Jedediah Smith and His Maps of the American West
Author: Dale Lowell Morgan
Publisher:
Published: 1954
Total Pages: 116
ISBN-13:
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Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West
Author: Dale Lowell Morgan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Published: 1969-01-01
Total Pages: 14
ISBN-13: 9780803243750
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn 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.
Jim Bridger
Author: Jerry Enzler
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2021-04-29
Total Pages: 511
ISBN-13: 0806169796
DOWNLOAD EBOOKEven 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.
Historical Atlas of the American West
Author: Warren A. Beck
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 1989
Total Pages: 204
ISBN-13: 0806124563
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe 78 maps in this atlas add significant information to the study of the development of the American West, Defined for this resources as those 17 continental states west of the Missouri River. The maps range in chronology from explorations in the sixteenth century to the location of World War II prisoner of war and Japanese internment camps. The atlas includes maps of geographic, flora and fauna data. Maps are on the left pages and narratives about the maps re on the facing pages. Maps are black and white clear and easily read. An Appendix shows Spanish-Mexican land grants, and there is an index. This is an excellent atlas for both middle and high schools. Includes a section on Arkansas aboriginal setting and Native American tribes. Describes European contacts and settlements.
Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West
Author: Dale Lowell Morgan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Published: 1953-01-01
Total Pages: 474
ISBN-13: 9780803251380
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn 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.
The Southwest Expedition of Jedediah S. Smith
Author: Jedediah Strong Smith
Publisher: Bison Books
Published: 1977
Total Pages: 259
ISBN-13: 9780803291973
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJedediah 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.
Jedediah Smith
Author: Barton H. Barbour
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2012-09-10
Total Pages: 306
ISBN-13: 0806183225
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMountain 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.
The Travels of Jedediah Smith
Author: Jedediah Strong Smith
Publisher:
Published: 1992
Total Pages: 252
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Travels of Jedediah Smith begins with Smith's own sketch of his entry into the fur trade in 1822, when he left St. Louis with an expedition headed by William H. Ashley and Andrew Henry. The book continues with the Smith's daily record from June 23, 1827, to July 3, 1828, dealing with his remarkable journey on foot over the Utah desert, his second visit to California, and his trip to Oregon.
Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America
Author: Eric Jay Dolin
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2011-07-05
Total Pages: 494
ISBN-13: 0393079244
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA Seattle Times selection for one of Best Non-Fiction Books of 2010 Winner of the New England Historial Association's 2010 James P. Hanlan Award Winner of the Outdoor Writers Association of America 2011 Excellence in Craft Award, Book Division, First Place "A compelling and well-annotated tale of greed, slaughter and geopolitics." —Los Angeles Times As Henry Hudson sailed up the broad river that would one day bear his name, he grew concerned that his Dutch patrons would be disappointed in his failure to find the fabled route to the Orient. What became immediately apparent, however, from the Indians clad in deer skins and "good furs" was that Hudson had discovered something just as tantalizing. The news of Hudson's 1609 voyage to America ignited a fierce competition to lay claim to this uncharted continent, teeming with untapped natural resources. The result was the creation of an American fur trade, which fostered economic rivalries and fueled wars among the European powers, and later between the United States and Great Britain, as North America became a battleground for colonization and imperial aspirations. In Fur, Fortune, and Empire, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin chronicles the rise and fall of the fur trade of old, when the rallying cry was "get the furs while they last." Beavers, sea otters, and buffalos were slaughtered, used for their precious pelts that were tailored into extravagant hats, coats, and sleigh blankets. To read Fur, Fortune, and Empire then is to understand how North America was explored, exploited, and settled, while its native Indians were alternately enriched and exploited by the trade. As Dolin demonstrates, fur, both an economic elixir and an agent of destruction, became inextricably linked to many key events in American history, including the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812, as well as to the relentless pull of Manifest Destiny and the opening of the West. This work provides an international cast beyond the scope of any Hollywood epic, including Thomas Morton, the rabble-rouser who infuriated the Pilgrims by trading guns with the Indians; British explorer Captain James Cook, whose discovery in the Pacific Northwest helped launch America's China trade; Thomas Jefferson who dreamed of expanding the fur trade beyond the Mississippi; America's first multimillionaire John Jacob Astor, who built a fortune on a foundation of fur; and intrepid mountain men such as Kit Carson and Jedediah Smith, who sliced their way through an awe inspiring and unforgiving landscape, leaving behind a mythic legacy still resonates today. Concluding with the virtual extinction of the buffalo in the late 1800s, Fur, Fortune, and Empire is an epic history that brings to vivid life three hundred years of the American experience, conclusively demonstrating that the fur trade played a seminal role in creating the nation we are today.
The World of the American West
Author: Gordon Morris Bakken
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-10-04
Total Pages: 982
ISBN-13: 1136931597
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe World of the American West is an innovative collection of original essays that brings the world of the American West to life, and conveys the distinctiveness of this diverse, constantly changing region. Twenty scholars incorporate the freshest research in the field to take the history of the American West out of its timeworn "Cowboys and Indians" stereotype right up into the major issues being discussed today, from water rights to the presence of the defense industry. Other topics covered in this heavily illustrated, highly accessible volume include the effects of leisure and tourism, western women, politics and politicians, Native Americans in the twentieth century, and of course, oil. With insight both informative and unexpected, The World of the American West offers perspectives on the latest developments affecting the modern American West, providing essential reading for all scholars and students of the field so that they may better understand the vibrant history of this globally significant, ever-evolving region of North America.
