Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1994
Abstract
The Great Plains fascinated Pierre-Jean De Smet. When describing his favorite haunts in the broad trans-Mississippi West, De Smet's letters bulged with superlatives. He used only grand and eloquent adjectives to describe the celestial peaks of the Rocky Mountains, the spewing geysers in the Yellowstone basin, The Dalles of the Columbia River, and the freeform, contorted rock formations that sprawled across the White Cliffs of the upper Missouri River. It was the Great Plains, however, that received from Father De Smet not only some of his most dramatic prose, but also some of his most perceptive comments regarding the future direction of America. His numerous publications, moreover, and their frequent reprintings secured for De Smet an influential role in advertising the Middle Missouri during the early frontier movements into the Plains and mountainous Northwest and did much to lift the veil of mystery, for Europeans and Americans alike, surrounding the region.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 14:4 (Fall 1994). Copyright © 1994 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.