Lydia Millet Quotes

I think the Lewis and Clark Expedition was the greatest undertaking in American History. I think landing a man on the moon pales next to it.

The ultimate camping trip was the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Some persons were to be sent in search of the river Missouri in order to discover whether it had any communication with the Pacific Ocean …

Soon you’ll be whirled along by steam in a country now only inhabited by wild beasts and Indians

You can always say that it was scarce dollars when Lewis and Clark wanted to go to the West Coast and explore the West. And people complained about it, I understand, from a reading of the history books.

At a time when Europeans already had a long history of violent contact with Native people, Lewis and Clark made most of their journey in peace.

Now, of course, the great thing about the solar system as a frontier is that there are no Indians, so you can have all the glory of the myth of the American westward expansion without any of the guilt.

Frontiersmen good and bad, gunmen as well as inspired prophets of the future, have been my camp companions. Thus, I know the country of which I am about to write as few men now living have known it.

I used to think I'd like to have been a pioneer on the Oregon Trail, experience untamed America.

Pa did not like a country so old and worn out that the hunting was poor. He wanted to go west. For two years he had wanted to go west and take a homestead, but Ma did not want to leave the settled country.

Large parties will never answer the purpose. They will alarm the Indian nations they pass through. Three of four young men well qualified for the task might perhaps compleat your wishes at a very trifling expense.

Turn your face to the West and there build your homes and fortunes.

Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, 1793

Gentlemen: The Lands of the Missouri River and the Indians inhabiting them are not as well known as they should be….

I like stories in specific time periods. 'The Revenant's' era of American history was fascinating because it was this lawless no-man's land. It defined the idea of the American frontiersman as man conquering nature. In a way, the story of Hugh Glass is about man dominating nature.

You want to know why there's a Texas Rangers? Well, here's the answer. You know how the six-gun came around? Well, here's the answer. You want to know why Mexicans allowed Americans to settle Texas in the first place? It was fear of Comanches.

I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west. We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure.

From the time I was a kid, I was crazy about anything having to do with the West. I'd look at all of these photos of Montana, and they all seemed so magical and majestic. I just wanted to go west, and I finally did it when I was barely 21. I went off to volunteer at a Navajo reservation in New Mexico.

While the government underwrote the West more than any other region, the myth claimed that hardworking Western cowboys and settlers wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone to work out their own destiny.

Things that happen in Wyoming are things that wouldn't happen in a big city - we've got bears, we've got a lot of shotguns - in Absaroka County, everybody's got a shotgun in the back of their car!

There's an undeniable tradition of sexism in this country that ties into the move westward by people of European descent and different ways of looking at Manifest Destiny on the west side of the Mississippi River.

The West was a wonderful world to me. I decided then that if this is the way they did things, then I wanted to be part of it.

I think coming from the Northwest is something that's born in your blood. On my mom's side, I'm, like, a sixth-generation Oregonian. My family came over in the covered wagons, 'Oregon Trail'-video-game style. Maybe the pioneer mentality runs in my blood because they were all pioneers.

I like to describe 'Yellowstone' is 'The Great Gatsby' on the largest ranch in Montana. Then it's really a study of the changing of the West.

My wife and I drove across America following the Oregon Trail, which the pioneers once passed along.