Gila monsters and red-eyed rattlesnakes

by Don Maguire

Don Maguire's narratives of his three remarkable trading expeditions through Utah, Nevada, California, Arizona, and Mexico during the years 1876-1879 are original and colorful contributions to the literature of the American West. While we know a good deal about other types of Western traders - such as the great fur companies or the settled Indian traders - the life of a wandering peddler among the mining camps and Indian tribes of the Southwest is largely a historiographical blank. Now, this book opens a large window into the experiences of an itinerant peddler. It was Maguire's genius to recognize a brief window of opportunity for trading in the Southwest. He realized that Arizona's mining districts - and those of a good part of Nevada and eastern California - were well populated, yet poorly supplied. And he saw that the barrier presented by hostile Indians, while still significant, had lowered enough to admit with reasonable risk a cautious and well-armed party of traders. This oppor