PROLOGUE
1 “It was bitterly cold… nearly undrinkable”: Roosevelt to Alice Lee Roosevelt, Sept. 8, 1883, Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University, https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org. This account of Roosevelt’s Dakota experience draws on H. W. Brands, TR: The Last Romantic (1997).
2 “I am now feeling very well”: Roosevelt to Alice Lee Roosevelt, Sept. 17, 1883, Theodore Roosevelt Center.
3 “I have been three weeks”: Brands, TR, 189.
4 “In the latter part of March”: Brands, TR, 208.
CHAPTER 1: THE RIVER AT THE HEART OF AMERICA
1 America’s West entered human history: An accessible introduction to life in the Americas before European contact in the late fifteenth century is Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (2005).
2 “I would rather”: Edmund S. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin (2002), 288.
CHAPTER 2: THE CORPS OF DISCOVERY
1 “The object of your mission… on your decease”: Jefferson to Lewis, June 20, 1803, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, American Memory, http://memory.loc.gov. In this and other documents from the period, idiosyncrasies of spelling and punctuation have been normalized and abbreviations spelled out.
2 “Captain Lewis and myself”: Entries for Aug. 2 and 3, 1804, in The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by Gary E. Moulton, https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu. This is the most authoritative version of the journals of the Corps of Discovery. Stephen E. Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (1996) is an enthusiastically told account of the Lewis and Clark journey informed by the author’s reprise of the trek.
3 “Sergeant Floyd”: Entries for Aug. 19 and 20, 1804, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
4 “The man who went back”: Entries for Aug. 5, 7 and 18, 1804, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
5 “On that nation”: Jefferson to Lewis, Jan. 22, 1804, Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
6 “We prepared some clothes”: Clark entries for Sept. 24 and 25, 1804; Gass entry for Sept. 25, 1804, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
7 “These are the vilest miscreants”: Clark, “Estimate of the Eastern Indians,” undated, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
8 “We shewed but little sign”: Clark entry for Sept. 27, 1804, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
CHAPTER 3: WEST BY NORTHWEST
1 “Two shots were fired”: Gass and Ordway entries, Jan. 1, 1805, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
2 “I ordered my black servant”: Clark entry for Jan. 1, 1865, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
3 “All the party in high spirits”: Clark entry for Mar. 30, 1805 (mislabeled as Mar. 31), Journals of Lewis and Clark.
4 “It may be observed generally”: Gass entry for Apr. 5, 1805, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
5 “I observed the extraordinary dexterity”: Clark entry for Mar. 29, 1805 (mislabeled as Mar. 30), Journals of Lewis and Clark.
CHAPTER 4: TO THE PACIFIC
1 “Our vessels consisted”: Lewis entry for Apr. 7, 1805, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
2 “We are informed”: Lewis report to Jefferson, “A Summary View of the Rivers and Creeks Which Discharge Themselves into the Missouri,” undated (winter 1804–1805), Journals of Lewis and Clark.
3 “This morning I walked”: Lewis entry for Apr. 27, 1805, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
4 “On arriving to the summit”: Lewis entry for May 26, 1805, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
5 “I had proceeded”: Lewis entry for June 13, 1805, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
6 “The Indian woman recognized”: Lewis entry for Aug. 8, 1805, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
7 “Both parties now advanced”: Lewis entry for Aug. 13, 1805, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
8 “I have been wet”: Clark entry for Sept. 16, 1805, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
9 “I ascended a high cliff”: Clark entry for Oct. 19, 1805, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
10 “The country on both sides of the river”: Gass entry for Oct. 23, 1805, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
11 “The natives are very troublesome”: Ordway entry for Oct. 22, 1805, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
12 “Great joy in camp”: Clark entry for Nov. 7, 1805, Journals of Lewis and Clark. This passage in the journal was edited, for publication, to read, “Ocean in view! O! the joy!” The edited version is the more widely quoted one. See Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804–1806, edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites (1905), 3:207.
13 “By land from the U. States”: Clark entry for Dec. 3, 1805, Journals of Lewis and Clark.
CHAPTER 5: ASTORIA
1 “I received, my dear sir”: Jefferson to Lewis, Oct. 20, 1806, Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.
2 He was sketching a plan: The present account of the Astor project follows Washington Irving, Astoria (1836), an authorized history of the enterprise. A recent account of the American fur trade is Eric Jay Dolan, Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America (2011).
3 “I am sent off”: Irving, Astoria, 1:82–83.
4 “Indian ragamuffins”: Irving, Astoria, 2:98.
1 At one point one of the partners: Irving, Astoria, 2:124–125.
CHAPTER 7: THE WHITE-HEADED EAGLE
1 The latter had deep roots: The classic history of the Hudson’s Bay Company is Donald McKay, The Honourable Company: A History of the Hudson’s Bay Company (1936).
2 “From what I had seen”: John McLoughlin statement, undated, in Transactions of the Eighth Annual Reunion of the Oregon Pioneer Association for 1880 (1881), 46.
