ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE

Set amid a homey and observant history of early trading in the Pacific Northwest, McCartney (Friends in High Places, 1988) tells the story of the trek that opened the wagon route west.

In 1812, a young fur trader, Robert Stuart, working for John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company, set off eastward from Astoria, with six companions, to find a suitable route across the continent for traders. Working from letters and the journal Stuart kept (when the ink ran out, he used berry juice and his own blood), McCartney—a descendent of Stuart—tells of tribulations ranging from fleas, bloodsuckers, and rattlesnakes, to mental illness, horse theft, hunger, and despair. Yet McCartney tells the story with command, never getting breathless. He manages to bring the native populations into focus as distinct entities—Chinooks, Clatsops, Brules, Mandans, Absarokas, Wishrams, Wahkiacums, Echeloots, Tetons, Yankstons, and many more. He makes sense, too, out of the rivalries among Russians, British, French, Canadians, and Americans. He paints the landscape broadly, for Stuart had an interest in nature and culture as well as in trade and exploration. McCartney discusses Astor’s political gamesmanship as he secured Astoria and then tried to circumvent the embargo of the War of 1812. He details the even more arduous voyage of Wilson Price Hunt, who had followed the Lewis and Clark route four years later. And he relates the expedition’s truly golden discovery (it wasn’t beaver pelts) with cool understatement: South Pass, located by Stuart on a tip from the Shoshone, was an Old Crow trail through the Rockies and the only one traversable by wagon: “Though they were preoccupied at the time of the crossing with immediate life-and-death concerns—finding firewood, food and water and retaining their scalps—the returning Astorians clearly understood the significance of what they’d discovered.”

Although the thrill here is in the discovery of South Pass, the weight of the story is in its political and economic setting. McCartney handles both with aplomb. (Illustrations)