People of the Troubled Water: A Missouri River Journal - Hardcover

Nancy M. Peterson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1558380825 ISBN 13: 9781558380820

Publisher: Primer Pub, 1988

Synopsis

People of the Troubled Water focuses on stories of people involved in early years of Missouri River history. It describes the adventures of explorers Lewis and Clark, trappers John Colter and Hugh Glass, artist George Catlin and scientist John James Audubon. The Hidatsa girl, Waheenee, finds her life forever changes by smallpox, and Mormon wife Jane Richards struggles to keep her faith through an incredible winter. The Missouri's raging waters change nearly everyone who challenge them. The Overland Journal described the book as "a joy to read."

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

The Fox Indians named the Missouri River for the stout wooden canoes their people needed to survive its brutal waters. Since then it has had a variety of labels -- Hishodse, MiniSose, Anati -- all of which (claimed explorer William Clark) translated roughly to Troubled Water. Though it was American's great waterway of western migration, "its turbid, chocolate-colored flood troubled everyone who had the questionable pleasure of its company," says Peterson, "whether in bullboat, pirogue, keelboat or steamboat."   People of the Troubled Water retraces the routes of the early explorers, the traders and trappers, missionaries and military men, and the common folk who pioneered the American West. With accounts taken from their memoirs and journals, Nancy Peterson weaves a highly personal account of the westward movement from St. Louis west along the trail carved by the Missouri. Peterson's painstaking interpretation of diaries and journals brings a new perspective to the exploration of the West.   "With Lewis ahead on the river, struggling to assemble his personally designed portable leather boat, it fell to Clark to get the gear across...Close to heat prostration, his men stripped naked for relief. At every halt they dropped to the ground and were instantly asleep...They searched the western sky for the dark clouds that meant rain, but when it came it brought more punishment. Hail beat on them unmercifully and the ground became an impassable quagmire...   "Suddenly...a torrent of brown water poured into the ravine, taking rocks brush and all before it. The water rose around them almost before they could stand. Clark grabbing his gun and pouch in one hand, used the other to push Sacajawea and her babe before him up he bank..."    Peterson's meticulous research brings incredible realism to her work. 

Review:

This work includes twenty-one biographical sketches of people who used the Missouri river between 1673 and 1850. They include French, Spanish. and American explorers, traders, settlers, and travelers. Most of them are well known to historians. Some, like Daniel Boone and Lewis and Clark, are known to the casual reader. Some, including four women, are welcome newcomers. I especially enjoyed two vignettes of Mormon women: one, a young girl suffering during the, persecution of Mormons in Missouri and Illinois in the 1830; the other coping with her husband's polygamy in the 1840s. The scenes of the sketches are drawn with as much historical accuracy as wellchosen secondary sources can provide, and the characters and their situations are written with understanding and sympathy. The book is an attractive and readable work of popular history. --independent-Publisher

About this edition

• Publisher: Primer Pub
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 1558380825
• ISBN 13: 9781558380820
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 153