Mountain Men, Blackpowder Guns & the Fur Trade
This catalog page has books on mountain men, frontiersmen, rendezvous, blackpowder guns and the fur trade.
Early in the nineteenth century, the mountain men emerged as a small but distinctive group of daring men whose experience and knowledge
laid the ground work for the opening of the American West. They explored that great expanse of largely known wilderness from the Great Plains
and the Eastern slopes of the Rockies, on to the Pacific coast, and South to what is now California and Mexico. Though Lewis and Clark had blazed
a narrow corridor of geographical knowledge to the Pacific in 1803-1805, the West remained largely terra incognita until fur trappers and traders,
known as mountainmen, such as Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick, Benjamin Bonneville, and Jedediah Smith opened paths through the high snow-choked passes of the
mountain wilderness of the American West to the fertile valleys of the great rivers that flowed into the Pacific Ocean. Collectively, they came
to know every river valley, safe passage route, every stream, mountain pass, source of fresh water, waterless stretch of plain, good hunting
and wild game areas, and Indian territory.
Included on this page are books about some of these well know and famous mountain men, frontiersmen, explorers, and trappers, such as Jim Bridger,
John Colter, John Johnson, Hugh Glass, Jedediah Smith, Kit Carson, and others.
In addition, several books will be added on muzzleloaders, fur trapping,
birch bark canoes, wilderness survival, and other topics relating to the era of the mountain man.
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Mountain Men, Blackpowder Guns, and Furs
- The Mountain Men
~Usually Ships in 2-3 Days
- -George Laylock / Paperback 256 pages / Published April 1996
This book chronicles the American fur trappers of the 1820s and 1830s in their push West, and discussing their role in the westward expansion of the U.S.
The adventurous fur trappers pushed West in the early 1800s in search of the much-prized beaver pelt. Though theirs was primarily a financial venture, their interaction
with Native Americans and the knowledge they gained of the terrain and its dangers made the way a little less treacherous for the homesteaders and farmers
who followed after them. The author discusses the trappers lifestyles, how they applied their trade and the
hardships they faced doing it.
Includes brief biographies of several of the famous mountain men such as Jim Bridger and John Colter, and others. Plus photographs and illustrations.
Click on the book title to read excerpts from this book.
- Jim Bridger, Mountain Man
~Usually Ships in 2-3 Days
- -Stanley Vestal / Paperback 333 pages / Published January 2002
The author writes an accurate history of the early 1800's in the American West. This historical biography explores the little known
life of the great American explorer, mountain man, trapper, frontiersman, and scout, Jim Bridger. He factually chronicles almost every known
aspect of Jim Bridger's life until his death at the old age 76. Jim Bridger was the discoverer of the Great Salt Lake and most points
of interest in the Rocky Mountain Range. His verbal descriptions of the unknown west are given in this book and show why Bridger was
one of the main reasons the early settlers heading west to Oregon survived.
Jim Bridger, although not usually recognized for this, was nearly single-handedly responsible for the opening of the Great American West.
Jim Bridger was a friend to the aboriginal Americans. He understood them. The author brings this to life, as well as explaining why the
early settlers and aboriginal Americans developed conflicts.
Includes brief biographies of several other famous mountain and explorers of the time, such as Hugh Glass, Kit Carson, and William Sublette.
Click on the book title to read excerpts from this book.
- Mountain Man: A Novel of Male and Female in the Early American West
~Usually Ships in 2-3 Days
- -Vardis Fisher / Paperback 368 pages / Published December 2000
This fascinating novel is based on the life of the "Crow Killer" the real John Johnson, Sam Minard is a mountain man who seeks the freedom that the
Rocky Mountains offers trappers. After his beloved Indian wife is murdered, Sam Minard becomes obsessed with vengeance, and his fortunes become intertwined
with those of Kate Bowden, a widow who faces madness. This remarkable frontier fiction combines the reality of the life of the mountain men in its most
brutal form and the myth of the mountain man as we would like him to be. Sam Minard is the most accomplished of the mountain men, the best trapper, the best
fighting man and absolutely ruthless as he applies his craft, but not far beneath the rugged exterior is a man of enormous sensitivity able to describe the
beauty of the wilderness in detail that allows the reader to be there.
Click on the book title to read more.
- Crow Killer: The Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson
~Usually Ships in 2-3 Days
- -Raymond W. Thorp, Robert Manson Bunker, Richard Mercer Dorson (Designer)
Paperback 236 pages / Published September 1983
This fascinating story about John Johnson, an extraordinary man that was well respected throughout the west. Includes what is considered
historical information about Johnson's exploits, along with a good many stories that probably aren't true, of the mountain man John Johnson.
