Josiah Gregg and His Vision of the Early West

The fame of Josiah Gregg, a native of Tennessee, rests chiefly on his classic account of the Santa Fe Trail, "Commerce of the Prairies" (1844), a ground-breaking work in the historiography of the American West. Six years after its publication, when Gregg had just completed a dangerous and arduous journey to the California coast, he died. Yet little was known of Gregg, the man, until his newly discovered notebooks, diaries, and letters were first published in the 1940s, together with a long biographical essay by Paul Horgan entitled "Josiah Gregg Himself." In the present volume, Mr. Horgan presents a revised version of this biographical portrait, long out of print. He adds to it an interpretation and analysis of "Commerce of the Prairies," appearing here for the first time in book form. The resulting work throws fresh light on this little-known American figure.