Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This is a worthy addition to the long shelf of good books about the doings of a few men who explored and adventured in the wilderness of the great West around about the 1820s and 1830s. Never perhaps did so few lead such exhilarating and dangerous lives.
The "Reader" consists of 151 brief excerpts from mostly contemporary writings. Here for example is William Ashley's 1822 advertisement for "ONE HUNDRED MEN, to ascend the Missouri River to its source." One of the respondents was Jim Bridger. There are writings here from painters Alfred Jacob Miller and George Catlin, historian Francis Parkman, writer Washington Irving, and by the Mountain Men themselves: tall tales from the likes of Joe Meek and Black Harris, the story of John Colter's amazing flight from the Blackfeet, Hugh Glass's encounter with a grizzly, and Kit Carson's amazement when he encountered a Dime novel in which he himself "was represented as a great hero, slaying Indians by the hundred."Each section of the book has an informative introduction from the editors.
The selections run the full range of topics from fiction to what the Mountain Men wore, how they trapped beaver, and their sometimes violent, sometimes connubial relations with the Indian tribes they encountered. It's a good book to page through looking for interesting selections. You'll find many.
Smallchief
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