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Exploration of the West
Motivating Factors for Westward Migration

Give Your Heart to the Hawks by Winfred Blevins  Los Angeles:  Nash Publishing, 1973

     Winfred Blevins explains, "This book is a personal tribute to the first Westerners - the men who moved ahead of the American frontier in the first half of the nineteenth century, who trapped and hunted and simply lived in the Rocky Mountains before anyone else though of going into the West - the mountain men."
     In this remarkable book, Winfred Blevins, one of the West's foremost writers of historical fiction, pays tribute to the rugged men who set the stage, though for the most part not intentionally, for the influx of the hundreds of thousands of settlers that followed.  While the explorer John Fremont  is given credit for charting much of the West, it was trappers like Kit Carson that showed him the way. 
     The book is a collection of short stories that builds on the legends left by many of the mountain men themselves.  The stories are essentially true, and Blevins sites numerous, credible sources that provide substantiation for adventures so remarkable one might not otherwise believe them.  The stories are embellished with fictional dialogue, but Blevins sticks close to the facts, and in doing so, teaches us about the men who took the first steps in taming the West.
     For the most part, taming the west was not their intention.  In the early 1840s, as trapping became unprofitable and hordes of settlers embarked on the Oregon trail, many left their lives of solitude to earn a living as trail guides or army scouts.  They did it to remain in the land they loved. 
     When possible, the mountain men coexisted peaceably with the Indians whose land they had invaded.  Some took Indian wives.  However, for a few Indian tribes, most notably the Blackfeet, their presence was unwelcome.  Blevins shares many of the deadly confrontations between the white mountain men and the Indians who challenged their presence.
     From "shinin" to "starvin" times, Blevins relates the elation of the men who enjoyed unparalleled freedom living in the midst of the unspoiled beauty of the Rocky Mountain West.  But they paid a terrible price, and Blevins in stark, often graphic terms, tells the stories of the many hardships they endured in exchange for that freedom.  As Blevins explains, "The accepted wholeheartedly the notion that whatever might come to them, good or bad, was of their own doing.  In short, they accepted ultimate aloneness.  That was what made them sovereign, and heroic."

Comment
     While many books have been written about the mountain men, Give Your Heart to the Hawks, is among the best.  It reads like a novel, yet it is well-documented and is structured in a manner that is informative, yet very entertaining.  Organized as a collection of roughly chronological short stories, each chapter is preceded by a short essays, called interludes, that provides background to help the reader better understand the context of each story. 
     Readers should be aware that the book does contain violent, often graphic descriptions of the battles between the Indians and the mountain men.  Blevins uses language from the mountain man era, but it adds color to the story, generally without impeding our understanding.  Some readers may be offended by occasional coarse language, and the use of racist terms like "niggur."  However, the use of the word was much broader (it could refer to anyone not like them) and less inflammatory in the early nineteenth century.

Reading Level:  NA, but I estimate 9 - 10
Interest Level:  Young adult to adult
326 pages

Supports the Following Instructional Objectives:

Trace the Exploration and Settlement of the West

Identify the Motivating Factors that led to the American Westward Migration

Excerpt

     It was God's country.  Except God stayed on his own side of the Missouri River.  No churches here to cramp a man, nor preachers to tell him what to do, nor stern-eyed, strict women to look at him mean when he did what was natural.  Nary a policeman to clap him in jail.  Nary a law to push him around.  Nary a lawyer to fool him fancy, not a revenuer to steal his money for the government.  Not a man to answer to.  And God's finest sculpturin's to roam in.  And if God had made the livin' a mite dangerous, wasn't that part of the fun?
     So, if the things of civilization had got a bit expensive, what did that count?  If a child could trap for half his life and go back to the settlements broke, what did that count?  They might have told their families that they were heading west to get their share of fortune that would make the mines of Peru seem puny.  They might even get Jed Smith to write a letter home for them declaring that they would come back rich.  But most of them didn't have a mind to go back, rich or otherwise.  Money was something for the settlements, and they didn't want the settlements.  They were learning that whatever they had come to the Stony Mountains for, it wasn't beaver.  (page 166)

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