The Way West

 

By A. B. Guthrie, Jr.

The story of a wagon train headed from Missouri to Oregon back in the 1840s.

Lije Evans was a farmer in Missouri with a loving wife and a teenage son. The three of them work hard and have a good life. But Lije is having second thoughts. He feels like he is just breaking even, not improving. So when folks start talking about immigrating to Oregon, which was currently part of the United Kingdom, Lije came to think maybe he should try his luck there. The word was that the land there was rich and productive and a man could get ahead if he was willing to put in the work. 

Lije talks his wife Becky into selling the farm and going west, even though Becky is happy in their little home on their Missouri farm. So off they went, sold the farm, loaded up their wagons, bought their provisions and headed to Independence, Missouri to form up a wagon train and brave the trials of the trails. They face the typical wagon train problems, accidents, deaths, natives, arguments, bison, heat, bugs, dust, river crossings, steep trails, lack of water, the usual. Actually, not too many people die in this story. One man dies of sickness, a woman has a miscarriage, a child dies of snakebite, a native gets shot by a settler. That's about it unless I am forgetting someone. 

This was a fairly good read. Not very exciting, and to someone who grew up in the 1950s, familiar territory. Lije is the main character with him moving up from traveling in the train to becoming the wagon train leader. Secondary characters are his son, his dog Rock and lastly his wife Becky. Rock gets more text than Becky does. Her main function is to tell Lije what a good guy he is. In fact, women in this story are mostly only there to cook and clean and take care of the kids and keep their menfolk happy. Their trials and tribulations are only touched on lightly. Not surprising for a book written in the 1940s.

Also not surprising for a book written in the 1940s is Guthrie's depictions of the natives encountered which he dismisses as lazy, dirty, heathen, ignorant, thieving savages. Near the end of the book, as the settlers are traveling by boat downriver, they pass a native cemetery. One of the settlers remarks about so many good indians, a reference to the old saying, the only good indian is a dead indian. 

If you have never read a story of the wagon trains headed west in America, this will probably be a very interesting story. But as a child of the 1950s, this story didn't tell me anything I wasn't already familiar with. I think the author touches too lightly on the suffering endured by the settlers and romanticizes it all a bit too much.  It did win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1950. It is also one novel in a series that Guthrie wrote about settlers headed to Oregon, which I didn't know until I looked up the Wikipedia page about the book: Wikipedia. 

The Way West

By Alfred B. Guthrie, Jr.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction 1950.

This is the story of a wagon train headed west on the Oregon Trail in 1846, starting off in Independence, Missouri and headed for the Columbia River and Fort Vancouver in the Oregon Territory. This is story of hardy pioneers, determined to reach their goal, despite hardship, accidents, sickness and death. People do die on the trail, one to fever, one to snakebite and one to premature birth. But the pioneers keep on trucking, looking for the gold at the end of the rainbow. At one point, the wagon train splits apart, as one group decides to head for California as they have heard the trail is easier than the one to Oregon. The pilot of the train, Dick Summers, is an old mountain man, trail wise and eager to get away from civilization and farming and back to his roots. His great wisdom and sound advice are the key to the success of the effort as he guides the pioneers through treacherous river crossings, across burning deserts, and on steep, nearly impassible mountain tracks. It's a pretty good story, engrossing and easy to read.
This novel was made into a movie in 1967 starring Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, Richard Widmark and Sally Field.
A word about the way the native peoples are portrayed in this book. Guthrie doesn't have a much sympathy for the people who will end up being pushed off the land by his doughty settlers. He most often describes them as dirty, smelly, naked, thieving, lousy and shiftless, with their hands out for whatever they can beg or steal from the settlers passing through their country. At one point, one of the characters is describing an Indian cemetery, saying, "You'll never set your eye on more good Injuns than right there," meaning all the dead Indians. I wouldn't call it an even handed or fair portrait but certainly typical of the times in which it was written.

Review by The Pulitzer Project.