Fragged, Scalped, Snowed Under

My friend Larry Len Peterson, who lives up the road in Sisters, stopped by to toss a hand grenade into my office last Friday.

Actually, it was his latest tome — a 728-page work of epic proportions, in every sense of that over-used word: American Trinity — Jefferson, Custer, and the Spirit of the West. Might as well have been a grenade, cuz it blew up my afternoon and it’s going to blow up my intellectual world for weeks.

Larry’s remarkable work graces my home and office: gorgeous books on Western artists Charles M. Russell and Philip R. Goodwin; the photography of L.A. Huffman, etc. This is something entirely different — a deep dive into the fundamental and excruciatingly difficult matter that simply cannot be escaped or elided when you explore the western frontier as it truly was: race.

From the Far Country Press blurb:

Dr. Peterson reveals how anti-Indian sentiments were always only obliquely about them. They were victims but not the cause. The Indian was a symbol, not a real person. The politics of hate and racism directed toward them was also experienced in prior centuries by Jews, enslaved Africans, and other Christians. Hatred and racism, when taken into the public domain, are singularly difficult to justify, which is why Europeans and Americans have always sought vindication from the highest sources of authority in their cultures. In the Middle Ages it was religion supplemented later by the philosophy of the Enlightenment. In nineteenth-century Europe and America, religion and philosophy were joined by science and medicine to support Manifest Destiny, scientific racism, and social Darwinism, all of which had profound consequences on Native Americans and the Spirit of the West.

Presenting research in anthropology, archaeology, biology, history, law, medicine, religion, philosophy, and psychology, Dr. Peterson provides the latest observations that delineate why the Native American’s life was destroyed. American Trinity is a stunning portrait, a view at once unique, panoramic, and intimate. It is a fascinating book that will make you think about the differences between belief and knowledge; about the self-skepticism of science and medicine; and about what aspects of the world we take on faith.

If that sounds like heavy lifting — it is. It has to be; the subject deserves the most searingly honest, challenging examination possible, and I know that’s what Larry Peterson has given it. Larry is a truth-seeker and a truth-teller with a deep love for the American West. You know me: I have to ride down this trail, no matter how steep the climb, no matter how deep the crevasses. As Hawkeye says, “No matter how long; no matter how far…”

That ain’t the end of the story, either. The very next day, Keith West, from down Texas way, scouts up a new biography of John Colter, released in May, which had escaped my notice — Mountain Man: John Colter, the Lewis & Clark Expedition, and the Call of the American West by David W. Marshall.

Historian David W. Marshall crafts this captivating history from Colter’s primary sources, and has retraced Colter’s steps―seeing what he saw, hearing what he heard, and experiencing firsthand how he and his contemporaries survived in the wilderness (how they pitched a shelter, built a fire, followed a trail, and forded a stream)―adding a powerful layer of authority and detail.

The book includes 50 photographs.

Just shoot me and take my scalp now. Give the (doubtless paltry) bounty to my daughter for the college fund. Otherwise y’all will find me next season looking like Hatchet Jack, snowed under by my literary friends. You’ll pry these books out of my frozen hands and leave my carcass for the wolves.

Hell, there are worse ways to go.