THE MOUNTAIN MEN.
By Wyatt Blassingame and Richard Glendinning '4O.New York: Franklin Waits, Inc., 1962.166 pp. $2.95.
Behind the lurid and misleading dust cover of this small volume the reader will find a very well-written, authentic account of the lives and fortunes of some of the best-known "Mountain Men." The book is lively and a bit blood-curdling at times but is also well-balanced and fully appreciative of the contributions of these hunters and trappers who roamed the vast area of the western mountains when all that country was still in a state of nature. The native Indians were on hand to greet them, of course, and to display what was an understandable but unpredictable combination of co-operation and resentment. The reader travels with the "Mountain Men" as they encounter the Sioux and the Blackfeet and the Crow, the Comanche and a dozen other tribes, and in addition to getting a glimpse of Indian life and customs one catches the spirit of the annual summer rendezvous when sometimes as many as a thousand Amerinds gathered to spend a few weeks of high revelry with the trappers and with the traders from St. Louis who brought supplies and trinkets to exchange for the winter catch of beaver pelts - or "plews."
The volume covers in some detail, re. markably well done in the light of brevity, the careers of seven "Mountain Men," including the well-known Jed Smith Jim Bridger, and Kit Carson, and presents a memorable picture of this most colorful era in the American fur trade. The distances covered on foot by these men seem in an automobile age to be unbelievable, distances often ranging all the way from the upper Missouri to the upper Rio Grande and off across the desert stretches to the Sierras Sometimes in small groups, and frequently in splendid isolation, they explored the whole western part of the United States and charted the countless rivers and mountains on the maps of their minds. They stumbled on the wonders of the Yellowstone and Yosemite areas and built up their tall tales of natural wonders and physical triumphs that were often more truthful than soft Easterners cared to believe.
The outside limits of the activities of the "Mountain Men" were roughly from about 1806 to 1840. By the latter date "the beaver trade was dead, silk had taken over, and a prime plew brought only a dollar, hardly worth the trouble it took to trap it."
This account was written chiefly for teenagers but there is certainly no sign of writing down to that level. There is no need for it in these days and this reviewer would judge that most of Dartmouth's "old boys" would thoroughly enjoy this lively account.
Professor of History
