EMIGRANT TALES OF THE PLATTE RIVER RAIDS is a sprawling, unapologetically comprehensive book. In July 1864, as the steady stream of European settlers made their way west via the Oregon Trail and others, Northern Plains Indians began to systematically attack their wagon trains. Author Janelle Molony succeeds in creating a compendium of surviving accounts of this frequently overlooked event in American history.

The book began life as an offshoot of author Janelle Molony’s own family history research. Indeed, amateur genealogists and family historians are obviously the principal target audience. The blurb includes a list of last names featured in the book to appeal to precisely this constituency. Many of the stories and anecdotes included here aren’t especially noteworthy in and of themselves; they only really acquire resonance for those descended from the participants. Molony also acutely feels the inherent narrative imbalance of the work, and is quick to acknowledge that her account has nothing to say about the experiences of those Northern Plains Indians who took part in the raids. This admission about the deficiencies of genealogical material and family narratives can be hard to find.

The book also benefits from a short but even-handed and informative foreword from Wyoming historian Kylie Louise McCormick, who correctly points out the one-sided and contemptuous treatment Indians received at the hands of settlers and soldiers alike. Molony is likewise aware of the fact that settlers were, after all, encroaching on territory that was already settled, and avoids using such loaded terms as “massacre” to describe the attacks that resulted.

Molony’s obvious intent to leave the entire fruits of research—the book is over 500 pages long—leads to a certain glut of information, and at times the main text has the feel of a prosopography. Molony groups the settlers by the trains they traveled in, and is careful to note family relationships and occupations of those who traveled, but also such minutiae as the medical ailments they suffered from, the animals they brought with them, and so forth. In so doing, the lede gets buried at times; though one might well respond that to expect a cohesive, flowing narrative from a book that is first and foremost a historical resource is to miss the point.

It is in the nature of the material that there are more than a few tidbits of information that are tantalizingly incomplete. It would, for example, have been fascinating to know more about Andy Lawrence: a former slave who had been emancipated by the Cherokee and, with his father, joined the Kelly-Larimer train as a hired help—only to see his father killed by Indians during a raid on July 12, 1864. After heading back east to join the Union Army, he became a mason, and apparently left no records. Many other individuals emerge briefly from the mass of mundane details at moments of high drama—only to disappear again once the danger has passed, either into the obscurity of the trail or a shallow grave. Molony is alert to familial sensibilities, and treats reports of deaths with appropriate solemnity. The only misstep is the peculiar decision to render the accounts in the present tense, which jars after a while. It is, however, a small complaint. Those interested in trail history will find much here of interest and usefulness.

EMIGRANT TALES OF THE PLATTE RIVER RAIDS sees author Janelle Molony compile a thorough, blow-by-blow account of a largely forgotten aspect of nineteenth-century trail history.

~Craig Jones for IndieReader