The Forgotten Founders caught my eye on a recent visit to the public library. At first glance, I saw only the arresting photograph of a lean and tired pioneer woman, arms crossed, resting on her wagon -- just daring me to take another look. Then the word "rethinking" caused me to examine it closely. Born in Utah and raised in California, I am a descendent of western pioneers. I was intrigued with Udall's suggestion that I needed to rethink the history, my history, of the Old West.

A former congressional representative from Arizona and Secretary of the Interior, Udall's love of the West is evident in this book and subsequent works such as To the Inland Empire: Coronado and our Spanish Legacy and Beyond the Mythic West. But more than just a lover of the land, Udall is a descendent of pioneers. And his ancestors, some of whose stories he shares in the text, were settlers in Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico. While he descends from famous and infamous ancestors alike, his entire premise is illustrated by the largely unknown lives of his pioneering forefathers and mothers. He asserts that the west was not "won" or conquered by the violence of cowboys, gunslingers, or soldiers made famous in pulp fiction or Hollywood westerns. The west was peacefully, diligently, and amazingly settled by families intent on building stable, peaceful, and often religious communities in which to better their own lives and the lives of their children.

As a daughter of the West and its settlers, I considered myself to be well informed of the challenges and trials my ancestors faced when they built communities from the ground up in Utah, Texas, and Arizona. But until reading Udall's work, I never fully understood the scope and significance of their contributions. Like many, my perception of the Old West was one full of violence and danger; if Indians or gunslingers did not kill them, the land or weather would. It is these very myths that Udall repudiates in The Forgotten Founders. In the Preface, he says his intent is to "pay homage to the authentic heroes and heroines of the first phase of western settlement" and this is exactly what he does.

Udall indicates in the Introduction that these heroes and heroines fell into two groups. The first he calls Pilgrims Trekkers. They were largely comprised of émigrés from the already settled areas of the U.S. and Mexico and were often motivated by courageous desires for freedom -- religious or economic. The second group he calls Prairiebusters. These were mostly immigrants from Old World countries who settled the Great Plains in spite of climate and occasional clashes with Native Americans. Udall also m akes it clear that the history of the West is best understood when divided into two time periods, pre-Civil War -- when families and individuals traveled to the West in wagon trains, and post-Civil War -- when travel was largely by train.

Unlike other chroniclers of western US history, he starts with the natives and discusses contributions of the Iroquois, Cherokee, and Pueblo nations. While their contributions to the settlement of the West are typically thought of in terms of battles, Udall points out that most settlers lived harmoniously with their native neighbors, often surviving only because of shared knowledge and expertise about the land. After his discussion of the natives, Udall points out the important contributions of Spanish an d Mexican priests and pioneers, especially in establishing communities in the Southwest as early as 1598. Modern day cities such as Santa Fe, New Mexico (established in 1610); San Antonio, Texas (1714); Tucson, Arizona (1776); San Diego and Monterey, California (1769 and 1770 respectively) were all founded before the United States had won its independence from Great Britain.

Udall's enlightening reaffirmation about these early settlements shows that the influence of mountain men, explorers, and trappers has been over exaggerated and crafted into myths about the discovery of the West. He contends that these transient men did not establish roots or help build communities. Religious groups such as Catholics, Mormons, and Protestants were the principle explorers of these lands. Their contributions, Udall points out, have been ignored or pushed aside by Hollywood and historians al ike. Large Protestant groups settled the Oregon territory; Mormons in Utah, Idaho, Arizona, California, Nevada, and Mexico; and Catholics in California, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. These groups were not, as Udall asserts, seeking to fulfill what many called "Manifest Destiny" -- the idea that the United States should extend from Atlantic to Pacific Oceans -- they were looking for a safe place to establish communities based upon religious and moral principles.

To illustrate his point about families establishing communities, he takes five ancestor couples from both his family and his wife's. These stories make up most of Chapter 2 and were the most interesting and entertaining parts of the book. Among these ancestors are famous and infamous Utah settlers alike. One is Jacob Hamblin (1819-1886), who was a prominent citizen in Santa Clara, near Saint George. He knew and had strong relationships with many native people. Another is Levi Stewart (1812-1878) who was a principal founder of Kanab. His daughter (Udall's grandmother), Ella Stewart, was the first telegraph operator in the Utah territory. One infamous ancestor is John D. Lee (1812-1877), a major in the Iron county militia who was responsible for the Mountain Meadows Massacre in September 1857. Lee was the only officer to be convicted and executed. In a postscript, Udall details his participation in the recent inception and unveiling of a monument at the Meadows in memory of the involved families. As a great -great grandson of John Lee, Udall brings a poignantly personal view to this tragic event. By doing so, he reaffirms his point that real people -- not cowboys, explorers, or gunslingers settled the West.

Another myth Udall refutes in The Forgotten Founders is that the level of violence was extreme. In reality, it was very different than many of us have been taught through Hollywood and television Westerns, and even in the schoolroom. Before the Civil War, the only guns settlers carried were the one-shot rifles used to kill wild game. The repeating rifles, such as the Winchester, were not even easily available until the early 1870s. Before that, Udall shows, there was relatively little violence. The actual contributions of "legendary" gunfighters like Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp were minimal. They did not belong to either group, Pilgrims Trekkers or Prairiebusters. Their feats have been so exaggerated and overblown that they have crowded out the contributions of people like Jason Lee, Brigham Young, Archbishop Lamy, and Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, to name a few. Udall also draws attention to the overwhelming perceptions of violent native peoples. He contends that the US Army often attacked peaceful groups calling them "mass killings" which "were carried out by glory-seeking western officers who felt deprived of an opportunity to win battle stars" during the Civil War. One such disaster is General Custer's fight with the Sioux on the Little Bighorn River in June 1876. This is just one of the examples Udall uses to illustrate his point -- that Indian and military conflicts "were routinely magnified to cast a patriotic glow over the actions, sometimes reprehensible ones, of mundane military patrols" (179).

Udall's writing is entertaining and informative, clearly the product of extensive research. This book has caused me to rethink my history and that of my ancestors in more ways than anticipated. While reading The Forgotten Founders, I observed that many of my ancestors lived in and around the same communities as Udall's. After finishing the book, I got out my family records and began to look through the names and dates of Utah and Arizona settlers. Knowing my father's family, the Greers, helped sett le communities around St. Johns, Arizona (where Udall was born) I picked up my great-great grandmother's biography. Catherine Ellen Camp Greer and her husband, Thomas Lacy Greer, bought a ranch near Woodruff, which was later known as Greer's Ranch. She mentions in her biography that one of the two mills near their ranch was Milligan mill and owned by David K. Udall (Stewart Udall's grandfather). But imagine my surprise when an examination of my mother's family line showed that my great-great-great aunt, M artha Elizabeth Berry, was once married to Udall's great-great grandfather, John D. Lee. Just one of his many wives, they had five children together, while living in various Utah towns. Finding these connections was exciting and altered my own ideas and conceptions about the West. But more than that, this book brought my ancestors to life for me in a new way.

Anyone with family who lived in the Old West would benefit from reading The Forgotten Founders. Also, those interested in western history would also find this an enjoyable read. There are photos, maps, and charts, along with a comprehensive index. The notes and suggested readings will point the interested researcher towards even more works about Native Americans, Spanish Catholic missions, Mormon settlements, the Oregon Territory, Irish settlements, Manifest Destiny, the California Gold Rush, and c apitalism in the Old West.

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The Forgotten Founders: Rethinking the History of the Old West by Stewart L. Udall. List price $16.94.