Download or read book Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West written by Dale Lowell Morgan and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1969-01-01 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1822, before Jedediah Smith entered the West, it was largely an unknown land, “a wilderness,” he wrote, “of two thousand miles diameter.” During his nine years as a trapper for Ashley and Henry and later for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, “the mild and Christian young man” blazed the trail westward through South Pass; he was the first to go from the Missouri overland to California, the first to cross the length of Utah and the width of Nevada, first to travel by land up through California and Oregon, first to cross the Sierra Nevada. Before his death on the Santa Fe Trail at the hands of the Comanches, Jed Smith and his partners had drawn the map of the west on a beaver skin.

Download or read book Jedediah Smith written by Barton H. Barbour and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-09-10 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mountain man and fur trader Jedediah Smith casts a heroic shadow. He was the first Anglo-American to travel overland to California via the Southwest, and he roamed through more of the West than anyone else of his era. His adventures quickly became the stuff of legend. Using new information and sifting fact from folklore, Barton H. Barbour now offers a fresh look at this dynamic figure. Barbour tells how a youthful Smith was influenced by notable men who were his family’s neighbors, including a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. When he was twenty-three, hard times leavened with wanderlust set him on the road west. Barbour delves into Smith’s journals to a greater extent than previous scholars and teases out compelling insights into the trader’s itineraries and personality. Use of an important letter Smith wrote late in life deepens the author’s perspective on the legendary trapper. Through Smith’s own voice, this larger-than-life hero is shown to be a man concerned with business obligations and his comrades’ welfare, and even a person who yearned for his childhood. Barbour also takes a hard look at Smith’s views of American Indians, Mexicans in California, and Hudson’s Bay Company competitors and evaluates his dealings with these groups in the fur trade. Dozens of monuments commemorate Smith today. This readable book is another, giving modern readers new insight into the character and remarkable achievements of one of the West’s most complex characters.

Download or read book Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West written by Dale Lowell Morgan and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1953-01-01 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1822, before Jedediah Smith entered the West, it was largely an unknown land, “a wilderness,” he wrote, “of two thousand miles diameter.” During his nine years as a trapper for Ashley and Henry and later for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, “the mild and Christian young man” blazed the trail westward through South Pass; he was the first to go from the Missouri overland to California, the first to cross the length of Utah and the width of Nevada, first to travel by land up through California and Oregon, first to cross the Sierra Nevada. Before his death on the Santa Fe Trail at the hands of the Comanches, Jed Smith and his partners had drawn the map of the west on a beaver skin.

Download or read book Jim Bridger written by Jerry Enzler and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2021-04-29 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even among iconic frontiersmen like John C. Frémont, Kit Carson, and Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger stands out. A mountain man of the American West, straddling the fur trade era and the age of exploration, he lived the life legends are made of. His adventures are fit for remaking into the tall tales Bridger himself liked to tell. Here, in a biography that finally gives this outsize character his due, Jerry Enzler takes this frontiersman’s full measure for the first time—and tells a story that would do Jim Bridger proud. Born in 1804 and orphaned at thirteen, Bridger made his first western foray in 1822, traveling up the Missouri River with Mike Fink and a hundred enterprising young men to trap beaver. At twenty he “discovered” the Great Salt Lake. At twenty-one he was the first to paddle the Bighorn River’s Bad Pass. At twenty-two he explored the wonders of Yellowstone. In the following years, he led trapping brigades into Blackfeet territory; guided expeditions of Smithsonian scientists, topographical engineers, and army leaders; and, though he could neither read nor write, mapped the tribal boundaries for the Great Indian Treaty of 1851. Enzler charts Bridger’s path from the fort he built on the Oregon Trail to the route he blazed for Montana gold miners to avert war with Red Cloud and his Lakota coalition. Along the way he married into the Flathead, Ute, and Shoshone tribes and produced seven children. Tapping sources uncovered in the six decades since the last documented Bridger biography, Enzler’s book fully conveys the drama and details of the larger-than-life history of the “King of the Mountain Men.” This is the definitive story of an extraordinary life.

Download or read book Broken Hand written by LeRoy R. Hafen and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1981-01-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known by the Indians as "Broken Hand," Thomas Fitzpatrick was a trapper and a trailblazer who became the head of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. With Jedediah Smith he led the trapper band that discovered South Pass; he then shepherded the first two emigrant wagon trains to Oregon, was official guide to Fremont on his longest expedition, and guided Colonel Phil Kearny and his Dragoons along the westward trails to impress the Indians with howitzers and swords. Fitzpatrick negotiated the Fort Laramie treaty of 1851 at the largest council of Plains Indians ever assembled. Among the most colorful of mountain men, Fitzpatrick was also party to many of the most important events in the opening of the West.

