as it was called, and its expression in the great migration to the West starting in the 1840s. Reading this book is like listening to an old friend telling great tales by the campfire on a warm evening. Fine work indeed.

Rating:
Summary: A flawed epic of the mountain men
Review: There are a lot of things about this book I don't like. First, and most seriously, it's incredibly complicated and dense, a virtual catalog of the comings and goings of hundreds of characters over a six year (1832-1838) period. You need a scorecard and an atlas to keep track of the players. Secondly, the author's judgments about Indians are politically incorrect and come close to being racist. Example: the "laborious accretion which convolutes the fore-brain and increases the cultural heritage" makes the white man superior to the Indian. And, third, DeVoto's wordiness (see preceding sentence) and flip judgements are ever so cute. But I've had this book on my shelf for many years and have read it through more than once. I can overlook the irritations because DeVoto tells a magnificient story about a magnificient land. "Broken Hand" Fitzgerald, Bridger, Carson and their colleagues are great American heroes, warts and all. Someday, I hope that a writer with the soul of a poet and the diligence of a scholar writes a better book than this about the mountain men. Until that happens, we have Across the Wide Missouri.

Rating:
Summary: Not Too Good.
Review: This book won the Pulitzer Prize. You have to wonder why.

If the author had stuck to his original premise, the Rocky Mountain fur trade in the mid to late 1830's, he would have had a winner. But only selected portions of that era seem to be here. Worse, Bernard DeVoto overlays so much extraneous information on what is here, in such a dense fashion, that this work becomes incredibly difficult to follow. It really is a very odd book. Many, far too many passages move beyond opaque; they become indecipherable. The reader winds up spending more time trying to understand the relevance of certain passages than he or she spends on the story itself.

This book was written 57 years ago and literary styles have certainly changed. However, I think it is fair to say the author has a difficult time adequately communicating with his reader. The first half of the book is acceptable, but the last half reads like it was written by Edgar Allen Poe. DeVoto continuously makes up his own names for people, places and organizations. The result is a circuitous, nonsensical ramble much more based on myth than fact.

I was very eager to read this work and have really liked other works by Bernard DeVoto. Having read it, I feel cheated. I hope you have much more luck with it than I did.

Rating:
Summary: This is the one that got me going
Review: Whereas Ambrose's "Undaunted Courage" got me interested in the early exploration of the American West, "Across the Wide Missouri" got me interested in the actual lives of the mountain man and fur trapper/traders, and how they also explored unknown regions of the west. Their day to day existence and survival amongst the Indians, dealing with the forces of nature, the early stages of Manifest Destiny, etc. were all to me mind boggling. DeVoto brings to life the fur trade at the peak of its industry. I must agree with a couple reviewers though on how the text does get somewhat wordy and complex, the list of characters involved is quite lengthy and one is always flipping back and forth to the maps and notes. But this is what it takes to tell the whole story. From his bibliography one can pick and choose which books are of interest to the reader and take it from there, that's what I have done. I would recommend this book to those of you that are interested in this time period.

Rating:
Summary: Detailed catalog of names/dates/locations--not a good read!
Review: Whereas Ambrose's "Undaunted Courage" got me interested in the early exploration of the American West, "Across the Wide Missouri" got me interested in the actual lives of the mountain man and fur trapper/traders, and how they also explored unknown regions of the west. Their day to day existence and survival amongst the Indians, dealing with the forces of nature, the early stages of Manifest Destiny, etc. were all to me mind boggling. DeVoto brings to life the fur trade at the peak of its industry. I must agree with a couple reviewers though on how the text does get somewhat wordy and complex, the list of characters involved is quite lengthy and one is always flipping back and forth to the maps and notes. But this is what it takes to tell the whole story. From his bibliography one can pick and choose which books are of interest to the reader and take it from there, that's what I have done. I would recommend this book to those of you that are interested in this time period.