The Undiscovered Country: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Shaping of the American West - Hardcover

Hutton, Paul Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1524746134 ISBN 13: 9781524746131

Publisher: Dutton, 2025

Synopsis

New York Times Bestseller
A Wall Street Journal Top Ten Book of the Year
A True West Magazine Best Historical Non-Fiction Book and Best Author of the Year
Western Heritage Award for "Outstanding Nonfiction Book"
Winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Historical Nonfiction
Winner of the Will Rogers Medallion Award

From the author of The Apache Wars, the true story of the American West, revealing how American ambition clashed with the realities of violence and exploitation

The epic of the American West became a tale of progress, redemption, and glorious conquest that came to shape the identity of a new nation. Over time a darker story emerged—one of ghastly violence and environmental spoliation that stained this identity.

The Undiscovered Country strips away the layers of myth to reveal the true story of this first epoch of American history. From the forests of Pennsylvania and Kentucky to the snow-crested California Sierras, and from the harsh deserts of the Southwest to the buffalo range of the Great Plains, Paul Andrew Hutton masterfully chronicles a story that defined America and its people. From Braddock’s 1755 defeat to the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, he unfolds a grand narrative steeped in romantic impulses and tragic consequences.

Hutton uses seven main protagonists—Daniel Boone, Red Eagle, Davy Crockett, Mangas Coloradas, Kit Carson, Sitting Bull, and William “Buffalo Bill” Cody—as the biographical threads by which to weave a tapestry across seven generations, revealing a story of heroic conquest and dark tragedy, of sacrifice and greed, and of man-made wonders and environmental ruin.

The American frontier movement has proven eternally fascinating around the world—the subject of countless books, paintings, poems, television shows, and films. The Undiscovered Country reveals the truth behind America’s great creation myth.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Andrew Hutton is the author of The Apache Wars. He is an American cultural historian, author, documentary writer, and television personality. He is also Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of New Mexico, a former executive director of the Western History Association, and a past president of the Western Writers of America. He currently serves as the Tate Chair of Western History and curator, Buffalo Bill Museum in the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

Death on the Monongahela

Early in the spring of 1774, a solitary figure crossed westward over Kane's Gap into Powell's Valley, far beyond the fragile line of English frontier settlements to the east. Daniel Boone, his hair plaited and clubbed up in Indian fashion, garbed in black-dyed deerskin, had come in search of the rude grave of his eldest son. James Boone and six companions had been killed by a band of renegade Shawnee, Delaware, and Cherokee Indians in October 1773 while hurrying forward with pack animals to rejoin his father's party of Kentucky-bound emigrants. James had called pitifully for his family in his death agony as a Shawnee called Big Jim delighted in torturing him. The slaughter had momentarily ended Boone's dream of a settlement in Kentucky.

The dead had been buried quickly, wrapped only in sheets, and now Boone journeyed alone to this westernmost tip of Virginia to rebury them. His worst fears were soon realized, for the graves had been disturbed by wolves. Under a darkening sky he rewrapped his son's mangled remains in his saddle blanket and reburied him. He wept over the grave as a storm broke above him. "The melancholy of his feelings," his son Nathan later recounted, "mingled with the howling of the storm and the gloominess of the place made him feel worse than ever in his life." Saddling his horse, he mounted and rode in a direction unnatural to his restless spirit-eastward into the evening shadows.

The death of his eldest son proved to be but one of a tragic string of blood payments that Daniel Boone would make to open the American West. In time he will come to be heralded as an American Moses leading the people to their western promised land. His personal travail will be embraced by writers, artists, poets, and filmmakers across the generations to create an epic that becomes the grand creation myth for the founding of a pioneer nation.

Born in what would become Berks County, Pennsylvania, on November 2, 1734 (or October 22 by the Old Style calendar), Daniel was the sixth of Squire and Sarah (Morgan) Boone's eleven children. His Quaker father had come to William Penn's colony in 1713 in search of religious freedom. But Squire Boone, angered when chastised by the Exeter Meeting of Friends for allowing two of his children to marry outside the church, left the faith and the colony. He took his family to Virginia in 1750 and then to North Carolina, where they settled on the Yadkin River.

By the time the family moved down the Great Valley of Virginia to the Yadkin, young Boone had already made a reputation in Pennsylvania as an accomplished hunter and marksman. The forest, so frightful to others, had early beckoned to the boy. He disdained his father's weaving and blacksmith shop for the freedom he found in the woods. This way of life was in sharp contrast to the rigid sanctity of the Quakers. The natural rhythms of the land appealed to him far more than the contrived rules of the settlements.

Young Daniel's formal schooling was limited, coming to an abrupt end after the teenager knocked down his Irish schoolteacher when the scholar attempted to cane him for some minor transgression. "It's all right, John," Squire Boone declared to his brother after much sober Quaker reflection, "let the girls do the spelling and Dan will do the shooting, and between you and me that is what we most need."

