William Drummond Stewart and Same-Sex Desire in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade
September 15, 2012
William Drummond Stewart (1795-1871) was a Scottish nobleman and soldier, a Byronic dandy who left his home for the New World, where he led the life of an adventurer in the Rocky Mountains. In this, the first major biography of Stewart in almost 50 years, Benemann (archivist, Boalt Hall Law Sch. Lib.; Male-Male Intimacy in Early America: Beyond Romantic Friendships) adds a shade of lavender to this colorful character. Focusing primarily on Stewart's seven years in America, the author skillfully interweaves a portrait of the outwardly macho world of the Rocky Mountain fur trappers, whose work was ideally suited to "confirmed bachelors," and a study of the influence of Native Americans who not merely accepted but ritualized homosexuality. In this almost all-male subculture, Stewart found surcease from hidebound 19th-century society, maintaining same-sex relationships with surprising candor. VERDICT Given the dearth of explicit source material, Benemann, as in his previous book, does a lot of conjecturing and inferring, parsing Stewart's letters and two novels for coded homoeroticism, but as in the earlier work, the results are utterly convincing. An engaging contribution to LGBT history; highly recommended.--Richard J. Violette, Victoria P.L., BC
Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from September 15, 2012
Don't let the subtitle scare you off from this engrossing, eminently readable study of one of the most intriguing figures in the history of the Old West. Stewart (17951871) was a Scottish aristocrat who from 1833 to 1837 went west annually in the company of fur-trading company suppliers en route to the annual rendezvous of the mountain men. Thanks to his military service, he was a crack shot, hard rider, and skilled commanderattainments that, along with his habit of packing plenty of good wines, spirits, and fancy duds for the voyage, made traders and trappers alike accept him. He always had in tow some young men, late teens to early twenties, looking for adventure and perhaps more. A historian of sexuality whose scholarly bailiwick is the early American republic, Benemann makes his case by means of documentary evidence that implies and indicates far more than it states. His interpretation is entirely plausible, and meanwhile he tells in satisfying detail the stories of Stewart's wanderings, capped by his 1843 last-hurrah expedition with a hefty contingent of his preferred young companions, whose adventures, climaxing in a month-long Renaissance fair in the wilderness, are numerous and exciting enough to pack a western movie with action. An altogether exceptional book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)