Saddle and Canoe

At first glance Theodore Winthrop didn’t look like a hardened equestrian adventurer when he set out to travel across Washington Territory in the early 1850s. The twenty-five-year-old was a recent graduate of Yale and a confirmed East Coast intellectual. Winthrop didn’t let his education handicap him however. Instead he set out to ride horses and canoes across some of the most remote portions of the early United States. The resultant book, “Saddle and Canoe,” is a vibrant picture of frontier life in the Pacific Northwest and covers the author’s travels along the Straits of Juan De Fuca, on Vancouver Island, across the Naches Pass, and on to The Dalles, in Oregon Territory. Throughout his journey Winthrop spent much of his time among both pioneers and Indians, whose picturesque descriptions are found within the pages of this historic travel account. Never one to hold back his opinions, the Yankee traveler thus regales the reader with personal observations and blunt honesty on a host of topics, people and places. Illustrated with drawings of the period, “Saddle and Canoe” also contains a vocabulary of the Chinook Indian language which Winthrop used during the course of this historic journey. A treasure to read, the book will be of interest to students of both the horse and history.