American Ecclesiastes: The Stories of James Pattie Review

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(More customer reviews)Note: This book was later published in a paperback edition by the University of Oklahoma Press under the title JAMES PATTIE'S WEST: The Dream & the Reality. Why the title was changed is unclear.
James Pattie is remembered solely for a book he published in 1831 entitled THE PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF JAMES O. PATTIE. The book recounted his experiences as a trapper and wanderer in the Far West between 1825 and 1830, experiences he shared with his traveling companion, his father Sylvester. After trapping throughout New Mexico and Arizona, the men journeyed to California where Sylvester died in [1828]. After continuing on to San Francisco, James boarded a ship for Mexico, across which he walked by way of Mexico City, and then boarded another ship on the Gulf for New Orleans. Destitute, he was able to borrow $40 from Senator Josiah Johnston, a family friend, to pay for passage aboard a steamboat to Cincinnati. It was there that he met publisher Timothy Flint, who published Pattie's narrative.
Since the book was first published it has held the attention of historians and others interested in first-hand accounts of the early West. Often it has been disparaged as a work filled with inaccuracies, half-truths, and tall tales; it was even claimed that Pattie, with Flint's help, made the whole thing up. Richard Batman has taken a fine-toothed comb to the Narrative with the purpose of separating fact from fiction wherever possible. He is able to show that quite a bit of what Pattie wrote is indeed based in fact. His descriptions of the geography he traveled over are often remarkably accurate. Batman wonders if Pattie kept a diary of some kind, since certain details (a rainstorm, for example, that can be verified from other journals that cite the event) are too specifically drawn to be recalled years later from memory. Where he errs the most is in his depictions of his own actions and responses. Zelig-like, Pattie blended in with the background scenery, rarely if ever making an impression on those he encountered (one trapper who spent time with him remembered his horse but not him). Yet in the Narrative he puts himself in the forefront and gives himself all kinds of heroic (at least "manly") qualities. Many of these incidents occurred in California where Pattie felt he was treated with great indignities; Batman is quick to point out where they might have been figments of his imagination. He also fills out Pattie's life, making the book a biography of the man. Unfortunately, but typically it seems, Pattie vanishes from the scene shortly after his book was published, never heard from again. Batman has done a great service with this book, not only helping to clarify a major historical record, but through his own researches adding much information about Pattie and life in the Far West at the end of the 1820s. Highly recommended for anyone interested in this period in American history.


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