A Life Wild and Perilous

July 31, 1997
From the days of Lewis and Clark in the early 1800s to the close of the Mexican War, the beginning of the Gold Rush and the planning of a railway to California, the trans-Mississippi West has been the province of the mountain men. The sagas of Jim Bridger, Kit Carson and dozens of others are replete with courage and even altruism as well as meanness and incompetence. Hazarding scalpings and worse from the tribes whose lands they violated, they are among the heroes, sometimes the villains, of Utley's epic, which needs all its good maps to keep the lines of narrative in focus. Much of the tale is compelling and authoritative, as would be expected from the former chief historian of the National Park Service and author of The Last Days of the Sioux Nation. Some readers may be troubled, however, by the chauvinist language about territories that would be swept up into the American nation in fulfillment of its "continental destiny." Utley's vanguard, creating empire as by-products of commerce, mostly beaver trappers and buffalo hunters motivated by money yet magnetized by the country, are described in terms that hardly suggest their depredations and cruelty. For all its graphic rawness, the sweeping story presented here lacks balance. Illustrations.