Plot
With Fawn's prompting, Dag seeks out a teacher. A powerful groundsetter at local New Moon Cutoff Camp could be the answer to his prayers, but conflicts arise between the insular Lakewalker traditions and Dag's determination to be a healer for farmers. Dag, Fawn, Arkady the groundsetter and others embark on a long journey by wagon. They are joined by several other characters, some Lakewalker, some farmer, including Fawn's brother, Whit, and his wife, Berry. On their way up the Trace, a long wagon road, they encounter a malice, an evil being with great power. A Lakewalker kills the malice with a sharing knife. Fawn guesses that this malice was fleeing something even more powerful. That turns out to be a second malice. That malice is killed by Whit, aided by Fawn and Berry, which is unprecedented—no farmer has ever killed a malice without Lakewalker aid before.
At the end of the book, Dag and Fawn's vision of closer cooperation and understanding between Lakewalkers and farmers, as partners, is beginning to be achieved.
The Oregon Trail was a 2,170-mile (3,490 km) east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of what is now the state of Kansas and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming. The western half of the trail spanned most of the current states of Idaho and Oregon.
The Donner Party, sometimes called the Donner–Reed Party, was a group of American pioneers who migrated to California in a wagon train from the Midwest. Delayed by a multitude of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–1847 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Some of the migrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, primarily eating the bodies of those who had succumbed to starvation, sickness, or extreme cold, but in one case two Native American guides were deliberately killed for this purpose.
Something Big is a 1971 American Western comedy film directed by Andrew V. McLaglen. Produced by McLaglen and screenwriter James Lee Barrett, the film stars Dean Martin, Honor Blackman and Brian Keith.
Robert A. Clay Allison also known as Clay Allison was a cattle rancher, cattle broker, and sometimes gunfighter of the American Old West. He fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Allison had a reputation for violence, having survived several one-on-one knife and gunfights, as well as being implicated in a number of vigilante jail break-ins and lynchings. A drunken Allison once rode his horse through town nearly naked—wearing only his gunbelt. Later most reports stated that he was not only dangerous to others but himself, accidentally shooting himself in the foot.
The California Trail was an emigrant trail of about 1,600 mi (2,600 km) across the western half of the North American continent from Missouri River towns to what is now the state of California. After it was established, the first half of the California Trail followed the same corridor of networked river valley trails as the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail, namely the valleys of the Platte, North Platte, and Sweetwater rivers to Wyoming. The trail has several splits and cutoffs for alternative routes around major landforms and to different destinations, with a combined length of over 5,000 mi (8,000 km).
Meek Cutoff was a horse trail road that branched off the Oregon Trail in northeastern Oregon and was used as an alternate emigrant route to the Willamette Valley in the mid-19th century. The road was named for frontiersman Stephen Meek, who was hired to lead the first wagon train along it in 1845. The journey was a particularly hard one, and many of the pioneers lost their lives.
Donner Party timeline provides an almost day-to-day basic description of events directly associated with the 1846 Donner Party pioneers, covering the journey from Illinois to California—2,500 miles, over the Great Plains, two mountain ranges, and the deserts of the Great Basin.
The Elliott Cutoff was a covered wagon road that branched off the Oregon Trail at the Malheur River where present-day Vale, Oregon, United States is today. The first portion of the road was originally known as the Meek Cutoff after Stephen Meek, a former trapper who led over 1,000 emigrants into the Harney Basin in 1845. There were considerable difficulties for the 1845 train, and after reaching a hill known as Wagontire, the people left Meek and split into groups. They turned north at the Deschutes River and finally returned to the traditional Oregon Trail near The Dalles.
Comanche Moon is a 2008 American television miniseries, an adaptation of the 1997 novel of the same name. Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae are in their middle years, serving as Texas Rangers. In terms of the Lonesome Dove series' storyline, this account serves as a prequel to the Lonesome Dove miniseries, and a sequel to Dead Man's Walk. It first aired on CBS beginning Sunday, January 13, and continuing Tuesday, January 15, and Wednesday, January 16, 2008.
The Sharing Knife: Legacy is a fantasy novel by American writer Lois McMaster Bujold, published in 2007. It is the second book in the tetralogy The Sharing Knife.
Passage is a fantasy novel by American writer Lois McMaster Bujold, published in 2008. It is the third in the tetralogy The Sharing Knife.
The Old Corral is a 1936 American Western film directed by Joseph Kane and starring Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette, and Irene Manning. Based on a story by Bernard McConville, the film is about a sheriff of a small western town who sings his way into a relationship with a singer from a Chicago nightclub who earlier witnessed a murder. The supporting cast features Lon Chaney Jr. and Roy Rogers.
In the history of the American frontier, overland trails were built by pioneers throughout the 19th century and especially between 1829 and 1870 as an alternative to sea and railroad transport. These immigrants began to settle much of North America west of the Great Plains as part of the mass overland migrations of the mid-19th century. Settlers emigrating from the eastern United States were spurred by various motives, among them religious persecution and economic incentives, to move to destinations in the far west via routes including the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails. After the end of the Mexican–American War in 1849, vast new American conquests again enticed mass immigration. Legislation like the Donation Land Claim Act and significant events like the California Gold Rush further lured people to travel overland to the west.
The White Pearl is a 2011 novel by Kate Furnivall set during the Japanese occupation of Malaya in the early 1940s. The White Pearl's initially takes place on a rubber plantation, later moving onto the yacht from which the novel takes its name.
Rose of Cimarron is a 1952 American Western film produced by Edward L. Alperson for 20th Century Fox. Despite the title, it has nothing to do with Rose Dunn the actual "Rose of Cimarron". The film is a revenge Western with a twist: the protagonist is a woman raised by the Cherokee avenging her parents who were murdered by whites.
God Forgives... I Don't! is a 1967 Spaghetti Western film directed and written by Giuseppe Colizzi. The film is the first in a trilogy, followed by Ace High and Boot Hill.
Walter Trueman Paget was a farmer and politician in Queensland, Australia. He was a Member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly.
Sedona Schnebly was an early pioneer in the Oak Creek area of Arizona. She was the namesake of the town of Sedona, Arizona. She helped in the establishment of the family farm and general store in the town. She also served as the town's bible school teacher. Sedona saved funds to build the Wayside Chapel. Among her legacy is a sculpture of a statue in her likeness by the Sedona Red Rocks Arts Council honoring her memory.
