Larry E. Morris – författare

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.

From the first account of “Colter’s Run,” published in 1810, fascination with John Colter, one of America’s most famous and yet least known frontiersmen and discoverer of Yellowstone Park, has never waned. Unlike other legends of the era like Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Kit Carson, Colter has remained elusive because he left not a single letter, diary, or reminiscence. Gathering the available evidence and guiding readers through a labyrinth of hearsay, rumor, and myth, two Colter experts for the first time tell the whole story of Colter and his legend.

In this book, Larry E. Morris complements the compelling story he began with The Fate of Corps, named a History Book Club selection and a Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Title. Illustrating how Thomas Jefferson’s vision of a sea-to-sea empire gave rise to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Morris in turn shows how the expedition impacted a host of fascinating individuals: John Colter, the first European to see Yellowstone, who helped William Clark create his master map of the West; John Jacob Astor, the prominent fur-trade entrepreneur who launched the second American trek to the Pacific; Ramsay Crooks, an “Astorian” adventurer present for the discovery of the Tetons, Hells Canyon, and South Pass who later became one of the most important merchants in the history of the fur trade; Thomas Hart Benton, a North Carolina native who went west after nearly killing Andrew Jackson in a gunfight and became the US Senate’s most powerful voice for Western expansion—and the father-in-law of “the Pathfinder,” John C. Fremont; and General Stephen Watts Kearny, whose conquest of California during the Mexican War fulfilled Jefferson’s vision of a nation that spanned the continent.

Guns, Furs, and Gold offers a riveting narrative of the American West by exploring the interactions of the Arikaras, Crows, Cheyennes, and Arapahos with each other and with Euro-American traders, explorers, and settlers from 1804, when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark embarked on their voyage of discovery, to 1864, when the U.S. Army attacked both Confederate forces in the South and Native nations in the West.Larry E. Morris recounts the nineteenth-century experience of these four tribes by detailing their interactions with four legendary survivors of a fight with the Arikaras in 1823. These renowned figures include the remarkable trailblazer blazer Jedediah Smith, the unparalleled interpreter Edward Rose, the premier guide and Indian agent Thomas Fitzpatrick, and the grizzly-bear-mauling survivor Hugh Glass. Their careers illuminate the fate of four Indian nations, revealing how—despite the best efforts of several explorers to treat the Indigenous peoples respectfully—the guns, furs, disease, and gold rushes of the interlopers put the Indians’ way of life, their lands, and their very lives at grave risk. The sixty-year period comes to a close when more than 150 Plains Indians, most of them women, children, and elderly, were ambushed and slaughtered by Colonel John Chivington’s Third Colorado Cavalry on the banks of Sand Creek.