Across the Wide Missouri.

Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard De Voto.483 pages, 19 color illustrations, 62 black & white. $12.21 paper, from Amazon.com

Across the Wide Missouri is regarded by many as a classic study of the Rocky Mountain fur trade and Plains Indian relations therewith. It is a book which, as long as it remains in print should be re-reviewed periodically, both for what it succeeds and abjectly fails in doing. Across the Wide Missouri is often recommended to novices in the study of Plains Indian history and the fur trade which it should never be, as it is loaded with distortions and misinformation regarding Indian history and culture.

Bernard DeVoto was a historian who unquestionably wrote well. His prose is clear, free flowing and at times, poetically beautiful. The following passage describes a camp of Mountain Men on their way to rendezvous:

Camp is pitched near some water course, a small creek or rushing mountain river, with firewood and grass at hand. If there has been no Indian sign and no reason to apprehend Indians, the fire will be built up when the meal is over. Here is the winesap air of the high places the clear green sky of evening fading to a dark that brings the stars within arm's length, the cottonwoods along the creek rustling in the wind. The smell of meat has brought the wolves and coyotes almost to the circle of firelight. They skulked just beyond it; sometimes a spurt of flame will turn their eyes gold; they howl and attack one another and farther out in the dark the howls of their relatives diminish over the plains. In running season there will be the bellowing of the bulls. Horses and mules crop the bunch grass at the end of their lariats or browse on leaves along the creek. The firelight flares and fades in the winds rhythm on the faces of men in whose minds are the vistas and the annals of the entire west.

It is the time of fulfillment, the fullness of time, the moment lived for itself alone...(pp. 43-44).

That's beautifully evocative prose, no doubt about it. De Voto obviously had great admiration and respect for Rocky Mountain fur trappers. He wrote eloquently of their adventures and way of life in a breezy offhand style which successfully captures the Mountain Man's sense of humor and casual disregard for the dangers of the life which he led.

As far as the actual details of the fur trade go, the partnerships, expenses, lists of trade goods, personnel and so forth, Across the Wide Missouri is an accurate depiction of events in that tumultuous period. However, a great deal of Across the Wide Missouri concerns itself with Indians: Indian history, culture, motivations, and relations with Whites. It is in this regard that De Voto's writing veers between mediocre and egregiously bad. De Voto inclined to a sneering, ostensibly clever brand of racism when he discussed Indians. His disregard for Indians as people led to an unfortunate disregard for the accurate facts of Indian life.

Consider the following. Mr. De Voto says that in 1835, "The Oglalas had moved within striking distance of the Pawnees, their immemorial enemies, and were constantly raiding them. They were also in an excellent position to raid the Crows, who were old enemies, and the Snakes (Shoshonis) who were even older ones. But they had acquired two new enemies, this being country claimed by the Arapahos and Cheyennes--first rate Plains Indians, fully as tough and intelligent as the Sioux if not so numerous. The Thirty Years War got under way. And Bull Bear presided over it (pp. 316-317).

It's difficult to know what to make of this entire passage. By 1835 the Lakotas had been living within striking distance of the Pawnees and Crows for some time. Scholars, from George Bird Grinnell on down to John Moore have found no evidence of warfare between the Lakotas and Cheyenne/Arapahoes. And the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Lakotas have always denied that they ever fought one another. So just what DeVoto meant by "The Thirty Years War" is hard to say. It makes no historical sense.

In a similar vein is De Voto's description of the 1834 trading season with the Blackfeet at Fort McKenzie on the Upper Missouri. This trading season was described in detail by Prince Maximillian of Wied-Neuwied, who was present as a guest of the American Fur Company. DeVoto's acoount of the 1834 trade with Blackfeet differs significantly from Maximillian's because De Voto invents characters who never existed and events which never happened. Compare Across the Wide Missouri, pages 141-142, with Maximillian in People of the First Man, pages 103-105.

I have said that De Voto was a racist. This is not just my interpretation of his writing. He quite explicitly stated his views:

He (the Mountain Man) had only skill. A skill so effective that, living in an Indian country, he made a more successful adaptation to it than the Indian--and this without reference to his superior material equipment. There was no craft and no skill at which the mountain man did not come to excel the Indian. He saw, smelled, and heard just as far and no farther. But there is something after all in the laborious accretion which convolutes the forebrain and increases the cultural heritage, for he made more of it (p. 160).

Which is a fancy and pseudo-intellectual way of saying that White people are innately smarter than Indians. And it's also worth observing that the evidence for the idea that Mountain Men surpassed Indians at every craft and skill existed only in Mr. De Voto's fertile imagination.

Fortunately, the illustrations, paintings done in the 1830s by Alfred Jacob Miller, George Catlin, and Karl Bodmer are excellent. The Bodmer and Catlin pictures have often been reproduced in other books but the Miller watercolors, done in 1837 while traveling with a fur brigade to the annual rendezvous have generally not appeared in other books and, to me, are the principal reason for owning this deeply flawed book.

Review by Lew Richards

Lubec, ME