Review

H.W. Brands is a serious historian who writes in the story-telling style of the late Stephen Ambrose. The story of the development of the United States west of the Mississippi River is familiar to most readers but refreshingly told, so that one follows the flowing narrative easily and finds it filled with interesting tidbits that add color and human interest: Kit Carson and the New Mexico volunteers holding off the Comanches and Kiowas at the Battle of Adobe Walls; the lives and deaths of missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman in the Oregon Territory; the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857, whites slaughtering whites; resistors like Quanah Parker, Concomly, and Crazy Horse; and those brought in to put them down - Sheridan, Miles, and the contemptible Custer; the riches-to-rags life of the California land baron Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo; the pathos of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce; and the great cattle Die Off in the winter of 1887. Brands shines light on these people, places, and events with writing that is compelling and intense. But Dreams of El Dorado is not just a story. Through the book runs Brands' ironydriven thesis that though the west is known for its individualism, it owes its existence to the interventions of the Federal government. Citing the heroics of John Wesley Powell, John Charles Fremont, and others, Brands notes that, "regions skirted by the early settlers as too remote or inhospitable yielded to exploration, typically sponsored by the Federal government." He demonstrates convincingly that, "the west [was] acquired by the national government - by treaty and war from the Indians, by purchase from France, by war and purchase from Mexico, by diplomacy with Britain." He presents numerous examples of government action that buttress his thesis: the 1853 Gadsden Purchase that enabled the railroad to go through southern New Mexico and Arizona; The critical Homestead Act and Pacific Railroad Act, both in 1863, that would vastly increase settlement in the region; and the Newlands Act in 1901 that irrigated the Great American Desert. The author's conclusion? After ridding the west of Mexicans and Natives, "the creation of the American West as the AmericanWest (ital. author's), was arguably the greatest accomplishment in the history of the American Federal government." While there will be many who disagree with such an assertion, Brands acknowledges the "Frontier Thesis" of Frederick Jackson Turner that the multi-phase development of the west over the better part of the century, "afforded individual opportunity, leveled social differences, [and] nurtured democracy. If not for the frontier, America would have been much like Europe." If that's the case, then all Americans owe as much to the west as it owes to Washington.

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