Siskiyou Trail: The Hudson’s Bay Fur Company Route to California by Richard Dillon (review)

Reviews 253 Siskiyou Trail: The Hudson’s Bay Fur Company Route to California. By Richard Dillon. The American Trails Series, edited by A. B. Guthrie, Jr., Volume 12 (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1975. 369 pp. $9.95.) Any book beginning, “John C. Fremont was not all that he has been cracked up to be in American history,” may be taken as a book of popular history, probably more “popular” than “history.” Yet a six-page bibliography attests that Richard Dillon has researched his subject respectfully and well. Librarian of California’s Sutro Library, Dillon has published many similar books during the past 15 years, three of them reviewed in WAL. The Siskiyous, straddling the California-Oregon border, were for long a barrier to communication between those areas. Even today’s massive freeways cannot mask the rugged landscape. Readers who recall yesterday’s spectacular but vertiginous highways, or the daylight rail passage of past years, will appreciate the difficulties of the early traveller. Such a region would inevitably draw the independent, feisty, determined characters who forced a trail through it in the early 19th Century and formed (if only briefly) the separatist “State of Jefferson” in the mid-20th. Prospective readers are warned, however, that the book is limited closely by its sub-title to the events of a quarter-century. After a brief, effective summary of early probes south from the Willamette Valley, Dillon begins with the story of the dynamic George Simpson in the 1820’s. His later limit is effectively the Emmons-Eld survey of 1841; a brief epilogue leads to the eve of the Gold Rush. Indeed, James W. Marshall himself migrated to California by the Siskiyou Trail in 1845. Dillon’s “hero,” however, is not Simpson, nor even the familiar John M. McLoughlin, but Michael Laframboise, Canadian-born, “the idealization of the Oregon and California mountain-man legend.” An enterprising voyageur indeed, Laframboise makes a strong impression under Dillon’s sensitive handling. There are problems with this book, for the historian rather than the general reader. Dillon has worked up both original research and collation, but has written a “popular” book without footnotes. His extensive bibliog­ raphy and close attention to detail are reassuring, but to verify a fact an interested historian would have to check dozens of obscure references on the fur trade. General readers should find the book interesting and informative. Dillon’s style is seldom as colloquial as the quotation opening this review might indicate. In fact, a certain crabbed obscurity is occasionally present, though not to the point of irritation. The dust jacket identifies the volume as the twelfth in the American Trails Series. Oddly, the LC card reproduction on the verso of the title page is the only such notice within. A cursory check indicates that none of the others has been reviewed in WAL. ARTHUR FRIETZSCHE, San Luis Obispo ...