Download or read book The Southwest Expedition of Jedediah S Smith written by Jedediah Strong Smith and published by Bison Books. This book was released on 1977 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jedediah S. Smith was to western exploration what Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison were to the world of invention—a legendary figure kiting into the unknown, a lighter of the dark. No one did more to open the American West than this mountain man. His greatest exploring expedition came in 1826 when he looked to the Southwest for trapping grounds. Jedediah Smith's route ran, in modern terms, from Soda Springs in Idaho to the Great Salt Lake, southward across Utah, along the Colorado River to the Mojave Desert, and westward to California. When he reached the San Gabriel mission there, he could claim to be the first American to have gone overland through the Southwest. Then Smith marched northward through the San Joaquin Valley and, with two companions, embarked across the Great Basin. In traveling to the rendezvous of 1827 they became the first citizens of the United States ever to cross the Sierra eastbound and the Great Basin. That is the itinerary described in The Southwest Expedition of Jedediah S. Smith, which contains the mountain man's long-lost journals. After coming to light in 1967, they were edited by George R. Brooks and published in a limited edition a decade later. This Bison Book reprint brings a scarce historical record to a wider audience.

Download or read book To Shake the Sleeping Self written by Jedidiah Jenkins and published by Convergent Books. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “With winning candor, Jedidiah Jenkins takes us with him as he bicycles across two continents and delves deeply into his own beautiful heart.”—Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things On the eve of turning thirty, terrified of being funneled into a life he didn’t choose, Jedidiah Jenkins quit his dream job and spent sixteen months cycling from Oregon to Patagonia. He chronicled the trip on Instagram, where his photos and reflections drew hundreds of thousands of followers, all gathered around the question: What makes a life worth living? In this unflinchingly honest memoir, Jed narrates his adventure—the people and places he encountered on his way to the bottom of the world—as well as the internal journey that started it all. As he traverses cities, mountains, and inner boundaries, Jenkins grapples with the question of what it means to be an adult, his struggle to reconcile his sexual identity with his conservative Christian upbringing, and his belief in travel as a way to wake us up to life back home. A soul-stirring read for the wanderer in each of us, To Shake the Sleeping Self is an unforgettable reflection on adventure, identity, and a life lived without regret. Praise for To Shake the Sleeping Self “[Jenkins is] a guy deeply connected to his personal truth and just so refreshingly present.”—Rich Roll, author of Finding Ultra “This is much more than a book about a bike ride. This is a deep soul deepening us. Jedidiah Jenkins is a mystic disguised as a millennial.”—Tom Shadyac, author of Life’s Operating Manual “Thought-provoking and inspirational . . . This uplifting memoir and travelogue will remind readers of the power of movement for the body and the soul.”—Publishers Weekly

Download or read book Jedediah Smith s Journal written by Jedediah Smith and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-01-21 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the journal of Jedediah Smith, businessman, mountain man, adventurer and explorer and his expedition to California in 1826. Smith kept a detailed and interesting account as he made his way from Utah, across the Rocky Mountains and to coastal California. He encountered many Indian tribes along the way, some who had never encountered Europeans before.The journey was very difficult, through harsh terrain, and he has many tales to tell of the deprivations of desert and mountain.

Download or read book The River of the West written by Frances Fuller Victor and published by . This book was released on 1870 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joe Meek was one of the West's irresistible characters. He was dashing, devil-may-care, cheeky, irreverent, and more fun than a playful grizzly cub. Initially, he covers his early life adventuring in the Rocky Mountains, California, and the Southwest. His firsthand account of fur-traders is priceless, as are his descriptions of the country, mountains, and the life of a mountain man. Then, Joe Meek's life as pioneer, sheriff, U.S. Marshall, and legislator is told in his own engaging voice. The turbulent years in the Northwest include the story of trappers, traders, missionaries, women, pioneers, and Native Americans that finally came together and created a state--Oregon.

Download or read book A Life Wild and Perilous written by Robert M. Utley and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[This] richly documented book is the definitive study of the decisive role mountain men played in the exploration and expansion of the Western frontier.” —Jay P. Dolan, The New York Times Book Review Early in the nineteenth century, the mountain men emerged as a small but distinctive group whose knowledge and experience of the trans-Mississippi West extended the national consciousness to continental dimensions. Though Lewis and Clark blazed a narrow corridor of geographical reality, the West remained largely terra incognita until trappers and traders—such as Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick, and Jedediah Smith—opened paths through the snow-choked mountain wilderness. These and other Mountain Men opened the way west to Fremont and played a major role in the pivotal years of 1845–1848 when Texas was annexed, the Oregon question was decided, and the Mexican War ended with the Southwest and California in American hands—thus making the Pacific Ocean America’s western boundary.

