On the Pony Express Trail

On the Pony Express Trail
Author: Scott Alumbaugh
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2023-06-01
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1493068709

The Pony Express has a hold on the American imagination wildly out of proportion to its actual role in the history of the West. The system of transporting mail to California by a relay of lone riders on swift horses ran less than eighteen months in 1860-1861 and failed by every measure of success. Nevertheless, it has become the most iconic symbol of the West. Scott Alumbaugh was so taken with the Pony Express that at age 62 he bikepacked 1,400 miles of the trail from St. Joseph, Missouri to Salt Lake City, Utah. Alumbaugh’s journey took five weeks on a route that was mostly off-road, sometimes through remote territory. Along the way he came to see the celebrated Pony Express as a collection of fables based on a few historical facts and reshaped into a symbol of the spirit that “won the West.” On The Pony Express Trail: One Man’s Bikepacking Journey to Discover History from a Different Kind of Saddle recounts Scott Alumbaugh’s experience bikepacking the Pony Express Trail during the summer of 2021. The narrative follows his day-to-day experiences and impressions—the challenges, the sites he visited, the country he rode through, and the interactions with the people he met—while taking a fresh look at the real Pony Express in the context of mid-1800s historical events along the trail: The Mexican-American, Utah, and Paiute Wars; the California and Pike’s Peak gold rushes; the overland emigration of hundreds of thousands to Oregon and California; the exodus of tens of thousands of Mormons to Utah; and the increasingly contentious fight over slavery along with the looming threat of civil war.

Buffalo Bill's America

Buffalo Bill's America
Author: Louis S. Warren
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 674
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 030742510X

William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody was the most famous American of his age. He claimed to have worked for the Pony Express when only a boy and to have scouted for General George Custer. But what was his real story? And how did a frontiersman become a worldwide celebrity? In this prize-winning biography, acclaimed author Louis S. Warren explains not only how Cody exaggerated his real experience as an army scout and buffalo hunter, but also how that experience inspired him to create the gigantic, traveling spectacle known as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. A dazzling mix of Indians, cowboys, and vaqueros, they performed on two continents for three decades, offering a surprisingly modern view of the United States and a remarkably democratic version of its history. This definitive biography reveals the genius of America’s greatest showman, and the startling history of the American West that drove him and his performers to the world stage.

Yale Series in Economic and Financial History

Yale Series in Economic and Financial History
Author: Mark W. Geiger
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2010-07-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0300151527

Mark Geiger explores a financial conspiracy at the start of the American Civil War, the impact this had on the intensity of the guerilla campaigns in Missouri & the enduring ramifications for that state through the period of Reconstruction.

The Exile's Song

The Exile's Song
Author: Sally McKee
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2017-01-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0300224699

The extraordinary story of African American composer Edmond D d , raised in antebellum New Orleans, and his remarkable career in France In 1855, Edmond D d , a free black composer from New Orleans, emigrated to Paris. There he trained with France s best classical musicians and went on to spend thirty-six years in Bordeaux leading the city s most popular orchestras. How did this African American, raised in the biggest slave market in the United States, come to compose ballets for one of the best theaters outside of Paris and gain recognition as one of Bordeaux s most popular orchestra leaders? Beginning with his birth in antebellum New Orleans in 1827 and ending with his death in Paris in 1901, Sally McKee vividly recounts the life of this extraordinary man. From the Crescent City to the City of Light and on to the raucous music halls of Bordeaux, this intimate narrative history brings to life the lost world of exiles and travelers in a rapidly modernizing world that threatened to leave the most vulnerable behind.

The Way to the West

The Way to the West
Author: Elliott West
Publisher: UNM Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 1995
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780826316530

Elegantly assembles the environmental, social, cultural, political, and economic history of the Great Plains in the 19th century.

Presenting Buffalo Bill

Presenting Buffalo Bill
Author: Candace Fleming
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2016-09-20
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1596437634

Everyone knows the name Buffalo Bill, but few these days know what he did or, in some cases, didn't do. Was he a Pony Express rider? Did he serve Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn? Did he scalp countless Native Americans, or did he defend their rights? This, the first significant biography of Buffalo Bill Cody for younger readers in many years, explains it all. With copious archival illustrations and a handsome design, Presenting Buffalo Bill makes the great showman come alive for new generations. Extensive back matter, bibliography, and source notes complete the package. This title has Common Core connections.

Tecumseh and the Prophet

Tecumseh and the Prophet
Author: Peter Cozzens
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 577
Release: 2021-08-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0525434887

"An insightful, unflinching portrayal of the remarkable siblings who came closer to altering the course of American history than any other Indian leaders."⁠ —H.W. Brands, author of The Zealot and the Emancipator The first biography of the great Shawnee leader to make clear that his misunderstood younger brother, Tenskwatawa, was an equal partner in the last great pan-Indian alliance against the United States. Until the Americans killed Tecumseh in 1813, he and his brother Tenskwatawa were the co-architects of the broadest pan-Indian confederation in United States history. In previous accounts of Tecumseh's life, Tenskwatawa has been dismissed as a talentless charlatan and a drunk. But award-winning historian Peter Cozzens now shows us that while Tecumseh was a brilliant diplomat and war leader--admired by the same white Americans he opposed--it was Tenskwatawa, called the "Shawnee Prophet," who created a vital doctrine of religious and cultural revitalization that unified the disparate tribes of the Old Northwest. Detailed research of Native American society and customs provides a window into a world often erased from history books and reveals how both men came to power in different but no less important ways. Cozzens brings us to the forefront of the chaos and violence that characterized the young American Republic, when settlers spilled across the Appalachians to bloody effect in their haste to exploit lands won from the British in the War of Independence, disregarding their rightful Indian owners. Tecumseh and the Prophet presents the untold story of the Shawnee brothers who retaliated against this threat--the two most significant siblings in Native American history, who, Cozzens helps us understand, should be writ large in the annals of America.