Despite his disdain for formal education, Daniel was not illiterate. He participated in daily readings from the Bible with his family, and like so many on the frontier learned to read in that manner. At first he could but barely scrawl his name, but in time he developed a decent if highly individualistic style of writing. The rules of grammar and syntax could no more contain his restless spirit than the pioneer settlements.

In 1750, with his friend Henry Miller, who was Squire Boone's blacksmith apprentice, Boone pursued his first long hunt. The boys followed the Roanoke Gap through the Blue Ridge and hunted along the Virginia-North Carolina boundary with great success. Deerskins were a valuable frontier commodity-as good as cash-and the terms "buck" and "dollar" quickly became synonymous. Thirty thousand deerskins were exported from North Carolina alone in 1753. The hunters' quarry was primarily the white-tailed deer, and they sought them when the skin was said to be "in the red," usually from April to the first frost. Boone and Miller hunted and trapped for months, eventually selling their hides and furs in Philadelphia. Miller later recalled that he and Boone went on a three-week "general jamboree or frolick" and spent every dollar they had earned. Miller determined to reform but noted that Boone had no such intention, being "very profligate." From 1750 on Boone was a professional hunter.

Even a young hunter in the distant Yadkin Valley could not escape the pull of international events when, in 1755, the long-festering rivalry between England and France over the rich fur trade with the Natives of the Great Lakes and Ohio River Valley erupted into war. George Washington, a Virginia militia officer but two years older than Boone, had lit the spark the year before.

Virginia lieutenant governor Robert Dinwiddie had been ordered by the king's ministers to repel any French movement onto lands claimed by the Crown. The governor decided to send an emissary to the French with a warning for them to keep out of the Ohio Country. Washington, an inexperienced but eager Virginia militia major, seemed to many an odd choice for such a delicate diplomatic assignment. Dinwiddie, however, recognized the superior characteristics in Washington that others would later come to appreciate. The twenty-one-year-old colonial officer was one of the few Virginians with an affinity for this western country. Washington's surveying work from 1748 to 1750 in the Shenandoah Valley had given him frontier experience as well as a keen eye for the future value of these western lands.

The king's ministers were charmed by the idea of blocking French influence in the western country, and so in 1749 the Crown granted to the Ohio Company 200,000 acres of land somewhere west of the mountains along the "branches of the Mississippi." While the Virginians were obsessed with land, British interests centered squarely on capturing the fur trade with the Ohio Valley tribes. Fur was to eighteenth-century Englishmen what oil would be to their descendants 150 years later. The company, whose sole purpose was the development of lands on the upper Ohio River claimed by Virginia, was founded in 1748 by the first families of the colony, including Dinwiddie and Washington's older half brother Lawrence. Unlike their northern colonial cousins, they did not look to the sea and commerce in order to prosper but rather thought only of more land, more enslaved people, and more expansive plantations. They were joined by English investors with dreams of creating something akin to a new East India Company or Hudson's Bay Company. The only obstacles to these speculative fantasies were the Natives and their French allies.

Major Washington, guided by the experienced frontiersman Christopher Gist, departed Williamsburg on November 1, 1753, with but a handful of companions. He was under orders to deliver Dinwiddie's letter to the French commander of Fort LeBoeuf (some five hundred miles to the northwest, fifteen miles south of Lake Erie). Gist had been one of the principal negotiators the previous year, along with George Croghan of Pennsylvania, of the 1752 Treaty of Logstown, by which the Iroquois had sold their ambiguous claim to the Ohio Valley to the British. He had also scouted out western lands for Lawrence Washington. Gist was held in high regard by the younger Washington as well. "He has had extensive dealings with the Indians, is in great esteem among them, well acquainted with their manners and customs, is indefatigable, and patient, most excellent qualities indeed, where Indians are concerned," he later wrote.

The Ohio Company was anxious to quickly establish a fort and then a settlement at the Forks of the Ohio (present-day Pittsburgh, where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers merge to form the Ohio), for which the Crown promised them 300,000 more acres. No one seemed much bothered by Native ownership of this land, although some of the Tidewater aristocrats agreed with Virginia planter and councilman William Byrd II's assessment of the potential new settlers when he fretted in 1736 over the temper and breeding of uncouth frontier folk such as the Boones, who "swarm like the Goths and Vandals of old" down the Shenandoah.

Gist arranged councils between young Washington and prominent tribal leaders Tanaghrisson of the Senecas, also often called the Half King because he represented the authority of the Six Nations, and Shingas of the Delawares in order to request their cooperation in his mission to the French. They were helpful, but these maneuvers also increased the anxiety of some of the Ohio tribes over British intentions and moved them even closer to their French trading partners. Despite their concerns, Tanaghrisson and three other chiefs went north with Washington and Gist as a protective escort.

On a frosty December morning-in terms of both weather and diplomacy-the colonial major delivered Governor Dinwiddie's letter to Captain Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre at Fort LeBoeuf. For the French there was far more at stake than their lucrative fur trade. The British colonies had already swelled to over a million and half inhabitants, while New France could barely muster 55,000 souls. If British expansion was not halted, they might well sweep aside the French and their Native allies and move on to threaten the Spanish to the southwest. The imperial designs of the great powers now hung in the balance.