3 William and Ann: Frances Fuller Victor, The River of the West: Life and Adventure in the Rocky Mountains and Oregon, Embracing Events in the Life-time of a Mountain-man and Pioneer, with the Early History of the North-western Slope (1871), 29–30. This indispensable and delightful book is both a history of Oregon and the fur trade and an as-told-to memoir of Joseph Meek. It is the source for the Meek tales below, which are probably no more embellished than the stories in most memoirs. Mrs. Victor was sympathetic but not gullible.
4 “It is of no use”: Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of the Northwest Coast (1884), 2:451–452.
5 “I divulged my plan to none”: McLoughlin statement, Transactions 1880, 48.
CHAPTER 8: MOUNTAIN MAN
1 “They did not grieve”: Victor, River of the West, 41.
CHAPTER 9: COLTER’S RUN
1 “Sublette came round”: Victor, River of the West, 70–71.
2 “I have been told”: Victor, River of the West, 76–77.
3 “Go! Go away!”: Thomas James, Three Years Among the Indians and Mexicans, edited by Walter B. Douglas (1916), 58–64.
CHAPTER 10: URSUS HORRIBILIS
1 “It is old Joe”: Victor, River of the West, 77, 86–87.
2 80 “I have held my hands”: Victor, River of the West, 120, 122, 146.
CHAPTER 11: MOSES AUSTIN’S DYING WISH
1 “We saw many signs of gold”: The Journey of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, edited by Ad. F. Bandelier (1905), 166.
2 “Tell dear Stephen”: The Austin Papers, edited by Eugene C. Barker, 3 vols. (1924–1927), 1:409–410. The best biography of Stephen F. Austin, which includes a full account of Moses Austin’s Texas project, is Gregg Cantrell, Stephen F. Austin: Empresario of Texas (2016 ed.). Background material for this section comes from H. W. Brands, Lone Star Nation (2004).
3 “The first 4 miles”: “Journal of Stephen F. Austin on His First Trip to Texas, 1821,” Texas Historical Association Quarterly 7 (1904): 288–296.
4 “Fifty Comanches”: Austin Papers, 1:487, 1:631.
CHAPTER 12: TEXAS WILL BE LOST
1 “I have just had the pleasure”: W. B. Dewees, Letters from an Early Settler of Texas (1852), 39–44.
2 “On the eastern bank… reserved for Mexican settlers”: Manuel de Mier y Terán, Texas by Terán: The Diary Kept by General Manuel de Mier y Terán on His 1828 Inspection of Texas, edited by Jack Jackson (2000), 32–39, 45–46, 53–58, 74–79, 97–98, 144–155, 178–179, 217–218.
CHAPTER 13: RUIN AND REDEMPTION
1 “If any wretch”: Marquis James, The Raven: The Life Story of Sam Houston (1929), 84. The best of the recent biographies of Houston is James L. Haley, Sam Houston (2002).
2 “About one o’clock”: Haley, Sam Houston, 59–60.
3 “I have this moment heard”: H. W. Brands, Andrew Jackson (2005), 426.
4 “It has been communicated”: Brands, Lone Star Nation, 196–197.
5 “nineteen twentieths”: Brands, Andrew Jackson, 517–518.
6 “The primary product”: Andrew J. Torget, Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderland, 1800–1850 (2015), 86–87.
1 “It was our Lexington”: Noah Smithwick, The Evolution of a State, or Recollections of Old Texas Days (1900), 101.
2 “We, therefore”: Texas Declaration of Independence, Mar. 2, 1836, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, https://tsl.texas.gov.
3 “To the People of Texas”: Travis letter from the Alamo, Feb. 24, 1836, Papers of the Texas Revolution, edited by John H. Jenkins, 10 vols. (1973), 4:423.
4 “The moon was up”: José Enrique de la Peña, With Santa Anna in Texas: A Personal Narrative of the Revolution, translated and edited by Carmen Perry (1975), 46–51.
5 “Among them was one of great stature”: De la Peña, With Santa Anna, 53.
6 “I told the people”: William C. Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis (1998), 413.
7 “Santa Anna answered”: De la Peña, With Santa Anna, 53. De la Peña’s account of Crockett’s capture and execution has been challenged, most vigorously by Texans who refuse to believe that Crockett or any of the other defenders of the Alamo would have let themselves be taken alive.
CHAPTER 15: BLOODY PALM SUNDAY
1 “I have but three citizens”: Papers of the Texas Revolution, 4:454.
2 “The immediate advance”: The Writings of Sam Houston, edited by Amelia W. Williams and Eugene C. Barker, 8 vols. (1938–1943), 1:365.
3 “The country around us”: Herman Ehrenberg, With Milam and Fannin: Adventures of a German Boy in Texas’ Revolution, translated by Charlotte Churchill (1935), 169–170.
4 “Grey clouds hung”: Ehrenberg, With Milam and Fannin, 198–207.
CHAPTER 16: LAYING THERE YET
1 “I am firmly convinced”: Carlos E. Castañeda, ed., The Mexican Side of the Texas Revolution (1928), 65–66.
2 “The first law of nature… trudged along”: Creed Taylor, as told to James T. DeShields, Tall Men with Long Rifles (1971 ed.), 117–123.
