Before 1850 the artist and naturalist John James Audubon was America’s most famous celebrity. His Birds of America was widely regarded as “the greatest monument ever erected by art to nature.” But like Thoreau, Audubon was also a witness to the growing destruction of wild America. That was particularly evident when he and his sons journeyed up the Missouri River in the early 1840s to finish Audubon’s book on the mammals of America. Stunned at the staggering diversity and abundance of wild creatures visible in the West, Audubon soon despaired at the wholesale (and to him) senseless destruction he saw, a disturbing insight into human nature on a continent Audubon loved and tried to preserve in paint and words. Thank you to our sponsor Velvet Buck. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube, Spotify, Apple, iHeart, Pandora, Amazon. MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals "The Long Hunters" and "Mountain Men" Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Ep. 11: Bringing Home All the Pretty Horses
When the western artist George Catlin journeyed to the Southern Plains in 1834 the animal that caught his attention there was the wild horse, which covered the country in immense herds. Little known to Catlin, or to Thomas Jefferson, who longed to know about horses in their natural state, horses were so successful in the western wilds because they were original natives of North America. Eventually a trade in wild horses dominated the southern West the way the fur trade did in the North. Native people initiated the trade, Hispanics in Texas perfected the art of capture, and from 1790 into the 1850s independent American traders captured, traded for, and drove wild horses east to supply the advancing American frontier. Little known in western history because until the 1920s it lacked a corporate player, the wild horse trade was an unexpected success and mustangers a working-class phenomenon of the West. Thank you to our sponsor Velvet Buck. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube, Spotify, Apple, iHeart, Pandora, Amazon. MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals "The Long Hunters" and "Mountain Men" Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Ep. 10: Start of the Endgame for the Ancient West
When Lewis & Clark saw the West in the first years of the 1800s it still preserved the healthy biodiversity of Native-managed ecologies in place for 10,000 years. Within thirty years, everything had changed. Americans arrived in the West with religious traditions that taught animals were created solely for human use. And they introduced an economic system that made western animals commodities in a global market, an economy that snagged Native people in the trade and created the first American millionaires. By 1840 ancient western ecologies evolved around sea otters, fur seals, beavers and many other species were collapsing in both the interior and on the coasts. For some the period produced romantic figures like the mountain men. Witnessing such destruction, however, even some of their peers saw the casual loss of the ancient West very differently. Thank you to our sponsor Velvet Buck. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube, Spotify, Apple, iHeart, Pandora, Amazon. MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals "The Long Hunters" and "Mountain Men" Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Ep. 09: Catlin’s and Bodmer’s "Time Machine Visuals"
Landscapes, wildlife, and Native people dominated the fascination with the early American West, but imagining that world is not easy. Fortunately, two talented and committed painters, one American and one European, left the future a rich and varied body of “Time Machine Visuals” of the Missouri River West in the 1830s. George Catlin was a Pennsylvanian whose life’s work was to be the historian of Native people. Catlin was a Romantic who believed preserving the West’s landscapes, animals, and Indian peoples was essential to the future. Karl Bodmer was the supremely talented painter on a Prussian prince’s 1833-4 journey up the Missouri, whose marvelous paintings have enabled modern Native people and Hollywood to re-discover the early West. Both men are celebrated now for their visual portrayals of a lost world. Thank you to our sponsor Velvet Buck. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube, Spotify, Apple, iHeart, Pandora, Amazon. MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals "The Long Hunters" and "Mountain Men" Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Ep. 08: Beyond the Earth’s Curve, Mysteries
Despite an ancient Native inhabitation and recent European settlements and forays around the perimeter of the West, in the early 19th century much of the interior West was still a place of conjecture, rumor, and mystery. What was out there? What kind of never-known phenomena did the West hold? For the brand-new United States and its Indian Agents, winning the western tribes with trade was essential geopolitics. But as happened with John Colter’s “Hell,” the future Yellowstone Park, those traders often returned with accounts that were hard to believe. Like Colter and in the same years, a trader named Anthony Glass in the southern West convinced the Comanche and Wichita Indians to reveal to him an astounding western mystery that excited the Southwestern frontier for three decades. Hauled to civilization, it would stand as one of America’s most intriguing contributions to global science from the early West. Thank you to our sponsor Velvet Buck. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube, Spotify, Apple, iHeart, Pandora, Amazon. MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals "The Long Hunters" and "Mountain Men" Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this new podcast, Flores chronicles the heroes, scoundrels, and pivotal events that defined the West, blending captivating stories of its charismatic animals, Jeffersonian explorations, and the adventurer-artists who immortalized Native peoples and western landscapes. From well-known tales to hidden gems, Flores uncovers the rich history of the West like never before.
Joined by his former students Rinella and Williams, as well as other historians and special guests, Flores will share, debate, and reflect on these stories across 26 dynamic episodes.
Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of the American West—not just as a historical era, but as a lens for how we experience and appreciate the outdoors today.
Ireland