Reviews 89 People of the Moonshell. By Nancy M. Peterson. (Frederick, Colorado: Renaissance House, 1984. 166 pages, $14.95.) The Moonshell is an early Indian name for the river we know as the Platte. It was through the valley of the Platte and along its two branches that most of the explorers, trappers, gold-seekers and settlers moved to the Rocky Mountains and beyond during much of the nineteenth century. And many miles of the Overland Trail, the Pony Express and the first transcontinental railroad followed this wide, sluggish river across the Great Plains. The present book adds nothing to what we already know of western history and it does not pretend to. It is more a contribution to western litera ture, in that it concentrates on character more than events. What it gives us is a beautifully written account of the adventures and hardships of some of the more colorful people who moved or settled along the Platte. Some of these people are as well known as Francis Parkman and Robert Louis Stevenson; others as obscure as the couple homesteading in Nebraska in 1880. A number of them are women;some are Indians. What theyhave in common iscourage and endurance of a sort rarely seen in America today. The forty chapters encompass 160years—from the firstview of the Platte by Spanish explorers in 1720 until the end of the pioneer period in 1880. Perhaps the most interesting of the people of the Moonshell is the Scottish gentlewoman Isabella Bird, who reached the sources of the river in the high Rockies in 1873, travelling by horseback and often alone. Each chapter is illustrated by one or more appropriate sketches by Asa Battles, which add much to the book’s flavor. A very ample bibliography includes journals and memoirs of the subjects aswell asearly newspaperitems. ROBERT D. HARPER Estes Park, Colorado Prairie Fire: the 1885 Rebellion. ByBob Beal and Rod Macleod. (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1985. 384 pages.) The Riel Rebellion: A Biographical Approach. ByCharles and Cynthia Hou. (Vancouver: Tantalus Research, 1984. 162 pages.) It is the frequent boast of Canadians that the exploration and settlement of the western plains in their country constitute a tranquil and ordered chronicle, in contrast to the violent saga of the American frontier past. There is, however, at least one prominent exception to this generalization: the Northwest or “Riel” Rebellion of 1885, when the French-speaking half-breeds, or “Metis,” and the Cree and Blood Indians of Saskatchewan took up arms against the Canadian government. The rebellion was small, localized, and relatively brief by comparison to the Indian wars of the United States, yet it has come to be seen as one of the most important events in Canadian history. The questions of federal-provincial relations and aboriginal rights which pro 90 Western American Literature voked the outbreak have continued to vex Canadian social and political life to the present day. In the last ten or fifteen years, a number of works of history and fiction have been inspired by the rebellion, many of them focusing on the charismatic Metis leader, Louis Riel. Two new books, obviously released by their Canadian authors and publishers to mark the rebellion’scen tennial in 1985, attempt to review and analyze the people, events, and conse quences of the nation’s most dramatic example of western frontier violence. Thanks largely to the improvisations of Cecil B. DeMille in his 1940 Hollywood epic North-West Mounted Police, a generation of North American school children were led to believe that the 1885 uprising was caused by halfbreed outlaws, and suppressed by a small but heroic contingent of Mounties. Historians have been trying for years to set the record straight, and Charles and Cynthia Hou’s The Riel Rebellion: A Biographical Approach isthe latest effort to clarify the subject for young readers. This soft-cover, slick-paper handbook might even make suitable reading for adults who are completely unfamiliar with the subject, or who dimly remember DeMille’s movie. Pro fusely illustrated with maps, drawings, and rare archival photographs, it is a comprehensive record, but its biographical structure—each chapter centers on one of the principal rebels, military leaders, and politicians involved—■ makes for...