3 “Sir: The enemy are laughing”: Writings of Sam Houston, 1:412n.
4 “Remember the Alamo!” and the rest of the account of the Battle of San Jacinto: Brands, Lone Star Nation, 450–455.
CHAPTER 17: THE FOUR WISE MEN
1 “Immediately after we landed”: Christian Advocate and Journal and Zion’s Herald, Mar. 1, 1833.
2 “The weather was very warm”: Samuel Parker, Journal of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains (1846 ed.), 46.
3 “A man by the name”: Parker, Journal, 46–47.
4 “Learning that this Indian”: Will Bagley, South Pass (2014), 39.
5 “The passage through these mountains”: Parker, Journal, 76–77.
6 “The Doctor pursued the operation”: Parker, Journal, 80–82.
CHAPTER 18: FEMALES WANTED
1 “Is there a place”: Clifford M. Drury, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and the Opening of Old Oregon (2005 ed.), 1:102–104.
2 “Our expenses here”: Drury, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, 1:183.
3 “We will pass through this city”: W. H. Gray, A History of Oregon, 1792–1849, Drawn from Personal Observation and Authentic Information (1870), 121–128.
4 “Among these veteran Rocky Mountain hunters”: Gray, History of Oregon, 121–128.
5 “She was the most beautiful”: Victor, River of the West, 176.
6 “The father seemed”: Gray, History of Oregon, 127–128.
7 “Dearest Mother”: Narcissa Whitman letter, no day given, July 1836, in First White Women over the Rockies: Diaries, Letters, and Biographical Sketches of the Six Women of the Oregon Mission Who Made the Overland Journey in 1836 and 1838, edited by Clifford Merrill Drury (1963), 1:73–77. This collection will be cited as Diaries and Letters.
8 “The whole tribe are exceedingly anxious”: Narcissa Whitman diary, Aug. 1836, Diaries and Letters, 1:79–80.
9 “We were so swarmed”: Narcissa Whitman diary, Aug. 1836, Diaries and Letters, 1:80–85.
10 “Before noon we began to descend”: Narcissa Whitman diary, Aug. 1836, Diaries and Letters, 1:87–91.
CHAPTER 19: TRAPPED OUT
1 “Come… we are done with this life”: Victor, River of the West, 264–265.
CHAPTER 20: WAIILATPU
1 “She is a large, healthy and strong child”: Narcissa Whitman letter to sister, Mar. 23, 1839, Transactions of the Annual Reunion of the Oregon Pioneer Association for 1891, 117.
2 “Last Sabbath, blooming in health”: Narcissa Whitman letter to Mrs. H. K. W. Perkins, June 25, 1839, Transactions 1891, 123–125.
3 “The greatest trial”: Narcissa Whitman letter to Clarissa Prentiss, May 2, 1840, Transactions 1891, 133–135.
4 “These men are all firm believers”: Narcissa Whitman letter to Jane Prentiss, Feb. 2, 1842, Transactions 1891, 140–143.
CHAPTER 21: FOR GOD AND COUNTRY
1 “We were most agreeably surprised”: New York Daily Tribune, Mar. 29, 1843, in Oregon Historical Quarterly 4 (1903): 168–169.
2 “Go get some decent clothes”: Drury, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, 2:51.
3 “My Dear Husband”: Narcissa Whitman letter to Marcus Whitman, Oct. 4 and after, 1842, Transactions 1891, 163.
4 “Probably there was more”: Narcissa Whitman letter to her parents, Feb. 7, 1843, Transactions 1891, 172.
CHAPTER 22: THE WAY WEST
1 “There was a bill”: Peter H. Burnett, Recollections and Opinions of an Old Pioneer (1880), 97–99. John D. Unruh Jr., The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–1860 (1979), puts the migration to Oregon in context.
2 “They appear very willing”: Marcus Whitman letter to Edward Prentiss, May 27, 1843, Transactions 1891, 177–178.
3 “It is four o’clock A.M.… of blushing maidens”: Jesse Applegate, “A Day with the Cow Column in 1843,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 1 (1900): 372–383.
4 “He was a tall, trim”: Burnett, Recollections, 102–103, 113–114.
5 “Up to this point”: Burnett, Recollections, 116–118.
6 “This noble tree… end of our journey”: Burnett, Recollections, 124–127.
CHAPTER 23: THE BUSINESS OF THE TRAIL
1 “The health of Mrs. Thornton”: J. Quinn Thornton, Oregon and California in 1848 (1849), 1:13–15, 1:21–26.
2 “The early part of the day”: Thornton, Oregon and California, 1:36–37, 1:66, 1:142–143.
3 “Applegate affirmed”: Thornton, Oregon and California, 1:161–162, 1:167–168.
4 “Water and grass good”: Thornton, Oregon and California, 1:161–162, 1:167–168, 1:178–179, 1:184.
5 “She did not complain in words”: Thornton, Oregon and California, 1:192, 1:198, 1:200, 1:213, 1:222–235.
CHAPTER 24: DESPERATE FURY
1 “In the fall of 1847”: Catherine Sager Pringle recollections, “Across the Plains in 1844,” c. 1860, available at PBS, Archives of the West, https://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/two/sager1.htm.
