The Perilous West

Seven Amazing Explorers and the Founding of the Oregon Trail

By (author) Larry E. Morris

Not available to order

Publication date:

19 December 2012

Length of book:

204 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781442211148

Although a host of adventurers stormed west in 1806 after Lewis and Clark’s safe return, seven of them left unique legacies because of their monumental journeys, their lionhearted spirit in the face of hardship, and the way their paths intertwined time and again. The Perilous West tells this riveting story in depth for the first time, focusing on each of the seven explorers in turn – Ramsay Crooks, Robert McClellan, John Hoback, Jacob Reznor, Edward Robinson, Pierre Dorion, and Marie Dorion. These seven counted the Tetons, Hells Canyon, and South Pass among their discoveries. More importantly, they forged the Oregon Trail–a path destined to link the Atlantic coast with the Pacific, spurring national expansion as it carried trappers, soldiers, pioneers, missionaries, and gold-seekers westward. The PerilousWest begins in 1806, when Crooks and McClellan meet Lewis and Clark, and the vast expanse from the Dakotas to the Pacific coast appears a commercial paradise. The story ends in 1814, when a band of French Canadian trappers rescue Marie Dorion, and even John Jacob Astor’s well-financed enterprise has ended in violence and chaos, placing the protagonists squarely in the context of Thomas Jefferson’s monumental opening of the West, which stalled with the War of 1812.

Prologue: The Timely Arrival of This Poor Unfortunate Woman
Chapter 1: I Shall Have Two Boats Well Manned and Armed
Chapter 2: A Powerful Company Is Forming
Chapter 3: Dissolved by Mutual Consent
Chapter 4: We All Now Became Blind from the Reflection of the Sun’s Rays
Chapter 5: Whiskey Flowed Like Milk and Honey in the Land of Canaan
Chapter 6: About Seventy Able Bodied Men, Nerved to Hardship
Chapter 7: Families, Plantations, and All Vanished
Chapter 8: A Very Sad Recollection
Chapter 9: The Inscrutable Ways of Providence
Epilogue: Desolation and Horror Stared Me in the Face
Chronology

Written for academics and history buffs alike, Larry E. Morris has provided a new perspective of six noteworthy frontiersmen and one female who made their marks in the exploration of the early American West. . .He paints good word pictures in the reader's mind and provides the reader with a new appreciation for the fur traders, trappers, and Indians involved in founding the Oregon Trail. . .Morris captures with intensity the lives, events, and hardships experienced by those involved as they sought to make their marks for history.