Dinwiddie's letter demanding that the trespassing French immediately depart the Ohio Country was met with courteous contempt by the captain, and Washington was soon on his way back to Williamsburg. Despite the intense difficulties of the journey, the young officer paid close attention to the land and river systems. His January report to the governor asserted that the French were undoubtedly plotting a movement south to the Forks of the Ohio, a position Washington felt vital to the overall strategic control of the Ohio Country. He was, of course, absolutely correct.

By the middle of April, Washington, promoted by Dinwiddie to lieutenant colonel, was on his way back to the Forks of the Ohio with a ragtag band of 186 untrained militia troops. Dinwiddie had also employed the services of George Croghan and his partner Andrew Montour to both supply flour to Washington's command and recruit Indian allies. On June 1 the governor appointed Croghan as interpreter for the expedition and urged Washington to rely on him. Washington assured the governor that he would be "particularly careful in consulting Mr. Croghan and Mr. Montour, by whom I shall be advised in all Indian affairs agreeably to your direction." This began an increasingly testy relationship between Washington and Croghan.

Events quickly began to overtake Washington's plans. By May 24, when he reached a boggy valley known as Great Meadows, the young officer had already been greeted by members of a colonial advance party sent to construct the proposed British fort at the Forks. They reported that five hundred French soldiers with eighteen cannon had confronted them at the Forks and forced their retreat. The French were now busily constructing a formidable bastion that they called Fort Duquesne. Gist arrived on May 27 to report a party of thirty-five Frenchmen advancing on Washington's camp. A Seneca warrior named Silver Heels soon also reached the camp with a message from Tanaghrisson of the French advance. He urged Washington to hurriedly join with him to block the Frenchmen.

Tanaghrisson was playing a dangerous game and cleverly using the young militia officer as his pawn. His position as the Iroquois Confederacy's appointed overlord among the Ohio tribes had been undercut by the French advance, so that many of his followers had drifted away. He needed to strike a blow against the French in order to restore his leadership position within the powerful Iroquois Confederacy.

Washington advanced with forty men through a heavy rain to meet Tanaghrisson and his handful of warriors not far from the French advance camp. By dawn Washington had the little encampment surrounded and as the Frenchmen crawled out of their blankets someone opened fire; each side, of course, blamed the other. One of the Iroquois warriors later claimed that it was Washington who fired the first shot. The French fled in confusion only to be met by Tanaghrisson's warriors. Within minutes nine Frenchmen were dead and twenty-two were made prisoners.

The wounded ensign who had commanded the French force was brought before Washington. He declared himself but an emissary and attempted to deliver his message that the English must depart this French country. As he was speaking-in French, which Washington did not understand-Tanaghrisson stepped forward and split open the ensign's skull with his tomahawk. As Washington looked on in horror, the Seneca sachem washed his hands in the French ensign's brains while his warriors slaughtered the wounded. And thus, with a single tomahawk blow, did Tanaghrisson incite the Seven Years' War between France and England, as well as the forty-year conflict between the Americans and the Native tribes for possession of the Ohio Country.

Washington retreated back to Great Meadows and hurriedly began construction of the rather pathetic little stockade that he named Fort Necessity. Croghan, with some military stores, joined him there on June 12. Washington dispatched his twenty-one French prisoners to Dinwiddie along with a belabored report of events that sought to cover up the murder of the ensign. He cautioned the governor not to listen to anything the prisoners might say.

Two hundred Virginians soon arrived at Washington's fort with nine small cannon followed by a company of British regulars from South Carolina with a much-needed herd of forty cattle. Emboldened by these reinforcements, Washington foolishly decided to advance against Fort Duquesne. He left the regulars to defend the fort, since the captain commanding refused to take orders from a colonial militia officer. He expected to be joined by hundreds of Ohio Indians, but at a council arranged by Croghan and Gist he quickly learned that they wanted nothing to do with his plan. Shingas and his Delawares refused to join Washington, and the Shawnees with him quickly departed as well. Croghan could not persuade his Native friends to remain, for they had decided upon neutrality. Tanaghrisson, realizing that his gambit had failed, hurriedly withdrew his people as well. The Half King blamed young Washington for the Indian withdrawal.

Washington, deserted by his Indian allies, wisely decided to retreat back to Fort Necessity. He was pursued by six hundred French regulars and Canadian militia with a hundred Native allies. Commanding this French force was Captain Louis Coulon de Villiers, the brother of the slain emissary. He was determined to extract vengeance. Washington's exhausted command reached Fort Necessity on July 1 and hurriedly attempted to improve the defenses around the frail outpost. The superior French force attacked two days later, and by the end of the day a third of Washington's men were dead or wounded.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dutton
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1524746134
• ISBN 13: 9781524746131
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 576