The Covered Wagon: About a Group of Pioneers Traveling Through the Old West from Kansas to Oregon Paperback – Import, 11 August 2016

Please note...this review is NOT for the story, but for the awful presentation of the "book". For a start it is 10 x 8 inches and printed in the most puzzling annoying fashion. Chapter headings in the middle of a sentence, mis-spellings, No seperation of chapters. All in all a terrible mess. I was looking forward to reading this, but gave up. Do try and find a proper paperback. This is a travesty. Do not buy.

I mainly read the book for research I'm doing on the Oregon Trail. Although this is a work of fiction, I found some very usuable information. For me, reading the novel was quicker than reading a history book, even though I've used plenty of them, too. The story was a little unreasonable, and I don't think Hough had a very high regard for women, since he talks about one lying as all women were apt to do. Still, the story is one of adventure and romance. The descriptions have dated vocabulary, but are nicely done, and this adds to the understanding of the times.

I read and enjoyed this story as a boy. And I can say now it's still enjoyable, despite a few quirks of dialogue and other uses we now consider old-fashioned.Hough knew the people and land whereof he wrote, having living the pioneer life himself in New Mexico and as an avid outdoorsman throughout the west. Set in the late 1840s just before the California gold rush (which actually plays a vital role in the plot), the book tells of two wagon caravans bound for Oregon and the conflict which divides them because of a love triangle. Indian fights, buffalo hunts, dangerous river crossings and other dangers of the trail add to a gripping and entertaining read.

