Horses, Hitches, and Rocky Trails Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a repurchase of an old friend. Years ago my career and life took me to Wyoming. Like many, I fell in love with the high country and soon realized that the only way to get to the best of it was with horses. As a relative greenhorn, however, I had a lot to learn about getting to and living in the high country, with or without horses. A friend gave me Joe Back's book Horses, Hitches and Rocky Trails. Somewhere along the way, I misplaced it. I'm glad to have it back.
This book is more than informative. It delivers all its name suggests, telling all I needed to know about the tack, rigging and techniques of handling horses in a pack string. By simply following his advice, I found myself not only able to do it, but do it without embarassing myself in the company of real mountain men.
Beyond that, Joe's earthy narrative and humorous, but informative, illustrations make the book a joy to read. Even after you read it cover to cover, you'll want to spend some time looking at the illustrations and re-reading the tidbits of wisdom. If you have an interest or plan to go into the primitive areas of the mountain West, I encourage you to read this even if you never intend to pack a horse yourself.

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"Horses, Hitches and Rocky Trails" is oftenreferred to as the packer's bible. Written in the language of theWest, it is a complete and often humorous presentation of the methodof packing horses into the wilderness. Amplified by the brilliantdrawings of artist Joe back, the book is for both the amateur andprofessional packer.

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In Trace of TR: A Montana Hunter's Journey Review

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(More customer reviews)"In Trace of TR" chronicles the legacy of one of our greatest Presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, while simultaneously interweaving a memoir of Aadland's life in the American West. This is a genuine story, written with a great deal of heart, that relates the shared admiration that both the author and TR have for the West.
Aadland brings you along on foot for rugged hunting expeditions, campfire visits, or riding on horseback through the mountains and forests of western Montana and northern Wyoming. It's obvious that Aadland did an exceptional amount of research into TR's character, life, and values. Interspersed throughout the book are quotes, letters written by TR, and stories of the President's own experiences of the West, many in the very same setting as the author. Aadland creatively relates his own experiences while on the trail, and also with his family and friends, to those which Roosevelt witnessed more than a century ago.
I see quality books as transporting the reader to experience the same setting and plot that is unfolding before him in the novel. Aadland's style does just that, keeping me entertained and interested in his experiences, and those of TR, while pursuing the outdoors of the American West. I would be happy to recommend this book, without reservation, and to give it a solid five stars.

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Buffalo Days: Stories from J. Wright Mooar (Texas Heritage Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)Good personal reminiscence. Very good end notes. Certainly not politicaly correct but a very good view of the prevaling mind set of the nineteenth century buffalo hide trade.

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"Because he has been criticized as a destroyer, a ruthless killer, and wastrel of a great game resource of a Nation, the buffalo hunter appeals to the bar of history for his vindication. . . . Within four years we opened up a vast empire to settlement, and put the Indians forever out of Texas."J. Wright Mooar tells the story of the buffalo hunter, from the hunter's perspective, in this first-person account published more than seventy years ago in several installments in Holland's, The Magazine of the South. Mooar was more than eighty years old when he sat down with Methodist minister/educator James Winford Hunt and recounted his years as a buffalo hunter.He describes how buffalo hunting became a huge business that thrived for less than a decade in the 1870s and makes the case that the buffalo hunter, more than anyone else, opened the way for white settlement by eradicating the Indians' source of food."Buffalo hunting was a business and not a sport. It required capital, management, and a lot of hard work. Magazine writers and others who claim that the killing of the buffalo was a national calamity and was accomplished by vandals simply expose their ignorance, and I resent such an unjust judgment upon us."If it had not been for the work of the buffalo hunters, the wild bison would still graze where Amarillo now is, and the red man would still reign supreme over the pampas of the Panhandle of Texas."Any one of the families killed and homes destroyed by the Indians would have been worth more to Texas and to civilization than all the millions of buffalo that ever roamed from the Pecos River on the south to the Platte River on the north.""Here is an odyssey of hairbreadth escapes from death with wild Indians, wilder white men, and thundering herds of wild buffalo," writes J. W. Hunt, founding president of Abilene's McMurry College (now University), in his introduction.Illustrated by Texas folklore artist Granville Bruce, the stories of J. Wright Mooar make for lively reading and continuing debate.