2 “It was most distressing”: Frances Fuller Victor, The Early Indian Wars of Oregon (1894), 98.
3 The story that did the most damage: Drury, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, 2:236–237; J. B. A. Brouillet, Authentic Account of the Murder of Dr. Whitman and Other Missionaries by the Cayuse Indians of Oregon in 1847 (1869 ed.), 35–36.
4 “The night was dark”: Drury, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, 2:244.
5 “He examined the patients”: Catherine Sager Pringle recollections.
6 “The kitchen was full of Indians”: Catherine Sager Pringle recollections.
7 “They were placed in a row”: Catherine Sager Pringle recollections.
8 “The bodies, or pieces of them”: Drury, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, 2:251–255. This is the most careful and accurate account of the massacre.
9 “With hearts filled with fright”: Catherine Sager Pringle recollections.
CHAPTER 25: AMBASSADOR FROM OREGON
1 “The Quickest Trip Yet”: Victor, River of the West, 439.
2 “That claim is by the right”: John O’Sullivan, “The True Title,” New York Morning News, Dec. 27, 1845, quoted in Andrew Menard, Sight Unseen: How Frémont’s First Expedition Changed the American Landscape (2012), xx.
3 “In the depth of winter”: Victor, River of the West, 455–456.
4 “Yes, indeed”: Victor, River of the West, 457–458.
CHAPTER 26: THE SECRET OF THE SIERRA NEVADA
1 “I picked up one or two pieces”: Rodman Paul, ed., The California Gold Discovery: Sources, Documents, Accounts and Memoirs Relating to the Discovery of Gold at Sutter’s Mill (1966), 118. General background for this section comes from H. W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (2002).
2 “I declared this to be gold”: Paul, ed., California Gold Discovery, 129.
3 “Damn that flag!” James A. Scherer, The First Forty-Niner, and the Story of the Golden Tea-Caddy (1925), 12.
4 “Gold! Gold!”: Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California (1888), 6:56.
5 “A frenzy seized my soul”: Bancroft, History of California, 6:56.
CHAPTER 27: GOLD MOUNTAIN
1 “We have received”: New York Herald, Sept. 15, 1848.
2 “Were I a New Yorker”: New York Herald, Sept. 17, 1848.
3 “The accounts of the abundance”: Polk annual message, Dec. 5, 1848, Papers of the Presidents, American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu.
4 “A more revolting”: Kearny, quoted in George R. Stewart, Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party (1960 ed.), 276.
5 “The gold is in fine bright scales”: The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, edited by Rachel Sherman Thorndike (1894), 45.
6 “The cradle is a very simple”: Vicente Pérez Rosales, California Adventure, translated from the original Recuerdos del Pasado by Edwin S. Morby and Arturo Torres-Rioseco (1947), 51–52.
7 “With a perpendicular column”: Sacramento Weekly Union, July 22, 1854, quoted in Rodman W. Paul, California Gold: The Beginning of Mining in the Far West (1947), 154–155.
8 “We descended their shaft”: Hutchings’ Illustrated California Magazine 2 (1857–1858): 147–149.
CHAPTER 28: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
1 “In the immense crowds”: Sarah Royce, A Frontier Lady: Recollections of the Gold Rush and Early California, edited by Ralph Henry Gabriel (1932), 109.
2 “No place in the world”: Frank Soulé, John H. Gihon and James Nisbet, The Annals of San Francisco (1855), 645–666.
3 “Go West!”: Horace Greeley to R. L. Sanderson, Nov. 15, 1871, Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History, https://www.gilderlehrman.org.
4 “Denison’s Exchange”: Bayard Taylor, Eldorado, or, Adventures in the Path of Empire (1850), 118–119.
5 “I put into this”: Brands, Age of Gold, 255.
6 “I may have slept”: Roger W. Lotchkin, San Francisco, 1846–1856: From Hamlet to City (1974), 175.
7 “It will be asked”: Brands, Age of Gold, 261.
8 “The voyage from Sydney”: Soulé et al., Annals of San Francisco, 565.
9 “We are determined”: Soulé et al., Annals of San Francisco, 569.
10 “I believe the man had a fair and impartial trial”: Soulé et al., Annals of San Francisco, 572–581.
CHAPTER 29: THE SPIRIT OF ’87
1 “As Congress has failed”: Report of the Debates in the Convention of California on the Formation of the State Constitution, in September and October, 1849, edited by J. Ross Browne (1850), 3.
2 “In a country where every white man”: Allan Nevins, Frémont: The West’s Greatest Adventurer (1928), 2:438.
3 “They are idle”: Report of Debates, 137–141.
CHAPTER 30: TO BE DECENTLY POOR
1 “When we join our fortunes”: Alan Rosenus, General M. G. Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans (1995), 90–91.
2 “All is lost”: Madie Brown Emparan, The Vallejos of California (1968), 43.
3 “The bandits from Australia”: Brands, Age of Gold, 321.
4 “I think I will know”: Rosenus, General Vallejo, 230.
