Pueblo, Hardscrabble, Greenhorn: Society on the High Plains, 1832-1856

This book is a must read for anyone interested in the history of Southern Colorado. I am from that area, and did not know about most of these events.

Absolutly terrific book about the area, the history of the three communities and their tie into the Taos area. Very enlightening, well researched and documented. Good information about the Mountain Man's demise, how he ended up in the Pueblo area, the connection between the northern ans southern part of the state and the "trail system". For those who grew up in the area this book can be quite enlightening about places and times that are "in your face" but not seen. Very good history of the upper Arkansas.

You'd never know from the dullish title, but this is an interesting, well-written, authoritative book of Western history. The subject is the upper Arkansas River valley around the present city of Pueblo -- not one of the West's most storied locations. There are a number of famous people who pass through the pages of this book -- Kit Carson, John Charles Fremont, Francis Parkman, and the Bents -- but the main characters are unfamiliar and have unalliterative, forgettable names: George S. Simpson, for example. All the disadvantages aside, Janet LeCompte has written a small masterpiece about a handful of ex-mountain men, Mexicans, and traders who established several communities along the Arkansas River from 1840 to 1854. In the latter year, the Ute Indians killed most of the traders, thereby erasing Pueblo's claim to being the first White settlement in Colorado. Most of the histories of the west are expansive, looking a big men and events. "PHG" is micro, focusing on a relatively unimportant region, and deriving its importance from a reconstruction of daily life among the Anglos and Hispanics at the isolated settlements. The author says the book is about the men and women who struggled to make a good life "out of the wild Indians, stubborn soil and thin grass of the difficult valley." Their failure, unnoticed as it may be in the larger scheme of things, is the drama of this homely story. Smallchief