AS USED HERE, the term "Mountain Men" applies to those trappers and
traders who went into the Rocky Mountains before emigrants had even
sought a pass through them to the west or cattle had beat out a trail
on the plains east of them. Beaver fur was the lodestar for the Mountain
Men. Their span of activity was brief, their number insignificant.
Yet hardly any other distinct class of men, irrespective of number or
permanence, has called forth so many excellent books as the Mountain
Men. The books are not nearly so numerous as those connected with range
life, but when one considers the writings of Stanley Vestal, Sabin,
Ruxton, Fer gusson, Chittenden, Favour, Garrard, Inman, Irving, Reid,
and White in this Seld, one doubts whether any other form of American
life at all has been so well covered in ballad, fiction, biography,
history.
See James Hobbs, James O. Pattie, and Reuben Gold Thwaites under "Surge
of Life in the West," also "Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail."
ALTER, J. CECIL. _James Bridger_, Salt Lake City, 1925. A hogshead
of life. Bibliography. OP. Republished by Long's College Book Co.,
Columbus, Ohio.
BONNER, T. D. _The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, 1856_;
reprinted in 1931, with an illuminating introduction by Bernard DeVoto.
OP. Beckwourth was the champion of all western liars.
BREWERTON, G. D. _Overland with Kit Carson_, New York, 1930. Good
narrative. OP.
CHITTENDEN, _H. M. The American Fur Trade of the_ _Far West_, New York,
1902. OP. Basic work. Bibliography.
CLELAND, ROBERT GLASS. _This Reckless Breed of Men: The Trappers and Fur
Traders of the Southwest_, Knopf, New York, 1950. Fresh emphasis on the
California-Arizona-New Mexico region by a knowing scholar. Economical in
style without loss of either humanity or history. Bibliography.
CONRAD, HOWARD L. _Uncle Dick Wootton_, 1890. Primary source. OP.
COYNER, D. H. _The Lost Trappers_, 1847.
DAVIDSON, L. J., and BOSTWICK, P. _The Literature of the Rocky Mountain
West 1803-1903_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1939. Davidson and Forrester
Blake, editors. _Rocky Mountain Tales_, University of Oklahoma Press,
Norman, 1947.
DEVOTO, BERNARD. _Across the Wide Missouri_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
1947. Superbly illustrated by reproductions of Alfred Jacob Miller.
DeVoto has amplitude and is a master of his subject as well as of the
craft of writing.
FAVOUR, ALPHEUS H. _Old Bill Williams, Mountain Man_, University of
North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1936. Flavor and facts both. Full
bibliography.
FERGUSSON, HARVEY. _Rio Grande_, 1933, republished by Tudor, New York.
The drama and evolution of human life in New Mexico, written out of
knowledge and with power. _Wolf Song_, New York, 1927. OP. Graphic
historical novel of Mountain Men. It sings with life.
GARRARD, LEWIS H. _Wah-toyah and the Taos Trail_, 1850. One of the basic
works.
GRANT, BLANCHE C. _When Old Trails Were New--The Story of Taos_, New
York, 1934. OP. Taos was rendezvous town for the free trappers.
GUTHRIE, A. B., JR. _The Big Sky_, Sloane, New York, 1947 (now published
by Houghton Mifflin, Boston). "An unusually original novel, superb as
historical fiction."--Bernard DeVoto. I still prefer Harvey Fergusson's
_Wolf Song_.
HAMILTON, W. T. _My Sixty Years on the Plains_, New York, 1905. Now
published by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio.
INMAN, HENRY. _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, 1897.
IRVING, WASHINGTON. _The Adventures of Captain Bonneville_ and
_Astoria_. The latter book was founded on Robert Stuart's Narratives. In
1935 these were prepared for the press, with much illuminative material,
by Philip Ashton Rollins and issued under the title of _The Discovery of
the Oregon Trail_.
LARPENTEUR, CHARLES. _Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri_,
edited by Elliott Coues, New York, 1898. As Milo Milton Quaife shows in
an edition of the narrative issued by the Lakeside Press, Chicago,
1933, the indefatigable Coues just about rewrote the old fur trader's
narrative. It is immediate and vigorous.
LAUT, A. C. _The Story of the Trapper_, New York, 1902. A popular
survey, emphasizing types and characters.
LEONARD, ZENAS. _Narrative of the Adventures of Zenas Leonard_,
Clearfield, Pa., 1839. In 1833 the Leonard trappers reached San
Francisco Bay, boarded a Boston ship anchored near shore, and for the
first time in two years varied their meat diet by eating bread and
drinking "Coneac." One of the trappers had a gun named Knock-him-stiff.
Such earthy details abound in this narrative of adventures in a brand
new world.
LOCKWOOD, FRANK C. _Arizona Characters_, Los Angeles, 1928. Very
readable biographic sketches. OP.
MILLER, ALFRED JACOB. _The West of Alfred Jacob Miller_, with an account
of the artist by Marvin C. Ross, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman,
1950. Although Miller painted the West during 1837-38, only now is he
being discovered by the public. This is mainly a picture book, in the
top rank.
PATTIE, JAMES OHIO. _The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie of
Kentucky_, Cincinnati, 1831. Pattie and his small party went west in
1824. For grizzlies, thirst, and other features of primitive adventure
the narrative is primary.
REID, MAYNE. _The Scalp Hunters_. An antiquated novel, but it has some
deep-dyed pictures of Mountain Men.
ROSS, ALEXANDER. _Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or
Columbia River_ (1849) and _The Fur Hunters of the Far West_ (1855). The
trappers of the Southwest can no more be divorced from the trappers of
the Hudson's Bay Company than can Texas cowboys from those of Montana.
RUSSELL, OSBORNE. _Journal of a Trapper_, Boise, Idaho, 1921. In the
winter of 1839, at Fort Hall on Snake River, Russell and three other
trappers "had some few books to read, such as Byron, Shakespeare and
Scott's works, the Bible and Clark's Commentary on it, and some small
works on geology, chemistry and philosophy." Russell was wont to
speculate on Life and Nature. In perspective he approaches Ruxton.
RUXTON, GEORGE F. _Life in the Far West_, 1848; reprinted by the
University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1951, edited by LeRoy R. Hafen.
No other contemporary of the Mountain Men has been so much quoted as
Ruxton. He remains supremely readable.
SABIN, EDWIN L. _Kit Carson Days_, 1914. A work long standard, rich on
rendezvous, bears, and many other associated subjects. Bibliography.
Republished in rewritten form, 1935. OP.
VESTAL, STANLEY (pseudonym for Walter S. Campbell). _Kit Carson_,
1928. As a clean-running biographic narrative, it is not likely to be
superseded. _Mountain Men_, 1937, OP; _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, 1939.
Vestal's "Fandango," a tale of the Mountain Men in Taos, is among the
most spirited ballads America has produced. It and a few other Mountain
Men ballads are contained in the slight collection, _Fandango_, 1927.
Houghton Mifflin, Boston, published the aforementioned titles. _James
Bridger, Mountain Man_, Morrow, New York, 1946, is smoother than J.
Cecil Alter's biography but not so savory. _Joe Meek, the Merry Mountain
Man_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1952.
WHITE, STEWART EDWARD. _The Long Rifle_, 1932, and _Ranchero_, 1933,
Doubleday, Doran, Garden City, N. Y. Historical fiction.