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Parading through History: The Making of the Crow Nation in America 1805-1935 (Studies in North American Indian History) Review

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(More customer reviews)This well researched text provides great insight into the Crow Indian culture. Beginning with earliest recorded written accounts, proceding through the forced move of the Crow, or Apslaloke, from historic homelands and concentrated on their modern day reservation, this is an excellent introduction or supplement to a basic understanding of this plains nation. There is a lot of first person quotes, good photo documentation and scholarly posings. The book concludes with a interesting analysis of Chief Plenty Coups presentation at the dedication of the tomb of the unknown soldier and it's meaning as representative of Native American society at that time.

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This history of the Crow Indians links their nineteenth-century nomadic life and their modern existence. The Crows not only withstood the dislocation and conquest visited on them after 1805, but acted in the midst of these events to construct a modern Indian community--a nation.Their efforts sustained the pride and strength reflected in Chief Plenty Coups' statement in 1925 that he did "not care at all what historians have to say about Crow Indians," as well as their community's faith in the beauty of its traditions and its inventions. Frederick E. Hoxie demonstrates that contact with outsiders drew the Crows together and tested their ability to adapt their traditions to new conditions.He emphasizes political life, but also describes changes in social relations, religious beliefs, and economic activities.His final chapter discusses the significance of the Crow experience for American history in general.

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Crowfoot: Chief of the Blackfeet (Civilization of the American Indian) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is interesting, adventurous, informative, accurate, captivating - a must read! It involves North American Indian history during the last half of the 1800's, in the Northwest US and Western Canada. The major focus is on the Blackfeet Indians of this area. Learn how critical the land and the buffalo were to so many Indian Nations, and how they lost both of these critical necessities of their life and culture. Read this book and learn that there were peaceful Indians, and there were violent Indians, rather like the rest of the world! Read this book and you will never think or say the North American Indians "were savages", as many people still do! This book should also be a must read for every high school student in North America! I highly recommend it!

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Crowfoot, a Blood Indian who became chief of the Blackfoot Nation, was a great warrior and peacemaker during the time of settlement of the Canadian West.In one shattering decade, from 1875 to 1885, the great buffalo herds disappeared from Western Canada, forcing the Plains Indians who had depended on them for food, shelter, and clothing, to change their way of life.Crowfoot became a leader by merit, establishing his leadership in battle.He survived smallpox epidemics, fought in 19 battles, and provided generous leadership, sharing his wealth with the less successful.Crowfoot tells the story of how one Canadian First Nation was led through years of cataclysmic change by a wise chief, a great warrior, a diplomat and peacemaker who viewed peace as the key to survival.--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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The Blackfeet: Raiders on the Northwestern Plains (Civilization of the American Indian Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is a researcher's dream, and a pleasure to read. First published in 1958, this volume traces the history of the Blackfeet from pre-horse days through to the 1950's. The author displays a thorough understanding of his subject, and extensively annotates his work, paying meticulous attention to dates, places and names. John C Ewers was the first curator of the Museum of the Plains Indian near Browning, Montana, and many of the items in the museum collection were given to him at the time by elder members of the tribe at the time. He used primary sources for much of his information for this book, and corroborated details with these tribal elders as much as possible. This is a well-written, respectful history of the Blackfeet nation, and ought to remain in print for decades to come. Potential buyers should scan the Table of Contents page for an overview of subjects covered.

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The Blackfeet were the strongest military power on the northwestern plains in the historic buffalo days. For half a century up to 1805, they were almost constantly at war with the Shoshonis and came very close to exterminating that tribe. They aggressively asserted themselves against the Flatheads and the Kutenais, shoving them westward across the Rockies. They got on fairly well with English and Canadian traders during the heyday of the fur trade on the Saskatchewan River, but on the upper Missouri they took an early dislike to Americans, whom they called "Big Knives." American fur traders, such as Manuel Lisa, Pierre Menard, and Andrew Henry, were literally chased out of Montana by the Blackfeet.

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