Book Review/Recommendation By Jerry Fetz Jim Bridger, John Bozeman, John Colter, Pierre-Jean De Smet, Malcolm Clarke, Two Bears, John Mullan, Heavy Runner, Chief Joseph, Thomas Francis Meagher, Brigham Young, Thomas Moran, Joe Kipp, Henry Dana Washburn, William Tecumsah Sherman, Phil Sheridan, Samuel Hauser, Nathaniel Pitt Langford, Teddy Roosevelt, Gustavus Cheyney Doane, and countless more famous names from 19th century Montana and western history, many of them memorialized as names of places, towns, and mountains: they are all found here in this magisterial book by George Black. Among the various things he accomplishes in this book, Black has taken these names, many of them etched in the landscape and on the maps of Montana, Wyoming, and the inland West, as well as featured in countless history books and novels of our part of the West, and placed them side-by-side or one after another in the bigger history, the larger “epic” story of our part of the American West which he tells here with vast knowledge, honesty, nuanced understanding, linguistic skill, imagination, and as a terrific story teller. The book’s title: Empire of Shadows: The Epic Story of Yellowstone, although somewhat less than clear in meaning when one starts turning the pages, is soon realized in a very impressive way by all that follows. “Empire of Shadows” suggests a story about events, people, places, and movements of history that often aren’t readily visible at first glance. “Empire” and “Epic” suggest grandeur, importance, and a long and complex story. The story of the exploration of and expeditions into Yellowstone; the difficult and unsettling tales of the conflicts between the Europeans and Americans (fur traders, gold seekers, explorers, Civil War refugees, soldiers, ranchers, railroad builders, settlers) and the original inhabitants of the region—as well as the various tribes’ interaction amongst themselves; the stories of the growth of the European-American presence (commercial forts, towns, farms and ranches, businesses and, later, industries); the down-sizing of the territory available to the Natives and the drastic diminution of their ways of life—they are all woven together by George Black into a genuine “epic story” of grand, dramatic, and (sometimes) tragic, proportions.
So where does “Yellowstone” come into this ambitious narrative? And what is meant here by “Yellowstone?” This book (thoroughly researched, with an extensive set of notes and a huge bibliography, in 5 parts, 35 chapters, 428 pages, plus a wonderful set of historic photos) can certainly be read productively and wonderfully as a marvelous and informative (and even entertaining) history of the Montana territory in the 19th century prior to statehood. But it is also, and more importantly, as the title implies, a history of “Yellowstone:” of the river, of the people and peoples who lived on or near it, crossed it, used it, oriented themselves by it; of what we have come to call the “Greater Yellowstone” area, stretching from Montana and Wyoming in the east and south to Idaho in the West; and, of course, of the explorations and the establishment of “Yellowstone National Park,” the first national park in the world. The Yellowstone River and its several tributaries are woven like threads through the entire story. Early myths ascribed to the Native tribes in the region about this frightening place; anecdotes, vignettes, and full-blown stories about the first white explorations of “the Yellowstone” and its increasing importance for the EuropeanAmericans; seeming digressions about people and issues and places removed in distance from “the Yellowstone” which gradually, however, take on significance as the history of the Montana territory unfolds between the 1830s and the 1880s and as the River (Yellowstone), region (Greater Yellowstone), and the park itself (Yellowstone Park) become historical sites, crucial symbols, and important players in the seemingly inexorable, but untidy and conflicted history of the region as it marches forward toward the 20th century: ALL of this and more is found in Empire of Shadows. And the reader is taken into the heart of the “epic” battles between the Natives (sometimes noble, sometimes not so noble) and the “manifest destiny” toting EuropeanAmericans (ditto) who intrude on the Natives, alter by accident and by design their ages-old ways of life and living, and comes out with an understanding and appreciation for the ambiguities of history that are often left out of
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