5 “For some time back”: Frank F. Latta, Joaquín Murrieta and His Horse Gangs (1980), 36.
6 “When shot at”: James F. Varley, The Legend of Joaquín Murrieta: California’s Gold Rush Bandit (1995), 49–50.
7 “I have been engaged”: John Boessenecker, Gold Dust and Gunsmoke: Tales of Gold Rush Outlaws, Gunfighters, Lawmen, and Vigilantes (1999), 91.
8 “He says he will take”: Latta, Joaquín Murrieta, 474–479.
CHAPTER 31: WHERE CAN WE GO?
1 “The system they employed”: Pérez Rosales, California Adventure, 44.
2 “insatiated search for revenge”: Daily Alta California, May 30, 1850.
3 “The white man, to whom time is money”: Peter Burnett message, Jan. 7, 1851, Journals of the Legislature of the State of California: Senate (1851), 15.
4 In hundreds of incidents: Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873 (2016). This is the most thorough—and harrowing—account of the killing. See especially the appendices.
5 “The savages were in the way”: Bancroft, History of California, 7:474.
6 “He is a man of about 28 years”: The Mariposa Indian War, 1850–1851: Diaries of Robert Eccleston. The California Gold Rush, Yosemite, and the High Sierra (1957), 106–107.
7 “Savage said to them”: Lafayatte Houghton Bunnell, Discovery of the Yosemite and the Indian War of 1851 Which Led to That Event (1892), 11–12.
8 “From his long acquaintance”: Bunnell, Discovery of Yosemite, 20–23.
9 “Burnt over 5000 bushels”: Mariposa Indian War, 49, 67–68.
10 “Kill me”: Bunnell, Discovery of Yosemite, 172–173.
11 “We are afraid”: Bunnell, Discovery of Yosemite, 33.
12 “Where can we now go”: Bunnell, Discovery of Yosemite, 231.
CHAPTER 32: STEPHEN DOUGLAS’S BRAINSTORM
1 “Here, before God”: Evan Carton, Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America (2006), 82. Or Brown might have spoken a less dramatic version: “I pledge myself, with God’s help, that I will devote my life to increasing hostility to slavery.” Ibid. The former quotation was the one that became etched in American memory.
2 “Bleeding Kansas”: David Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 (1976), 220; New York Times, May 30, 1856.
3 The image was misleading: See Dale E. Watts, “How Bloody Was Bleeding Kansas?” Kansas History (Summer 1995): 116–129.
CHAPTER 33: NORTH, SOUTH, WEST
1 Lincoln made the grand tour: The most thorough telling is Ralph Campanella, Lincoln in New Orleans: The 1828–1831 Flatboat Voyages and Their Place in History (2010).
2 Harpers Ferry: See Tony Horwitz, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War (2011).
CHAPTER 34: FREE SOIL
1 “We cannot but feel”: Junction Union excerpted in The Big Blue Union, Marysville, Kansas, Dec. 27, 1862.
CHAPTER 35: HELL ON WHEELS
1 construction of the Pacific railway: The best sources are David Haward Bain, Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (1999); Stephen E. Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869 (2000); Maury Klein, Union Pacific: Birth of a Railroad, 1862–1893 (1987); and Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (2011).
2 “Four or five of the Irishmen”: George T. Clark, Leland Stanford (1931), 213–214.
3 “Did they not build”: Bain, Empire Express, 221.
4 “Those mountains over there”: Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World, 117.
5 Ropes anchored at the top of the cliff: Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World, 156–157.
6 “Without them it would be impossible”: Bain, Empire Express, 220.
7 “They really began to suffer”: Bain, Empire Express, 362.
8 “We’ve got to clean the damn Indians out”: Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World, 223.
9 “Unless some relief”: Bain, Empire Express, 351.
10 “Many an honest John”: Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World, 235–236.
11 “We send you greeting… our highest ambition”: Clark, Leland Stanford, 244.
12 “Make it cheap… for acceptance”: Bain, Empire Express, 447.
13 “We are cribbed in… not travel over too fast”: J. D. B. Stillman, “The Last Tie,” Overland Monthly, July 1869, 79–80.
14 “Durant is so strange”: Bain, Empire Express, 651.
15 “THE LAST RAIL IS LAID”: Klein, Union Pacific, 226.
CHAPTER 36: SAINTS AND SINNERS
1 “The cause of our exile”: Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (1985), 128.
2 “We owe the United States nothing”: Niles National Register, Nov. 22, 1845.
3 Perpetual Emigrating Fund: Also called the Perpetual Emigration Fund. On the fund, and for the fullest account of the handcart emigration, see David Roberts, Devil’s Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy (2008).
4 “Take good hickory”: Will Bagley, “‘One Long Funeral March’: A Revisionist’s View of the Mormon Handcart Disasters,” Journal of Mormon History, Dec. 2009, 58–71.
5 “There were 30 children”: Roberts, Devil’s Gate, 103–104.
6 “And thus has been”: Bagley, “‘One Long Funeral March,’” 76.
7 “They expect to get cold”: Bagley, “‘One Long Funeral March,’” 76–84, 89, 92, 111.