Some of these stories are almost definitely true, for example Johnson's battle with the twenty Crow warriors over fourteen years. However,
some of these tales are more than likely fictitious, or not completely true, or just made-up accounts passed on among the last Mountain Men
until Thorp found upon them. Even Thorp's principal source, "White-eye" Anderson, was getting most of his information third-hand. Thorp
proclaims his source as impeccable, but even he can't help but include, in the course of the narrative, that White-eye had a famous capacity
for "story-telling", at times.
However, this book is recommended because of it's value as a great contribution to the mountain man literature.
And because it is great book to read by the fireplace during a cold winter's night.
Click on the book title to read excerpts from this book.
- Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West
~Usually Ships in 2-3 Days
- -Dale Lowell Morgan / Paperback 286 pages / Published December 1964
This is a story about Jedediah Smith's accomplishments, who in many early American West enthusiasts views, was one of the first true early
mountain men and frontiersman. This saga of Jedediah Smith began in about 1808, soon after the opening up of the Louisiana Purchase.
Jed Smith was then 23 when he struck out for that vast largely unknown wilderness territory that ranged from the valleys of the
Yellowstone and the Missouri Rivers, on to Oregon and to California as far south as Los Angeles, then east along the Old Spanish Trial
and the Gila River as well as into New Mexico. The sage ended ten years later, in 1831, when, on the Santa Fe trail, he was killed
by Indians when he stopped for a drink from a stream.
Jed was one of the first true mountain men, frontiersman, and trappers whose life and knowledge of so vast a country was invaluable
and, in spite of his untimely death, contributed greatly to the exploration and opening of the West to settlers. Although he died
before the western movement really began, those that followed him relied heavily upon the exploration and knowledge of he passed on.
The book is a scholarly presentation of his hardships, struggles, incredible feats, and his search to discover the best trapping
areas of the important but elusive beaver.
This book is a definite must read for early American West enthusiasts and deserves a place in the library of every serious student
of the American West.
Click on the book title to read more about this book.
- Firearms, Traps, and Tools of the Mountain Man
~Usually Ships in 24 Hours
- -Carl Parcher / Paperback 470 pages / Published October 1977
This book discusses and explains the manufacture, use, and history of the tools that the mountain man
made and relied upon for his living and survival.
Click on title to read more about this book.
- A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific
~Usually Ships Within 1 to 2 Business Days
- -Robert M. Utley / Paperback 400 pages / Published October 1998
This book is a gripping, interesting, and definitive study of the decisive role mountain men played in the exploration and expansion
of the American Western frontier. Their travels across deserts and plains and over high mountains yielded a large body of geographical
knowledge and knowledge of the Indians, that would enable American pioneers to cross the Mississippi and traverse the continent in relative
security. The author tells the stories of hard-fighting men like Jim Bridger, Benjamin Bonneville, Kit Carson, and Joseph Walker, and others
whose names now figure prominently on maps of the region.
This is a magnificent account of an unique group early of American explorers, called the mountain men,. Utley writes, they were a "mostly illiterate
bunch of rough-and-tumble entrepreneurs, given to gaudy dress, drunkenness, and often, mindless violence". However, together they amassed a vast
amount of information about the geography of the West, and of the Indians tribes, blazed the first trails across the high plains and over the high
Rockies, explored the Great Basin, the Cascades, and the Sierra and their pathfinding would eventually bring American settlers across the Mississippi
into these new territories.
They went, Utley writes, less from noble motives than "to make money in a pursuit that promised adventure, excitement, and personal freedom".
Numbering only about a thousand at any one time (the first were Lewis and Clark veterans, engaged by a St. Louis fur company), they were
mangled by Blackfeet, but soon emissaries of several competing firms, employees of beaver tycoon John Jacob Astor among them, were ascending
the Missouri, wintering in the Tetons, and surviving an incredible variety of Indian ambushes, bear attacks, and benders at the annual all
important Green River rendezvous. But Utleyy sets the incidents into the gradual expansion of discovery that the mountain men effected and
that the settlers moving out west depended upon after the fur empire collapsed.
Includes 15 maps.
Click on title to read more about this book.
- Fur Traders, Trappers, and Mountain Men of the Upper Missouri
~Usually Ships Within 1 to 2 Business Days
- -Le Roy R. Hafen, Leroy R. Hafen, Janet Lecompte(Introduction), Scott Eckberg (Introduction)
Paperback 336 pages / Published March 1995
This book offers some very good, concise descriptions of eighteen lesser known fur trappers, frontiersmen, traders and mountain men of the early American west.