Download or read book Journal of a Mountain Man written by James Clyman and published by Scurlock Publishing Company. This book was released on 1998-08-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These journals preserve, in his own homey words, James Clyman's experiences on the plains and in the mountains during the heyday of the American fur trade and during the peak of emigration to Oregon and California. The events Clyman recorded were momentous. He was a member of Jedediah Smith's first brigade, which discovered South Pass and opened the Intermountain West to the beaver hunters. Crossing the country during the great migration of 1846, he encountered the Donner party and gave them sound advice they tragically ignored. "Journal of a Mountain Man "is especially valuable, says editor Linda Hasselstrom. The journals are "conspicuously sober and meticulous Clyman shows the mental bent of a surveyor: he scrupulously takes measurements and notes down facts Alongside the vivid but exaggerated sketches some mountain men have left us, we are lucky to have the record of one man who was a keen, thorough, and precise observer."

Download or read book Little Britches written by Ralph Moody and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ralph Moody was eight years old in 1906 when his family moved from New Hampshire to a Colorado ranch. Through his eyes we experience the pleasures and perils of ranching there early in the twentieth century. Auctions and roundups, family picnics, irrigation wars, tornadoes and wind storms give authentic color to Little Britches. So do adventures, wonderfully told, that equip Ralph to take his father's place when it becomes necessary. Little Britches was the literary debut of Ralph Moody, who wrote about the adventures of his family in eight glorious books, all available as Bison Books.

Download or read book The Fist in the Wilderness written by David Sievert Lavender and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1998-05-01 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An oft-told story from different perspectives, the history of the American fur trade is here placed within the overall rivalry for empire between Britain and the United States. David Lavender focuses on men such as John Jacob Astor and Ramsay Crooks who learned to exploit the needs and wants of Indian tribes to gain a superior economic position over the British and made fur trading an integral economic activity in early U.S. history. Maps.

Download or read book Children of the Covered Wagon written by Mary Jane Carr and published by Christian Liberty Press. This book was released on 2007-03 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Young children will love to read this historically-accurate, personal account of pioneers heading west on the Oregon Trail during the mid-1800s. Great illustrations, large print and helpful maps will enhance your child's journey through this exciting historical period.

Download or read book Mountain Men and Fur Traders of the Far West written by LeRoy Reuben Hafen and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1982-01-01 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legendary mountain men—the fur traders and trappers who penetrated the Rocky Mountains and explored the Far West in the first half on the nineteenth century—formed the vanguard of the American empire and became the heroes of American adventure. This volume brings to the general reader brief biographies of eighteen representative mountain men, selected from among the essay assembled by LeRoy R. Hafen in The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West (ten volumes, 1965-72). The subjects and authors are: Manuel Lisa (Richard E. Oglesby); Pierre Chouteau Jr. (Janet Lecompte); Wilson Price Hunt (William Brandon); William H. Ashley (Harvey L. Carter); Jedediah Smith (Harvey L. Carter); John McLoughlin (Kenneth L. Holmes); Peter Skene Ogden (Ted J. Warner); Ceran St. Vrain (Harold H. Dunham); Kit Carson (Harvey L. Carter); Old Bill Williams (Frederic E. Voelker); William Sublette (John E. Sunder);Thomas Fitzpatrick (LeRoy R. and Ann W. Hafen); James Bridger (Cornelius M. Ismert); Benjamin L. E. Bonneville (Edgeley W. Todd); Joseph R. Walker (Ardis M. Walker); Nathaniel Wyeth (William R. Sampson); Andrew Drips (Harvey L. Carter); and Joseph L. Meek (Harvey E. Tobie).

Download or read book The Forgotten Awakening written by Douglas McMurry and published by Deep River Books LLC. This book was released on 2011-05-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roughly corresponding in time to the Great Awakening in the east, there was an extraordinary outpouring of prophecy among the western tribes of western Montana, Idaho and eastern Washington. Occuring prior to the arrival of white people, these prophecies began to alert the tribes to the Christian gospel, soon to arrive on their doorstep.... The Forgotten Awakening tells the story of those prophecies and the spiritual fervor they produced west of the Rockies.... It suggests that, if God has a unique vision for the North American continent, the indigenous First Nations are an indispensable part of it, and were intended so from the beginning"--Back cover.

Download or read book Edward Warren written by Sir William Drummond Stewart and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known for over a century only to devotees of microfilm and rare-book rooms, Edward Warren now emerges as an invaluable eyewitness account of the beaver trade of the Rocky Mountains and of the fabled mountain men, sketched from life by one who shared their times starving and shining. Sir William Drummond Stewart, soldier, adventurer, and baronet, spent most of a decade in a place as unlike his luxurious ancestral estates as possible--the plains and mountains of American in the 1830s, when the inhabitants were Indians, mountain men, and buffalo.