William Lewis Manly is best known for his book, Death Valley in ’49, a travel narrative about his trek to California in 1849. At one point, Manly chose to ride the Green River from Wyoming to its junction with the Colorado River, and then planned to navigate the Colorado as far as possible before debarking and finishing up in California. Fortunately, when his buffeted adventurers reached the Green River Crossing, just short of the Colorado, he encountered a band of Western Ute traders led by the well known raider and trader, Chief Wákara.
The meeting was fortuitous, for the trail-wise chief was well versed in the territory and the trail to California. His advice to not continue down the river, but to take the better-known Spanish Trail the rest of the way, may well have saved Manly’s life and the lives of all his companions.
Manly’s travel narrative has given us an invaluable record of the early West. But also important is his positive description of the often enigmatic, sometimes vacillating, and too often maligned, Wákara. But Manly describes a man who was reasonable and helpful, and who chose to go out of his way to help and guide the American travelers when they were clearly headed for trouble.
Michael Kane’s book also provides a deeper look at William Lewis Manly, the man, and the context from which he arose. Kane describes the events and attitudes that shaped Manly’s attitudes and outlooks on life, and which led him to be among the vanguard heading to California. It is also an additional glimpse into the nature of the many early adventurers who risked all to get to California … or those other beckoning Utopias of the West—Oregon, or Taos, or the fur-bonanza of the Rocky Mountains.
— Sondra Jones, historian and author of Being and Becoming Ute (University of Utah Press, 2019), winner of the Utah State History Society's best book award