8 “those twin relics”: Republican party platform, June 18, 1856, Papers of the Presidents.
9 “despotism of Brigham Young”: Arrington, Brigham Young, 230.
10 “If the government dare”: Juanita Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre (1991 ed.), 138–139.
11 The decision to massacre the emigrants: The best recent account is Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Glen M. Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows (2008).
CHAPTER 37: ONCE WE WERE HAPPY
1 “I am a Lakota”: Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, as told through John G. Neihardt (Flaming Arrow) by Nicholas Black Elk (2000 ed.), 6–9. This edition addresses the controversy surrounding Black Elk’s famous memoir, including matters of translation and interpretation. Similar questions touch most memoirs. The present author judges the book no less reliable than many of those.
2 The biggest game included mammoths: A recent argument for climate change as the principal cause of the mammoth extinction is Eske Willerslev, John Davison, Mari Moora, Martin Zobel, Eric Coissac, Mary E. Edwards, Eline D. Lorenzen, et al., “Fifty Thousand Years of Arctic Vegetation and Megafaunal Diet,” Nature 506 (Feb. 6, 2014): 47–51. The case for human causation is in Lewis J. Bartlett, David R. Williams, Graham W. Prescott, Andrew Balmford, Rhys E. Green, Anders Eriksson, Paul J. Valdes, Joy S. Singarayer, and Andrea Manica, “Robustness Despite Uncertainty: Regional Climate Data Reveal the Dominant Role of Humans in Explaining Global Extinctions of Late Quaternary Megafauna,” Ecography 39, no. 2 (2015): 152–161.
3 Whether hunting or changing climate: On the extinction of American horses (and mammoths), see Andrew R. Solow, David L. Roberts, and Karen M. Robbirt, “On the Pleistocene Extinctions of Alaskan Mammoths and Horses,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103, no. 19 (May 9, 2006): 7351–7353.
4 The first horses acquired: On the spread of horses, Francis Haines, “Where Did the Plains Indians Get Their Horses?” American Anthropologist, n.s., 40, no. 1 (Jan.–Mar. 1938): 112–117.
5 “If you have horses”: Colin G. Calloway, One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark (2003), 307.
6 “The Sioux tribes are those who hunt most”: Richard White, “The Winning of the West: The Expansion of the Western Sioux in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Journal of American History 65 (1978): 322.
7 the Sioux population quintupled: White, “Winning of the West,” 329–330.
8 “The day is not far off”: Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1837–1838 (1838), 69.
9 “These lands once belonged”: Mike Sajna, Crazy Horse: The Life Behind the Legend (2000), 77.
10 “What shall I do”: Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (1970), 79.
11 “Kill all the Indians”: Brown, Bury My Heart, 83, 90.
12 “I saw five squaws”: Brown, Bury My Heart, 89–90.
13 “I did not see a body”: Brown, Bury My Heart, 89–90.
14 “The white men have crowded”: Brown, Bury My Heart, 130.
15 “A single company of regulars”: Sajna, Crazy Horse, 196.
16 “One morning the crier”: Black Elk Speaks, 40–45.
CHAPTER 38: THERE WOULD BE NO SOLDIERS LEFT
1 “pure beggars and poor devils”: Lloyd Lewis, Sherman: Fighting Prophet (1993 ed.), 596.
2 “We must act”: Bain, Empire Express, 311–312.
3 “If you don’t choose”: Henry M. Stanley, My Early Travels and Adventures in America and Asia (1895), 1:210–211.
4 “Go ahead in your own way”: Stephen Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (1975), 281.
5 “The only good Indians”: Paul Andrew Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army (1999 ed.), 180. Sheridan later denied having made the statement.
6 “I looked and saw… under the mother sheo’s”: Black Elk Speaks, 18–29.
7 “When he went into a fight”: Black Elk Speaks, 65–66.
8 “abominable compact”: Sajna, Crazy Horse, 251.
9 “STRUCK IT AT LAST”: Donald Jackson, Custer’s Gold: The United States Cavalry Expedition of 1874 (1972 ed.), 89.
10 “If anything happens… and got his scalp”: Black Elk Speaks, 82–85.
11 “Hoka hey,” the war chief cried: Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer, 401.
12 “We could not see much… into his forehead”: Black Elk Speaks, 95–96.
1 “I regard Custer’s massacre”: New York Herald, Sept. 2, 1876.
2 “anyone who wants to fight me” Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains (1952), 4.
3 “He makes but an awkward figure”: Wallace and Hoebel, The Comanches, 47–49.
4 Quanah Parker: The most gripping account of Quanah Parker is S. C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History (2010). Another good one is Bill Neely, The Last Comanche Chief: The Life and Times of Quanah Parker (1995). On the Comanches generally, see T. R. Fehrenbach, Comanches: The Destruction of a People (1974), and Thomas W. Kavanagh, Comanche Political History: An Ethnohistorical Perspective, 1706–1875 (1996).
5 “When I told them”: Seth Hathaway, “The Adventures of a Buffalo Hunter,” Frontier Times, Dec. 1931, reprinted in Randolph B. Campbell, ed., Texas History Documents (1997), 2:8–12.
