2003, Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 430 pages
In researching the life of Liver-Eating Johnson, it is necessary to research the trapping era of the Old West, and to do that it is necessary to look into the Louisiana Purchase and the first expeditions charting this new territory.
A Wilderness So Immense is not an adventure story or an account of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, but rather a narrative of the political intrigues that resulted in the expansion of the fledgling United States into a continental power. The book is provided with period documents and one of the best period maps. The story includes information on the planning of government buildings in the early republic and the geopolitical trials faced by Thomas Jefferson. Rivalries between the maritime New England states who wished for the Mississippi watershed to remain “locked up” so that interior trade could not circumvent New England ports, and the Virginians of an adventurous mindset who sought to push the Spanish out of the Mississippi, hinted already, in 1803, that the North and the South were not going to make good political bedfellows.
The cast of characters include the French botanist and spy Andre Michaux, “Conqueror of the West” George Rogers Clark [older brother of the expedition leader], savage wilderness commander and shady dealer who was organizing a private invasion of Spanish New Orleans, a handful of Spanish officials such as Carondelet, Governor Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, and Juan Ventura Morales who threw an infamous stone into the Mississippi thinking the act would deter a butcher like Clark, Kentucky Governor Isaac Shelby, Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture, the megalomaniacal Corsican stump-jumper Napoleon Bonaparte, the doomed French General Leclerc, James Monroe, and a conniving gaggle of Founding Fathers who I would not have bought a used carriage from.
Illustrations and portraits provide capsule biographies on the important historical figures mentioned in the book. Mister Kukla, an expert on documentary evidence from the Post Revolutionary period of U.S. history, does a nice job of sketching the unlikely deal that bounced the hot potato that was an immense wilderness between the French, Spanish and Americans, with the global British menace, the specter of slave revolts and the danger of rogue American adventurers looming over the shrewd-dealing parties to this world-shaping exchange.
And through it all, the only people who did not have a voice in the matter were the only people who had a legitimate claim, the people who lived there. That matter would be settled at the hands of lesser men, whose words are not often found recorded in books, men like the one who became known as The Liver-Eater.
Too true that the real players are so many times over looked. They are the unspoken in our histor. If one had money, to say, back an exploration, they (the esplorers) became renown in our history books. Hell, who hasn't heard about Lewis and Clark or other famous Custer men?
But, how much do you, or anyone, know about Daniel Boone's travels in the 1700's? How far west did he travel and explore while leaving 6 - 7 kids and a wife behind? Hell, he was living in what is now Kentucky and traveled for almost 5 years without ever returning home. In his adventures he declared seeing "Big Mangy Cows on ground as far as the eye can see, and water spewing from the ground by the surounding mountains." Sounds like the prairie and Yellowstone to me. But who knew it?
Liver-Eater made his own way as did thousands of others of his kind. Liver-Eater you, Ishmael and I will slice and dice to fruition to figure out fact or fiction or inbetween. Money, or those who had monitary backing, have always played a significant role of "Who's who in America"? God did I really say that? I just dated myself. Sorry...not!
Ben Rumson
There is an excellent biography of Daniel Boone that came out in the late 90s. I forget the title. My favorite anecdote was when Dan returned after a couple years hunting, to find Rebecca with a small child. Rather than be angry at her infidelity, he looked around at the neighbors, who were all his kin, and declared, among other approving words, "It's a Boone."