After Lewis and Clark

by Utley, Robert M.

• ISBN13: 9780803295643
• ISBN10: 0803295642
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-11-01
• Publisher: Bison Books

Summary

In 1807, a year after Lewis and Clark returned from the shores of the Pacific, groups of trappers and hunters began to drift West to tap the rich stocks of beaver and to trade with the Native nations. Colourful and eccentric, bold and adventurous, mountain men such as John Colter, George Drouillard, Hugh Glass, Andrew Henry, and Kit Carson found individual freedom and financial reward in pursuit of pelts. Their knowledge of the country and its inhabitants served the first mapmakers, the army, and the streams of emigrants moving West in ever-greater numbers. The mountain men laid the foundations for their own displacement, as they led the nation on a westward course that ultimately spread the American lands from sea to sea.Robert M. Utley, former chief historian for the National Park Service and a founder of the Western Historical Association, is the author of fifteen books on the Western frontier, including Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life and Custer and the Great Controversy: The Origin and Development of a Legend, both available in Bison Books editions. After Lewis and Clark was originally published as A Life Wild and Perilous.

Author Biography

Robert M. Utley, former chief historian for the National Park Service and a founder of the Western Historical Association, is the author of fifteen books on the Western frontier, including Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life and Custer and the Great Controversy: The Origin and Development of a Legend, both available in Bison Books editions. After Lewis and Clark was originally published as A Life Wild and Perilous.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xiii
1. Colter and Drouillard: Continental Crossing	1	(10)
2. Colter and Drouillard: Mountain Man Prototypes	11	(12)
3. Robinson, Hoback, and Reznor: Doomed Trio	23	(16)
4. Jedediah Smith: Atypical Mountain Man	39	(16)
5. Jedediah Smith: South Pass and the Siskadee	55	(14)
6. Étienne Provost: L'homme des montagnes	69	(14)
7. Jedediah Smith: California, Oregon, and the Cimarron	83	(20)
8. Ewing Young: Gila Trails to California	103	(14)
9. Joe Walker: The Great Basin and the Sierras	117	(14)
10. Bill Sublette: Struggle of the Fur Giants	131	(18)
11. Warren Ferris: Trapper as Cartographer	149	(8)
12. Tom Fitzpatrick: Missionaries to Oregon	157	(16)
13. Jim Bridger: End of an Era	173	(12)
14. Kit Carson: Mapping the Way West	185	(22)
15. Joe Meek and Doc Newell: Trappers as Colonists	207	(16)
16. Kit Carson: Frémont's Third Expedition	223	(18)
17. Kit Carson: The Continent Spanned	241	(22)
18. Jim Bridger: Filling in the Map	263	(24)
The Maps, by Peter H. Dana	287	(6)
Acknowledgments	293	(4)
Sources	297	(18)
Notes	315	(56)
Index	371