6 “Nothing of interest occurred”: Hathaway, “Adventures of a Buffalo Hunter.”
7 The buffalo had been under pressure: The best account is Andrew C. Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920 (2000). But see also Dan Flores, “Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy: The Southern Plains from 1800 to 1850,” Journal of American History 73, no. 2 (Sept. 1991): 465–485.
8 “Those white men can’t shoot you”: Wilbur Sturtevant Nye, Bad Medicine and Good: Tales of the Kiowas (1962), 179.
9 “We charged pretty fast”: Brown, Bury My Heart, 266.
10 “It was each man for himself… of their medicine”: Hathaway, “Adventures of a Buffalo Hunter.”
11 “The buffalo hunters were too much”: W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill (1969 ed.), 191.
12 “All the boys went out”: Hathaway, “Adventures of a Buffalo Hunter.”
CHAPTER 40: LOST RIVER
1 “General, we can make peace quick”: Jeff C. Riddle, The Indian History of the Modoc War (1914), 64–67. This memoir draws on Jeff Riddle’s memories, those of his mother and father, and some official documents. Whether the conversations he quotes verbatim, forty years after the fact, are precisely accurate is open to question. But no more so than is the case with many memoirs. And they doubtless capture the essence of what was said.
2 “I for one”: Riddle, Indian History of the Modoc War, 69–72.
3 “Do not go”: A. B. Meacham, Wigwam and War-Path (1875), 467–470.
4 “If you kill all these soldiers… The soldiers are coming”: Riddle, Indian History of the Modoc War, 90–97; Meacham, Wigwam and War-Path, 482–500.
5 “All the Modocs are involved”: Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865–1890: The Army and the Indian, edited by Peter Cozzens (2005), 113; Perry D. Jamieson, Crossing the Deadly Ground: United States Army Tactics, 1865–1899 (1994), 32.
CHAPTER 41: THE PRIDE OF YOUNG JOSEPH
1 “The Nez Percé comes into history”: New York Times, Oct. 15, 1877.
2 “There was no stain”: Joseph, “An Indian’s Views of Indian Affairs,” North American Review 128, no. 269 (Apr. 1879): 415–429.
3 “They stole a great many horses”: Joseph, “An Indian’s Views of Indian Affairs.”
4 “Why do you sit here”: Joseph, “An Indian’s Views of Indian Affairs.”
5 “It is cold”: Elliott West, The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story (2011), 282–292. This book, the most thorough account of the Nez Perce war and its context, raises questions about the verbatim authenticity of the surrender speech. But the gist of Joseph’s remarks is certainly accurate, and this version was the one that was repeated in newspapers all around the country. The most recent account of the Nez Perce war is Daniel J. Sharfstein, Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, and the Nez Perce War (2017).
CHAPTER 42: ABILENE
1 No image in American history: An intriguing explanation of the power of the cowboy image is in Larry McMurtry, “Take My Saddle from the Wall,” Harper’s Magazine, Sept. 1, 1968.
2 “In short, it was to establish… toward completion”: Joseph G. McCoy, Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest (1874), 40–51.
3 “The ordinary trail-herd… over the prairie”: “The Old Cattle Trails,” in Prose and Poetry of the Live Stock Industry of the United States (1904), 1:532–534.
4 “Corn bread, mast-fed bacon… and death”: McCoy, Historic Sketches, 10–13, 138.
5 The most famous of all the gunfights: Paula Mitchell Marks, And Die in the West: The Story of the O.K. Corral Gunfight (1989). On the nature and incidence of gunfights, an encyclopedist of the form has concluded, perhaps ruefully, “If showdown duels were the only legitimate gunfights, this would be a very short book.” Bill O’Neal, Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters (1979), 3.
6 “At frontier towns where are centered… and tenderest memory”: McCoy, Historic Sketches, 120–121, 138–141.
CHAPTER 43: HARD LESSON
1 “Dear Brother”: James S. Brisbin, The Beef Bonanza, or How to Get Rich on the Plains (1881), 59–70.
2 “Sixteenth Street”: Ernest Staples Osgood, The Day of the Cattleman (1929), 96.
3 “Cowboys don’t have as soft a time”: Osgood, Day of the Cattleman, 229.
CHAPTER 44: INTO THE GREAT UNKNOWN
1 “Long ago, there was a great”: Report of J. W. Powell: Exploration of the Colorado River of the West (1875), 7. The classic account of the life and feats of Powell is Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West (1954). More recent is Donald Worster, A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell (2001).
2 “The good people of Green River City”: Report of J. W. Powell, 8–25.
3 “We start up a gulch”: Report of J. W. Powell, 33–34.
4 “We pass through a region”: Report of J. W. Powell, 46, 58, 76–100.
5 “We glide rapidly along the foot”: Report of J. W. Powell, 100–102.
1 “The redemption”: J. W. Powell, Report on the Lands of the Arid Region (1879 ed.), vii–31.
2 “The landscapes of the Santa Clara Valley… the magnificent dome-head”: John Muir, The Yosemite (1912), 4, 8–9, 21–22, 65–66, 77–78, 87, 131–132.
