Reviews So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812–1848 by Will Bagley University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2010. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 480 pages. $45.00 cloth. Thisbookisthefirstinaprojectedfour-volume Overland West: The Story of the Oregon and California Trails, intended as a comprehensive survey of western overland migration through 1870,the approximate onset of transcontinental rail travel. The outgrowth of a study originally sponsored by the National Park Service’s Oregon and California Trails unit,few ventures in public history would seem to have resulted in such a rich trove of scholarship. The effort is not merely ambitious, but brave, because Bagley knowingly, and graciously , follows John Unruh’s path-breaking masterwork, The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–1860. In the book’s preface, Bagley obliquely makes the case for his venture, noting his utilization of “five hundred overland narratives unknown to scholars before 1988” (p. xvii). Here we are reminded once again of historian Sandra Myers’s essential point: “no mass movement in history has been better recorded than the migrations of Americans across the continent” after 1840 (p. 284). With this amplitude of resources at his disposal, Bagley succeeds in bringing a new set of characters to the fore, or bringing a freshened outlook to certain near-legendary figures, such as Father Pierre-Jean DeSmet. Running contrary to the tenor of modern sensibilities, Bagley even attempts a favorable reconsideration of NarcissaWhitman’s personality and endeavors.Nevertheless,the essential outline of the story remains as Unruh so ably told it a generation ago,and that work remains unchallenged as the interpretive gold standard for this topic as a single volume overview. The promise inherent in Bagley’s projected series is the richness of detail that in its own way can serve as a“jumping off”opportunity for other students of western trails history. So Rugged and Mountainous is organized in an imaginative manner. A few stage-setting chaptersarefollowedbyaveryengaging,almost year by year, account of the major migrations west from the river towns of the lower Missouri . A few episodes of regional interest to Northwest readers stand out, including the Hudson’s Bay Company’s effort at countering American settlement through application of colonists from the Red River district of what is now Manitoba.Another is the story of Elijah Heading,the son of aWallaWalla Indian headman whose murder in California in 1844 did so much to sour the future of emigrant-Native relationships on the Columbia Plateau. That narrative trajectory, of course, ends up with the Whitman affair, which is briefly recounted here in an exemplary fashion. Bagley is especially good at unpacking the logistical dynamics of organizing, conducting , and sustaining a wagon train across the continent. Subtopics here include outfitting, wagoneering, packing gear, clothing, and provisioning . This makes for fascinating reading and truly re-creates the practical experiences of the overlanders. Bagley also has a flair for dryly inserting provocative observations from the period, the best two being these:missionary MaryWalker’s observation (from 1841!) that “we see Oregon fast filling up”; and the less well known Mariah King’s 1846 observation that Oregon was unlike any other destination for the yeoman farmer and family because the land was “already paid for when you get here”(p. 114, 335). Both statements were originally uttered without irony, and similarly Bagley lets them stand in print to startle and amaze readers. An ambitious undertaking like So Rugged and Mountainous is always going to create opportunities for small errors to creep in. For example,Bagley confuses George Bush,among the first colonists to Tumwater on Puget Sound, OHQ vol. 111, no. 3 with George Washington, the African-American town founder of Centralia. And the book would have been better served by a more ample distribution of maps. Still, all serious students of western migration will want this book on their shelves. Anyone who reads this volume will look forward to the next three. David L. Nicandri Washington State Historical Society The Love Israel Family: Urban Commune, Rural Commune by Charles P. LeWarne University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2009. Illustrations, photographs, notes, index. 312 pages. $24.95 paper. With the...
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Mar 1, 2013
Yi Liu + 1
Open Access