Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1987
Abstract
This book, "a narrative history of the American West as seen through the eyes and exploits of British sportsmen," begins with an epigraph from George Frederick Ruxton: "Although liable to an accusation of barbarism, I must confess that the very happiest moments of my life have been spent in the wilderness of the Far West" (v,iv). Ruxton was but one of scores of British sportsmen who wandered through the American plains during the nineteenth century-killing buffalo and elk, seeing (and sometimes fleeing) Indians, undergoing hardships, and generally revelling in the wildness they found beyond the frontier. After spending 1846-47 in Mexico and the American West, Ruxton returned to Europe and wrote Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains (1848) and Life in the Far West (1849), books that were well-received by the Victorians, whose appetite for vivid accounts of wilderness and wildness seemed insatiable. In this, his experience is representative of the type.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 7:1 (Winter 1987). Copyright © 1987 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.