Astoria by Peter Stark

 In the year 1808, German immigrant John Jacob Astor wrote a letter to President Thomas Jefferson suggesting Astor’s vision for American control of the fur trade on the North American continent.  In the years leading up to 1810, Astor, already having a significant footprint in the fur trade of upstate New York and northward, put his vision into action with the organization of two groups, one sea-going and one overland.  The two groups would meet at the Columbia River to there establish the young United States and Astor himself as major players--if not the only players--in the lucrative fur trapping-and-trading business of the Pacific Northwest.

The tale of John Jacob Astor’s visionary undertaking is as good an adventure story as you’ll ever read.  It is also a good entry point for exploring America’s inexorable push westward as the nation sought to fulfill its “manifest destiny” and extend the American nation from coast to coast.  

The opening chapters of the book deal with the sea-faring party of the Tonquin under the leadership of the sternly impersonal navy man, Captain Jonathan Thorn.  These chapters alone tell some hair-raising adventures! After rounding Cape Horn, stopping in Hawaii and losing some eight men, Thorn finally piloted the Tonquin across the bar and sailed up the Columbia River in March of 1811.   

Meanwhile, the overland party led by Wilson Price Hunt followed well behind schedule and didn’t come paddling down the Columbia River until February of 1812.  Theirs was an equally if not more hair-raising trip and the author does justice to the successes, trials and psychological intrigues of both parties with detailed and engaging narrative.  With all the intervening drama covered, we are brought up to the War of 1812 and the effect this international conflict had of essentially cancelling out much of the Astorians’ gains in the area.  The author discusses the significance of Astoria in the nation’s early history and gives a helpful follow-up summary on what happened to some of the more prominent Astorians.

None other than Washington Irving wrote the original account of Astoria at Mr. Astor’s request (and at Mr. Astor’s home at present-day location 87^th Street and York Avenue, NYC).  His book is entitled Astoria, or, Anecdotes of an Enterprise Beyond the Rocky Mountains and was published to acclaim and popularity in 1836.  Irving made use of diaries and had also the advantage of personal interviews. 

Our current author, Peter Stark, used Irving’s work, minus the personal interviews of course, and other sources and added some nice signature touches of his own to the telling of the Astorian enterprise.  Mr. Stark grew up in the western environs and seems very familiar with the great outdoors having sailed and canoed with his father, and presumably, having done some hiking, camping and maybe mountain-climbing as well.  Stark went on-site to the Snake River, the Bighorn Mountains, the Blue Grass Mountains, the Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island and other places to steep himself in the atmosphere in which the events of his book unfolded. 

I found the book to be a page-turner and very good reading even with occasional detours to look up dates and places.  The pictures and maps could have been better in my opinion.  The only possible quibble I might have is with what appeared to be the almost obligatory discussion in the Epilogue of whether or not John Jacob Astor was a mean capitalist with no feeling for the men who suffered and died for his cause.  That line of thinking serves only to cloud the facts and politicize history.

You will be glad to know that I read this book on the recommendation of a dining companion at a pleasant evening gathering. At the time, I was reading (actually re-reading) Bernard de Voto’s colorful and endlessly informative  The Year of Decision 1846 along with probably another book or two about the Oregon Trail and the westward expansion (see below).  My dining companion had just read Astoria.   I knew that we were reading about the same ball of wax but I couldn’t line up the people, places and dates until now when I got about a third of the way in to  Stark’s book. 

Astor’s venture was part of the beginning of the westward expansion. The year 1846 heralded its completion. You might say that I started my westward reading journey from the wrong direction!  By 1846, Astoria had faded into history and America’s Manifest Destiny had just about played itself out.  Texas and its vast miles had joined the Union in 1845, the Mexican-American War would yield us California, Arizona and other western land by 1848.  The disputed Oregon territory, site of Astoria, was finally ours in 1846, settled between President Polk and Great Britain at the 49^th parallel. Americans were about to begin the rush to California and hundreds moved along the Oregon Trail to the fertile Willamette Valley while the Santa Fe Trail carried others to the Southwest. 

I’m certainly pointed in the right direction now. The story of America’s push westward and the lives of the mountain men, trappers and traders, plus the visionaries and pioneers, the opportunists and wanderers who led the way is exciting and many-layered in all it has to reveal about how the American Republic and the American spirit intertwined to build the nation we have today. Should you be interested, allow me to list my to-date curated parade of books on this exciting phase of American history, a parade to which I can now add Astoria by Peter Stark.

 

Coda:

Accounts, diaries, etc. of the very early explorers to be compiled:   

Fr.Marquette and trader Joliet, 1673; Great Lakes to the Gulf for France

Francisco de Coronado; 1540-42; SW U.S. and Kansas

Sieur de LaSalle; 1682; Great Lakes, lower Mississippi, La Louisiane for France

            Alexander MacKenzie   early explorer who crossed the Rockies in Canada

The Year of Decision 1846             Bernard De Voto

Two Years Before the Mast            Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

Across the Plains in 1844            Catherine Sager

The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate

                                                 Eliza Donner Houghton

Across the Plains with the Donner Party

                                                 Virginia Reed Murphy

Wah-To-Yah and the Taos Trail

                                                  Lewis Hector Garrard

History of the Donner Party     Charles Fayette McGlashan

A Life Wild and Perilous          Robert Utley

The American Fur Trade          Hiram Chittenden

Undaunted Courage                  Stephen Ambrose

Astoria                                      Peter Stark

Astoria , or, Anecdotes of an Enterprise Beyond the Rocky Mountains

                                                  Washington Irving                               

Astoria & Empire                     James P. Ronda

Astorian Adventures                 Alfred Seton

Robert Stuart’s Narratives             in The Discovery of the Oregon Trail 

     Philip Ashton Rollins, ed.

Adventures of the First Settlers on the Columbia River    

     Alexander Ross

 

You may also wish to consult the report I wrote in 7^th grade titled “Trappers, Traders and Mountain Men”  😊