Great primary source story/narrative...Witty writer, too!!

books:

	• Wah-to-yah & the Taos trail: Prairie travel and scalp dances, with a look at los rancheros from muleback and ... Lewis Hector Garrard University of Oklahoma Press, 1979 - 302 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A young man's sojurn in the old west

Lewis H. Garrard was an exuberant 17 year old tourist in the Old West of 1846-1847. He traveled down the Santa Fe Trail with a wagon train and stopped off at Bent's Fort on the Arkansas River of Colorado and spent a couple of months with the Cheyenne Indians and the traders and mountain men who lived around the fort. When Governor Charles Bent of New Mexico and twenty others were killed in Taos in an Mexican/Indian uprising he joined an informal expedition of mountain men to take revenge. His group arrived after the U.S. army had recaptured Taos, but Garrard was in Taos for the trial and hanging of nine of the revolutionary trouble-makers, even loaning the hangman several lariats when he ran short. "Wah-to-yah" is said to be the only account of the trial and hanging of the Taos revolutionaries.

Garrard was a lot more tolerant than most travelers, obviously enjoying the company of the Cheyennes and his extravagant and untutored White companions. He feels the need to express himself occasionally about moral issues and the lack of civilized values of the Indians, Mexicans, and other prairie dwellers - but his condemnations are rote rather than persuasive. Garrard, we imagine, probably shared buffalo robes with comely young Cheyenne women and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, as he did buffalo hunting, dog-meat feasts, and tall tale sessions with the mountain men. He also demonstrates a moral core, condemning the U.S war against Mexico and the wholesale hanging of the revolutionaries in Taos -- sentiments which were not popular in the West at the time.

"Wah-to-yah" -- the Indian name for the Spanish Peaks of southern Colorado -- is perhaps the best account you will find of a young man's adventures in the Old West of mountain men and unconquered Indians. It is similar to Francis Parkman's "The Oregon Trail." The two young men were in the West during the same year but Garrard's book is "the fresher, the more revealing, the more engaging, the less labored" in the words of A. B. Guthrie's introduction to "Wah-to-yah." Garrard is a likeable person; Parkman is not. Both were keen observers and good writers.

"Wah-to-yah" is on the short list of essential books about the Old West. It's easy and engaging reading. We need an annotated edition, however, which will tell us more about the many characters - some of them famous, such as Kit Carson -- Garrard meets and the places he visits and put the book in its historical context of its times.

Smallchief

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Great primary source story/narrative...Witty writer, too!!

Boy...Lewis sure is a witty fellow!!...I like his writing style...very descriptive....a true social observer.....A lot of "savage Indians" and interesting characters with Green River knives along young Mr.Garrard's journey .....some of the language is VERY un-PC by today's standards....I'm surprised Al Sharpton hasn't called for a boycott of this book ;)...Nice footnotes and forward....They say it is a classic Southwest history book and I agree...

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a pleasant surprise

I've read a number of histories of this period and have at times seen historians' references to this book. I've considered reading it for about thirty years and finally purchased it. I had no idea what a well written and entertaining book this was. If you've any interest in the late fur trade era, you should get this one.

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A young man's sojurn in the Old West

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Worthy of repeated readings

Main character - Lewis H. Garrard
Location - present-day American southwest
Story - Adventure of a seventeen year old among the Indians (mainly Cheyenne) and Indian traders
This book is absolutely brilliant! Lewis experienced a time and place that is gone forever and he documented it with a style, flair and grasp of the English language that most of us will never possess. I can't recommend this book enough. It is essential reading for those interested in the Old West and have no choice but to live vicariously through books such as Garrards. Again, this book is truly brilliant. It is literature of the highest degree. Thank you Lewis for putting your western adventure down in words for all to enjoy. Well, at least those with enough good taste to seek out such a book.

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