Pattie, James O.: [Flint, Timothy, editor]:

$4,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

THE PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF JAMES O. PATTIE, OF KENTUCKY, DURING AN EXPEDITION FROM ST. LOUIS, THROUGH THE VAST REGIONS BETWEEN THAT PLACE AND THE PACIFIC OCEAN, AND THENCE BACK THROUGH THE CITY OF ... The "second edition" of Pattie's narrative, which is the first printed account of an overland journey to California. This printing could more accurately be called a first edition, second issue, as it is made up entirely of sheets from the first edition and differentiated only by a cancel titlepage. Wagner-Camp writes that this issue was created when E.H. Flint, son of the editor Timothy Flint, came into possession of the disappointingly numerous unsold sheets of the first and replaced the titlepage with a new date and his own imprint.The Pattie account is one of the classics of Western Americana. The author and his father Sylvester Pattie were engaged in the fur trade in the Southwest in the 1820s. In 1828 they went overland to California, only the second American group to make the trip by a southern route (the first was Jedediah Smith in 1826) and the first to publish an account of their journey. The party experienced difficulty and dangers trapping along the Gila River, eventually crossing into California. There they were arrested by California Governor José Maria Echeandia and jailed in San Diego, where the elder Pattie perished in his cell. At that point, "James had some knowledge of vaccination and probably saved himself further imprisonment by being able to curb, to some ex

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