The Fist in the Wilderness

by Lavender, David Sievert; Wishart, David J.

• ISBN13: 9780803279766
• ISBN10: 0803279760
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr

Summary

The story of the American fur trade has been told many times from different viewpoints, but David Lavender was the first to place it within the overall contest for empire between Britain and the United States. Rather than offering a simple hagiography of men like Jedediah Smith, Kit Carson, Jim Bridger and other legendary trappers, Lavender relates the story of men such as John Jacob Astor and Ramsay Crooks who competed with Britain's Hudson's Bay Company for the fur resources of the Great Lakes region and the upper Missouri River country.Within this framework of contest and competition, Lavender shows how the American Fur Company learned to exploit the needs and wants of Indian tribes to gain a superior economic position over the British. The brutal and bloody rivalry helped Ramsay Crooks develop the techniques for transporting furs, supplying trappers, and selling pelts that made fur trapping such an integral economic activity in early U.S. history.

Author Biography

David Lavender lives in California. David J. Wishart is a professor of geography at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and the author of The Fur Trade of the American West: A Geographical Synthesis, also a Bison Book.

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE	xiii
CHAPTER 1 Michilimackinac: The Key and the Door	1	(16)
CHAPTER 2 Robert Dickson and the Ways of the Trade	17	(17)
CHAPTER 3 The Americans Stir	34	(18)
CHAPTER 4 Citizenship by Necessity	52	(16)
CHAPTER 5 The Meeting at La Charette	68	(14)
CHAPTER 6 Bold Hopes	82	(15)
CHAPTER 7 Frustrations	97	(21)
CHAPTER 8 Ripostes	118	(16)
CHAPTER 9 By Sea	134	(12)
CHAPTER 10 And by Land	146	(15)
CHAPTER 11 The Harrowing	161	(17)
CHAPTER 12 The Pawns of War	178	(16)
CHAPTER 13 Small Fights for Large Stakes	194	(15)
CHAPTER 14 Sweet Fruits of Defeat	209	(19)
CHAPTER 15 Bright New Vistas, American Style	228	(10)
CHAPTER 16 Taste of Power	238	(17)
CHAPTER 17 The Breath of Failure	255	(22)
CHAPTER 18 The Fist Closes	277	(17)
CHAPTER 19 Pressures	294	(20)
CHAPTER 20 Triumph	314	(18)
CHAPTER 21 Defeats	332	(17)
CHAPTER 22 Tensions	349	(18)
CHAPTER 23 The Colossus	367	(15)
CHAPTER 24 Strangling the Missouri	382	(16)
CHAPTER 25 The Spasms of Change	398	(22)
A NOTE ON THE BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	420	(5)
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES	425	(56)
INDEX	481