Several of the mountain men and frontiersmen named in this book are not familiar to most readers, but who were very instrumental in the development
of this part of the country during this time period. These men are James Kipp, Gabriel Franchere, William Laidlaw, David Dawson, William Gordon
and John Sanford to mention a few. Each one of these men's lives had obstacles of hardships, disasters, frustrations, and other problems to overcome
and all had something to do with the founding and development of the early American west in one way or another. It is a fun book to read and the
bibliographies in each chapter simply 'whet the appetite' to read more about these interesting early frontiersmen.
Click on title to read more about this book.
- Last of the Mountain Men
~Usually Ships Within 24 Hours
- -Harold Peterson, Sylvan Hart / Paperback 240 pages / Published August 1994
This book is an accounting of a modern mountain man, Sylvan Hart and his life in the pristine Salmon River wilderness in Idaho, high in the Rocky Mountains.
Sylvan Hart was a mountain man, a naturalist, a survivalist, and someone who could live off the land. However, this book is not about a mountain men who
lived and dealt with the early history of the West. He didn't have to face the extreme hardships or obstacles that Gabriel Franchere, John Johnson, Jim Bridger
and other true mountain men of the early half of the 1880's did. Sylvan Hart lived as remote and pure a life as any man in the last half of this past century.
He was supremely skilled in survival, and knew how to live off of the land. His knowledge of the wilderness, nature, and techniques of self sufficiency was critical
and helped to encourage his decision to live apart from mainstream society.
However, in any event this book is worthwhile reading.
Click on title to read excerpts from this book.
- A Rendezvous Reader: Tall, Tangled, And, True Tales of the Mountain Men, 1805-1850
~Usually Ships Within 1 to 2 Business Days
- -James H. Maguire, Peter Wild, Donald A., Barclay (Editors)
Paperback 376 pages / Published July 1997
This book is a rendezvous reader which means that it is great collection of some very tall tales. Some true, some not quite true, and others,
never intended to be actuate. A Rendezvous was a meeting where the mountain men, frontiersmen, fur trappers, and native Americans gathered to
trade goods, trade information, meet friends, to socialize, compare notes, relax and have a few brews, and of course to tell stories and sometimes
tall tales.
This reader is a collection of selections from journal entries, newspaper articles and books, most only a page or two long, that provide a window
into the culture and folklore of the mountain men and the wilderness in which they lived. It describes everything from trapping techniques, encounters
with giant grizzlies, descriptions of huge herds of buffaloes, bloody fights, sources of food, surgery on the trail, guns and other weapons,
best river crossings, the best sources for whisky, and just about everything else that you may want to know, or perhaps didn't care to know about
concerning the mountain men rendezvous.
Click on title to read more about this book.
- Saga of Hugh Glass: Pirate, Pawnee and Mountain Man
~Usually Ships Within 24 Hours
- -John Myers Myers / Paperback 237 pages / Published June 1976
This is a fascinating story of the adventures of an early day fur trapper and and frontiersman in the early American wilderness.
Some of the highlights include the time Glass was captured by pirates, pulled off an escape, then was captured by the Pawnees and
later lived with them for some years. After leaving the Pawnees, he joined Ashley's fur expeditions to the Rockies. There he had
narrow escapes from the Indians, but probably the most celebrated adventure of his life was the mauling by a huge grizzly bear
and the tales that spawned from that event.
Hugh Glass's adventures were so interesting that a movie was made based upon his life. Several years ago, the movie
"Man in the Wilderness" starring Richard Harris was made based upon Hugh Glass's heroic adventure with the grizzly bear.
Click on the book title to read more.
- One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey
~Usually Ships Within 1-2 Business Days
- -Sam Keith, Richard Proenneke / Paperback 223 pages / Published May 1999
This book portrays Richard Proenneke's fantastic adventure in the Alaskan Bush. First edition appeared in 1973, and became a best seller. Keith based the book's text on the journals and great photography of Richard Proenneke, who did what many of us only fantasize about. He left the rat race behind and went to live in the North woods.
This is a powerful book and is quite vivid in describing Richard's many adventures and months of survival and adventure in the Alaska bush. It is very well written and it makes you feel like you are living the adventure with Richard. Pictures of the Alaska country side taken by Richard are awesome and spectacular. The step by step narration of Richard building a comfortable cabin in the bush country with his two hands at the cost of $40 dollars is captivating and is one of the central themes of the book. Richard survived the severe Alaskan weather with wisdom and common sense. He had great respect for God's country and the animals. The book also relates how Richard enjoyed making friends with the some of wild animals and with Babe Alsworth, a bush pilot.
In the busy world of today, it was refreshing to read this book and reflect on how in years past people lived day by day.
This book is truly one of the great journals of living in the Northern wilderness.
Click on the book title to read more.
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This page last reviewed and updated September 06, 2007.