A Life Wild and Perilous

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.

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.

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.

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.