The Great Medicine Road, Part 1: Narratives of the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails, 1840–1848 ed. by Michael L. Tate (review)

Since the appearance of such books as John Unruh’s The Plains Across (1979) and John Mack Faragher’s Women and Men on the Overland Trail (1979), there has been considerable interest by historians in the westering experience. The Great Medicine Road is a welcome addition to these classics. The book is the first volume of a projected series that will provide firsthand accounts of overland travel during the period from 1840 to 1849.

For this initial volume, Tate has selected fifteen narratives that include letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, and interviews. Arranged chronologically, and many published here for the first time, are accounts by Pierre-Jean De Smet, Nancy Kelsey, Jesse Looney, Lucy Jane Hall Bennett, and Lilburn Boggs. The selections are representative of early trail travel, including texts that express both women’s and men’s voices and reflect a wide variety of ages and differing economic statuses and educational attainments. Taken together the narratives provide an ideal vehicle for analyzing the social roles and relationships of westering men and women. The trail experience put a unique strain on interpersonal relationships, and the narratives in this book are particularly useful for providing insight into how emigrants coped with the hardships of the trail. The book also deepens our insight into how relationships between Indians and emigrants worked on the trail. Although overlanders brought with them stereotypes of Indian barbarity, more often than not Indians aided emigrants, most commonly through trade. In addition, Indians frequently guided wagons, provided ferry services across rivers, and offered advice about the trail in exchange for manufactured goods.

The author of Indians and Emigrants: Encounters on the Overland Trails (2006), Michael Tate has considerable experience with overland trail diaries. Tate begins The Great Medicine Road with a general introduction and before each narrative provides extensive information describing its author’s background, his or her reasons for being on the trail, details about the author’s subsequent life, and sources for further research. To account for any errors and misspellings that might cause confusion, he places corrections in brackets throughout each original text, capturing the sounds of common speech while at the same time making it easy to read. His extensive footnotes add crucial information and also expand on facts that are incorrect, vague, or false in the original text, making the collection valuable not just to scholars of the overland trails, but to students and general enthusiasts as well.

The Great Medicine Road concerns a critical time in US history as seen through the eyes of participants and contributes greatly to our understanding of the experience of the westering emigrants. This volume is a valuable resource for anyone—scholars and students alike—interested in the history of the American West.