The Story of the American fur trade has been told many times from different viewpoints, but David Lavender was the first to place it within the overall contest for empire between Britain and the United States. Lavender relates the story of men such as John Jacob Astor and Ramsay Crooks, who competed with Britain's Hudson's Bay Company for fur resources of the Great Lakes region and the upper Missouri River country. Within this framework of contest...

From the time of Coronado's discovery to the era of modern ski resorts, men have been lured irresistibly to the Rocky Mountains. The author traces the range's colorful history.

Long ago, the legendary trapper known as Preacher took shelter with the Absaroka, and fell in love with a girl called Bird in the Tree. Twenty years later, he rescues a woman and her son from an ambush by the hated Blackfoot. The woman is Birdie, and the valiant young warrior is Hawk That Soars--Preacher's son. Now the greatest fighter on the frontier is about to go to war, to protect a family he never knew he had. Led by the vicious war chief Tall...

"Luke Ransom was just eighteen years old when he answered an ad in a St. Louis newspaper that would change his life forever. The American Fur Company needed one-hundred enterprising men to travel up the Missouri River -- the longest in North America -- all the way to its source. They would hunt and trap furs for one, two, or three years. Along the way, they would face unimaginable hardships: grueling weather, wild animals, hunger, exhaustion, and...

For over thirty years, from the time of Lewis and Clark into the 1840s, the mountain men explored the Great American West. As trappers in a hostile, trackless land, their exploits opened the gates of the mountains for the wagon trains of pioneers who followed them. In Give Your Heart to the Hawks, Win Blevins presents a poetic tribute to these dauntless "first Westerners" and their incredible adventures. Here, among many, are the stories of:* John...

Journal of a Trapper is one of the most important first hand accounts of the mountain man era. In it, Russell provides a detailed narrative describing the day-to-day life of an ordinary trapper in the Rocky Mountains. The Journal begins when Russell hired on with Nathaniel Wyeth's second expedition to the west. He participated in the establishment of Fort Hall, and later became a free trapper. He trapped for nine years in the greater Yellowstone region...