Across the Wide Missouri

I have read well over 1,000 books and can count on one hand the number I have abandoned without finishing. This work joins that select list.

This is a non-fiction chronicle of fur trading activity in the early 1830s. It is a bone dry, often confusing and hard to follow account of the different mountain men, trading companies and Indian tribes that interacted during the period in the Rocky Mountain region.

If a two-page, narrative account of the supplies carried by a beaver trapping company, with the 1832 cost of each item is your cup of tea, this is the book for you. If an exhaustive description of the physical movements of a trapper, with place names and geographic features, without the aid of a map, is your idea of fun, send me a show more message and I’ll forward you this beauty.

After 100 pages of torture and 400 left to go, I bailed. show less

Overly detailed look at the fur trade in the 1830's in the Oregon Territory and what made up the NW US after the Louisiana Purchase. But it did shine a light on the westering of what was to be the United states and where and when it happened. Also, and unapologetic look at the American Indians at the time. Written in the 1940's deVoto had no mind for dramatizing the plight of native people.

This is a logical successor to the books I read on Lewis & Clark - of which I was sufficiently enamoured to have planned a trip retracing their momentous peregrination travelling from St Louis to the Pacific at Astoria. This story wouldn't have happened without L&C who were rapidly followed by the beaver and fur trade and the inimical 'mountain men'. These men could hardly be called 'white men' as they became almost as the Indians except not really believing in their superstitions.

Most of the story happens between 1834 to 36, some in 37 and then dwindles away, as did the beavers and the mountain men, until the first settlers about a decade later.

This is a story of primitive white men, stone-age Indians, greed, violence, and grandeur. show more

The book was written in 1947 and I wonder if modern sensitivities would have made this a very different book.

It left an impression. I must follow Lewis and Clark. I must ... show less

DeVoto’s narrative style is top-notch. His story is compelling. The lives of the mountain-man and their world leaps off the pages, burning themselves into you psyche. It may not be too much of an overstatement that DeVoto’s oeuvre, along with John Ford’s films, may be responsible for the “Western” craze of the 1950s. Note that some reprints do not included the profuse illustrations frequently referred to in the text! Your enjoyment of this book will be greatly enhanced by reading the illustrated edition.

At first, DeVoto's style drove me crazy, since I like my history written in plain, unassuming English, but as he wrote he seems to have lossened up and by the end of the book I appreciated his digressions and comments, even his footnotes. The real problems I had with this book were the lack of any map (this problem is not DeVoto's but the compilers of this edition)and DeVoto's assumption that his readers already possess a fairly comprehensive knowledge of American history. My knowledge was not comprehensive enough to fully appreciate the story DeVoto tells.

This is another of those books, like Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, that you must read if you want to understand the Western United States. Meticulous research on the Rocky Mountain fur trade, and the mountain men who made it happen, by one of the real scholars of the American West.

This is DeVoto's classic story of the exploration of the West after Lewis and Clark's trip to the Pacific. He focuses largely on progression of the fur trade, together with the exploration of U.S. military. De Voto had a fabulous narrative style, and told the story well.