3 “public use, resort, and recreation”: Act of June 30, 1864 (13 Stat., 325).
4 “The intelligent American”: “The Wonders of the West II—More About the Yellowstone,” Scribners’ Monthly, Feb. 1872, 388–396.
5 “The entire area”: Remarks by Congressman Dunnell on H.R. 764, in Preliminary Report of the United States Geological Survey of Montana and Portions of Adjacent Territories, by F. V. Hayden (1872), 163–164.
6 “It is important to do something”: Jay Cooke, in Richard A. Bartlett, Nature’s Yellowstone (1989 ed.), 207–208.
7 “The effect of this measure… in the world”: Aubrey L. Haines, Yellowstone National Park: Its Exploration and Establishment (1974), 127–128.
CHAPTER 46: MORE LIKE US
1 Geronimo, the last of the holdouts: Robert M. Utley tells the Geronimo story in Geronimo (2012).
2 “We destroyed everything”: Recollection by Jacob Wilks, in Frank N. Schubert, Voices of the Buffalo Soldiers (2003), 42.
3 “The officers say”: Frances M. A. Roe, Army Letters from an Officer’s Wife, 1871–1888 (1981 ed.), 65.
4 “This is the best arranged… to enlist”: “The Comanches and the Peace Policy,” The Nation, Oct. 30, 1873. An alternative, or complementary, explanation for the label “buffalo soldiers” is given by William H. Leckie, who contends that it connoted respect—the same kind of respect the Plains Indians felt for the buffalo. The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West (1967), 26.
5 “I immediately attacked”: Stance to B. M. Custer, May 26, 1870, in Schubert, Voices of the Buffalo Soldiers, 36–37.
6 “domestic dependent nations”: Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. (5 Peters) 1 (1831).
7 “If they remain”: Jackson’s annual message, Dec. 8, 1829, Papers of the Presidents.
8 Dawes Severalty Act: Janet A. McDonnell, The Dispossession of the American Indian, 1887–1934 (1991), 1–18; Stuart Banner, How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier (2005), 257–290.
9 “The preparations for the settlement… have just begun”: William Willard Howard, “The Rush to Oklahoma,” Harper’s Weekly, May 18, 1889.
CHAPTER 47: IT GREW VERY COLD
1 “I was frightened”: Black Elk Speaks, 108.
2 “There were more people… dance with them”: Black Elk Speaks, 178–183.
3 “They would not stop… to run away”: Black Elk Speaks, 191–201.
CHAPTER 48: LESS CORN AND MORE HELL
1 “Stand at Cumberland Gap”: Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of Frontier in American History,” in Turner, The Frontier in American History (1921), 12, 37–38.
2 “The hot winds burned up”: The Populist Mind, edited by Norman Pollack (1967), 34–35.
3 “Take a man”: The Populist Mind, 3–4.
4 “Wall Street owns the country”: John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers’ Alliance and the People’s Party (1931), 160.
5 “What’s the matter with Kansas?”: William Allen White, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” in The Autobiography of William Allen White (1946), 280–283.
6 “Having behind us”: William Jennings Bryan, Selections, edited by Ray Ginger (1967), 46.
CHAPTER 49: BONANZA
1 “When the river crosses”: William Allen White, “The Business of a Wheat Farm,” Scribner’s Magazine, Nov. 1897, 531–548.
1 “Have you and Theodore”: Brands, TR, 327.
2 “He had served in General Miles’s… unmoved equanimity”: Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders (1899), 7–31.
3 “The men can go in… ever was in battle”: Brands, TR, 342–343.
4 “Yesterday we struck… like a guidon”: Brands, TR, 349, 356.
5 “The Mauser bullets”: Roosevelt, Rough Riders, 120.
6 “The man in command… great day of my life”: Brands, TR, 357.
CHAPTER 51: WEST TAKES EAST
1 “If Colonel Roosevelt is nominated”: Brands, TR, 364, 397.
2 “That damned cowboy”: H. H. Kohlsaat, From McKinley to Harding: Personal Recollections of Our Presidents (1923), 101.
CHAPTER 52: CASHING IN
1 “Some of these pages… hero without wings”: Owen Wister, The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains (1902), vi–ix, 4.
2 “the Cowmen and boys”: Andy Adams, The Log of a Cowboy: A Narrative of the Old Trail Days (1903), dedication page, 381–382.
3 “No gift”: Roosevelt, Rough Riders, 318, 320.
4 Harper’s called him… “Cowboys are cash with me”: Peggy and Harold Samuels, Remington: The Complete Prints (1990), 33.
CHAPTER 53: JOHN MUIR’S LAST STAND
1 “Forest protection”: Roosevelt, annual message, Dec. 3, 1901, Papers of the Presidents.
2 “I do not want anyone”: Linnie Marsh Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir (2003 ed.), 290.
3 “John Muir met me”: Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (1913), 347–349.
4 “These temple destroyers”: Muir, The Yosemite, 261–262.
CHAPTER 54: THE LONG, LONG TRAIL
1 “A people’s dream died there”: Black Elk Speaks, 207.