The Controversial Hastings Overland Guide: A Reassessment

TLDR: For a man who had the good fortune to be involved in the vanguard of much of western activity during the 1840's, Lansford Warren Hastings remains a shadowy and elusive figure as mentioned in this paper.

Abstract: FOR A MAN WHO HAD the good fortune to be involved in the vanguard of much of western activity during the 1840's, Lansford Warren Hastings remains a shadowy and elusive figure.1 Most written accounts of his impact upon the development of the Far West have been either fragmentary in scope or superficial in explanation. In part, at least, this is due to the absence of adequate documentation concerning his many exploits. Hastings left no diary or volumes of papers for this period whereby his activities could be more carefully charted and his motives more clearly discerned.2 Where little is known about the man, much has been suspected. These suspicions, moreover, have been used to close the gaps in the historical record until it is extremely difficult to separate fact from fiction in what has become a growing Hastings myth. Faced with such scattered and conflicting evidence, one is tempted to cry out with John Donne, " 'Tis all in peeces, all cohaerence gone." Nowhere is this problem more observable than in the past genera-