James Ohio Pattie, an early Western traveler, was born near
Brooksville, Kentucky, in 1804. His father, Sylvester Pattie
(1782-1828), emigrated to Missouri in 1812, and settled at St.
Charles. He served in the War of 1812, at the conclusion of which he
built a saw-mill on the Gasconade river, sending down pine lumber in
rafts to St. Louis. Several years later his wife died, leaving nine
young children, of whom James O. Pattie was the eldest. In 1824
Sylvester Pattie became dissatisfied with his lumber business and
decided to dispose of it and undertake an expedition into New Mexico,
which was one of the first from this country into that territory. The
route pursued by his party was quite new. James O. Pattie was at
school, but he prevailed upon his father to permit him to accompany
the expedition. It remained for him to write a most interesting
account of their remarkable journey, in which Indians who had never
seen white men before were encountered, his own capture described,
together with the sufferings and death of his father in New Mexico. On
his return to the United States Pattie passed through Cincinnati,
where he met Timothy Flint, one of the pioneers of Western letters,
who edited his journal under the title of _The Personal Narrative of
James O. Pattie, of Kentucky, during an Expedition from St. Louis,
through the Vast Regions between that Place and the Pacific Ocean, and
thence Back through the City of Mexico to Vera Cruz, during
Journeyings of Six Years; in which_ _he and his Father, who
accompanied him, suffered Unheard of Hardships and Dangers, and
Various Conflicts with the Indians, and were made Captives, in which
Captivity his Father Died; together with a description of the Country
and the Various Nations through which they Passed_ (Cincinnati, 1831).
"One sees in [Pattie's] pages the beginnings of the drama to be fought
out in the Mexican War." The date and place of his death are unknown.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Appletons' _Cyclopaedia of American Biography_ (New
York, 1888, v. iv); Pattie's _Narrative_ has been carefully
re-edited with notes and introduction by Reuben Gold Thwaites, and
published in his famous _Early Western Travels Series_ (Cleveland,
1905, v. xviii).