“The Covered Wagon” is a very disappointing book the second time I’ve read it as it was in 1948 when I first read the book and threw it in the trash when I finished reading it.As a descendant of Mescalero Apache, Lipan Apache and Aztec people I am disappointed that the 1922 volume “The Covered Wagon” by Hough Emerson is thought to be a factual novel with historical facts. I have been reading since the age of 4 that is since 1942 and have read thousands upon thousands of books, diaries, and Library of Congress documents.“The Covered Wagon” was followed by a movie of the same title in 1923 produced as a joint venture of Player-Lasky Corporation and Paramount Pictures Corporation. The movie was a great success as it was the first major Western movie and depicted what most people thought or were taught what savages and ignorant low life we American Indians were.In January of 1924 headlines in a number of newspapers like The Stanford Daily, Volume 64, Issue 65, January 22, 1924 read, Daughter of “Jim” Bridger sues picture Producers. Virginia Bridger Hahn, Jim Bridger’s only surviving child of 5, said that she suffered humiliation from the way her father was depicted in the movie. Virginia also said her father was also defamed, maligned and insulted that he was an upright, honorable man and was known by his contemporaries as opposite of his depiction and not a drunkard. The judge threw out the case ruling that dead people can’t be maligned or insulted.Emerson says Bridger had two Indians wives at the same time, one Ute and the other Shoshone. Emerson says Bridger bragged that he named his squaws Blast Yore Hide an' Dang Yore Eyes. Bridger called his wives women not squaws. He never had more than one wife at one time and never would demean them with stupid names.In 1835, Bridger married his first wife, Cora, a woman from the Flat Head (Salish) tribe, with whom he had three children. Cora was the daughter of Scar Face Chief of the Flathead Nation. After her death in 1846; he married the daughter of a minor Shoshone chief, who died in childbirth three years later. In 1850, he married his last wife one of Shoshone chief Washakie's daughters, with whom he had two more children. Some of his children were sent back east to be educated. His daughter Mary Ann with his first wife was sent to the Whitman mission in Oregon to be educated. She was there during the massacre.Bridger spent the two years from 1852 to 1854 as guide to Sir George Gore, an Irish nobleman, who is said to have spent two million dollars a year in the pursuit of pleasure. Though his hunting grounds were east and north of South Pass it is interesting to note that this party was guilty of the slaughter of twenty-five hundred buffalo, forty grizzly bears, and other game too numerous to mention. It is said that the educated noblemen took much pleasure in the companionship of his guide, and there are stories of camp-fire scenes where he read aloud to the Bridger from some such books as Shakespeare and Baron Munchausen and listened with respect to his quaintly expressed opinions.Throughout “The Covered Wagon” Emerson continually refers to Bridger as “old” yet Bridger was only 44 years old in 1848 when the laced with misinformation story is told. The author portrays Jim Bridger as ignorant buffoon who couldn’t speak English well which is 180 degrees of what Bridger was. He was an extremely accomplished man even though he could not read or write. Just a few of Bridger's accomplishments are staggering in today’s world where many people struggle to be accomplished in a single area. To list just a few of his accomplishments; Bridger was a scout, translator, storekeeper, trapper, trader and explorer. He spoke English, French, and Spanish, as well as six Indian dialects. He guided prospectors to the Montana gold fields and laid out routes for stage lines. One such line was for the Central Overland and Pike's Peak Express Company westward from Denver. When the Union Pacific was planning its railroad west of Cheyenne he told ex-Union general Rawlins that the route over what is Sherman Pass today had a much more gradual incline than the one he and his surveyors had chosen and would be fewer miles. One of Rawlins’ assistance asked, “What would that ignorant man who can’t even read or write know about railroads?” Rawlins had the route surveyed and it saved money and miles. The town of Rawlins in my home state of Wyoming is named for Rawlins. Interstate 80 follows the same route across southern Wyoming.For his services during the Mormon War, General Johnston conferred the honorary title of "major" on Bridger. Although Bridger could not read or write he loved to be read to, even to the extent that at one point he employed an individual to read to him. He was particularly fond of Shakespeare and managed to memorize a large number of passages which he would recite. Two explanations have been given for Bridger's love of Shakespeare. One is that Sir George Gore introduced Bridger to the bard. Another was given by Eugene F. Ware (1841-1911) in his 1911 book, The Indian War of 1864.“The Covered Wagon” is filled with so many untruths and fake facts that I will point out just a few more. The book gives the impression that Indians were the worst menace to “pioneers”.The book says 2,000 Sioux warriors attacked the wagon train using arrows with “strap-iron heads bent over at right angles. That would make a very dull arrow head. Indians didn’t use iron arrow heads until the 1860’s and they were fashioned out of the iron rims of wagon wheels and razor sharp. The only time there were perhaps 2,000 to 3,000 Indian warriors in a Western battle against whites is at the Lieutenant Colonel George Custer battle. As you know over 220 seasoned cavalry, 10 Indian Scouts and two of Custer’s brothers were killed. The majority of warriors had bows, arrows, spears and war clubs. If 2,000 Sioux Warriors had attacked all pioneers in “The Covered Wagon” would have been anihilated.The author also says the “Arapahos and Gros Ventres and Cheyenne, the Crows, the Blackfeet, the Shoshones, the Utes” were joining forces with to Sioux to wipe out the whole white nation, referring to the two wagon trains. Of the tribes listed only the Cheyenne were not mortal enemies of the Sioux and lived near the Oregon ‘Trail. By 1848 many chiefs and ordinary Indians had been to St Louis and Washington DC and tribes knew the White Nation was larger than two wagon trains. The first were sent by Lewis and Clark in 1803 and met with President Thomas Jefferson.According to studies of more than one hundred years by anthropologists, actuarial scientists and historians only about 2.5 percent of deaths on the Oregon and Mormon Trails can be attributed to American Indians.Retired historian Mel Bashore worked with a team of actuarial scientists at Brigham Young University to analyze 56,000 Mormon pioneer records from 1847-1868. Of these 56,000, there were an estimated 1,900 people who died either on the plains or within the calendar year of their arrival. That is about a 3.5 percent mortality rate, whereas a national comparison group in 1850 experienced an annual mortality rate between 2.5 percent and 2.9 percent.As I wrote previously, contrary to what books like “The Covered Wagon”, late 19th and early 20th century dime novels would have the world believe Indian attacks contributed most to the mortality rate on the overland trails. From 1842, when the first “pioneers” began to travel the Oregon Trail through 1849, fewer than 50 emigrant’s deaths were by American Indians. By the 1860 the total reached 400 out of an estimated 500,000 on Oregon/Mormon/California Trails. However the pioneers killed many more Indians than Indians killed emigrants. Some emigrants shot Indians just so they could brag that they had killed Indians.Accidents were caused by negligence, exhaustion, guns, animals, and the weather. Shootings were common, but murders were rare -- one usually shot oneself, a friend, or perhaps one of the draft animals when a gun discharged accidentally. Shootings, drownings, being crushed by wagon wheels, and injuries from handling domestic animals were the biggest accidental killers on the Trail. Any one of these four causes of death claimed more lives than were lost to sharp instruments, falling objects, rattlesnakes, buffalo hunts, hail, lightning, and other calamities.Deaths along the trail, especially among young children and mothers in childbirth, were the most heart-rending of hardships: From Absolom Harden’s 1847 diary-"Mr. Harvey's young little boy Richard 8 years old went to git in the waggon and fel from the tung. The wheals run over him and mashed his head and Kil him Ston dead he never moved."Suicide and insanity were other causes: The tiring pace of the journey – ten to fifteen miles a day, the incessant wind, blowing sand (in a large part of the trek} and almost always on foot -- got to many an emigrant. Elizabeth Markham went insane along the Snake River, announcing to her family that she was not proceeding any farther. Her husband was forced to take the wagons and children and leave her behind, though he later sent their son back to retrieve her. When she returned on her own, her husband was informed that she had clubbed their son to death with a rock. He raced back to retrieve the boy, who was still clinging to life, and on his return found that his wife had taken advantage of his absence to set fire to one of the family's wagons. A major cause of death at Fort Laramie and other western forts was suicide caused by the same reasons some pioneers went insane or killed themselves.I could write many pages more but I am certain the reader understands my point.

LOVE!