The Prairie Traveler – The 1859 Handbook for Westbound Pioneers
For today’s reader, Marcy’s manual offers a fascinating view of the rigors and hazards of crossing the country. In 1859, it provided life-or-death advice on everything from finding water and building a fire to avoiding quicksand and treating snakebites. Marcy promised to assist his reader in escaping unforeseen disasters and maintaining relative comfort during the journey, adding that the intrepid pilgrim “will feel himself a master spirit in the wilderness he traverses, and not the victim of every new combination of circumstances which nature affords or fate allots, as if to try his skill and prowess.”
Marcy’s counsel encompasses choosing the best routes to California, wagon maintenance and the selection and care of horses, food supplies, first-aid procedures, and fording rivers. He also conveys information “concerning the habits of Indians,” including Native American tracking and hunting techniques, smoke signals and sign language, and battle tactics. Twenty-one original illustrations complement the informative and entertaining text.
ISBN – 978-0-486-45150-3
256 Pages
Softback
5″ x 8″
Dover Publications, 2006
The Revenant – A Novel of Revenge
The year is 1823, and the trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company live a brutal frontier life. Hugh Glass is among the company’s finest men, an experienced frontiersman and an expert tracker. But when a scouting mission puts him face-to-face with a grizzly bear, he is viciously mauled and not expected to survive. Two company men are dispatched to stay behind and tend to Glass before he dies. When the men abandon him instead, Glass is driven to survive by one desire: revenge. With shocking grit and determination, Glass sets out, crawling at first, across hundreds of miles of uncharted American frontier. Based on a true story, The Revenant is a remarkable tale of obsession, the human will stretched to its limits, and the lengths that one man will go to for retribution.
ISBN: 978-1-250-10119-8
262 Pages
Softback
5 1/2″ x 8 1/4″
Picador/St. Martin’s Press, 2002
The Saga of Hugh Glass – Pirate, Pawnee, and Mountain Man
Before his most fabulous adventure, Hugh Glass was captured by the buccaneer Jean Lafitte and turned pirate himself until his first chance to escape. Soon he fell prisoner to the Pawnees and lived for four years as one of them before he managed to make his way to St. Louis. Next he joined a group of trappers to open up the fur-rich, Indian-held territory of the Upper Missouri River. Then unfolds the legend of a man who survived under impossible conditions: robbed and left to die by his comrades, he struggled alone, unarmed, and almost mortally wounded through two thousand miles of wilderness.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-5834-1
237 Pages
Softback
5 1/4″ x 8″
University of Nebraska Press, 1963
The Splendid Wayfaring – Jedediah Smith and the Ashley-Henry Men, 1822 – 1831
The exciting narrative begins in 1822, when (Jedediah) Smith ascended the Missouri River in the first fur-trading expedition of William H. Ashley and Andrew Henry, and ends in 1831, when he was killed by Comanche Indians on the Cimarron River. In the intervening years Smith became the first explorer to recognize South Pass as the gateway to the Far West, the first overlander to reach California and travel up the coast to the Columbia River, and the first white man to cross the Sierra Nevada and the Great Basin from west to east.
ISBN: 0-8032-5723-6
290 Pages
Softback
5″ x 8″
University of Nebraska Press, 1920
The Story of Sacajawea – Coloring Book
Kidnapped as a young child by enemy warriors, sold to a French trader, and married at fourteen, Sacajawea was just a teenager when she helped lead explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark through the wilderness of the great American Northwest.
ISBN: 978-0-486-42374-6
32 Pages
Softback
8 1/8″ x 10 7/8″
Dover Publications, 2002
The Truth about Sacajawea
Sacajawea made a great contribution during the travel by The United States Army’s Corps of Discovery and their history making exploration of our continent west of the Mandan/Hidatsa villages to the Pacific Ocean.
She was adept at finding food. She was a symbol to native warriors that the expedition was a peaceful party of travelers. She was helpful as a source of information about the land from the Three Forks area to the Lemhi Valley. However, it is clear that her main contribution was as an interpreter when the expedition was in dire need of horses and a guide to make the critical traverse of the mountains before winter shut them off.
ISBN: 978-1-880114-18-6
96 Pages
Softback
6″ x 9″
Grandview Publishing,1997
The Wild Wyoming Range
The Wyoming Range stands like a dusky silhouette above the sagebrush sea, revealing its splendor only to those who venture off the highway. Its snowy peaks and ridgelines extend nearly a hundred miles from the confluence of the Hoback and Snake Rivers to the headwaters of LaBarge Creek. The mountains highlighted is this book of photographs and essays include not only the Wyoming Range but the Salt River Range, Greys River, and the long, high ridges stretching another fifty miles to the south: Commissary Ridge, the Tunp, and Porcupine Ranges, Absaroka Ridge. In this vast landscape of singular beauty, the Old West lives on.
ISBN: 978-0-9840007-0-8
119 Pages
Hardback
11 1/2″ x 10 3/4″
Laguna Wilderness Press, 2013
The Wise Animal Handbook
A laugh-out-loud book of animal kingdom advice for kids.
ISBN: 978-0-7385-2765-9
32 Pages
Hardback
10″ x 10″
Arcadia Kids, 2017
The Women’s West
The American West looms large in popular imagination — a place where men were rugged nd independent, violent and courageous. In this mythic West all the men were white, and the women were largely absent. The few female actors played supporting roles around the edges of the drama. Molded by the Victorian Cult of True Womanhood, they were passive, dependent , reluctant, and out of place. Men “won” the West. Women, against their better judgement, followed them to this “newly discovered” place and tried to re-create the amenities of the urban East.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-2067-6
323 Pages
Softback
6″ x 9″
The University of Oklahoma Press, 1987
The Year of Decision 1846
The Year of Decision 1846 tells many fascinating stories of the U.S. explorers who began the western march from the Mississippi to the Pacific, from Canada to the annexation of Texas, California, and the southwest lands from Mexico. It is the penultimate book of a trilogy which includes Across the Wide Missouri (for which DeVoto won both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes) and The Course of Empire. DeVoto’s narrative covers the expanding Western frontier, the Mormons, the Donner party, Fremont’s exploration, the Army of the West, and takes readers into Native American tribal life.
ISBN: 978-0-312-26794-0
538 Pages
Softback
5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″
Truman Talley Books, 1942
Tidings from the 18th Century
Beth Gilgun’s work gives readers the information, background, patterns and techniques to recreate the Colonial American lifestyle. Patterns and instructions for making clothing for the whole family, as other skills such as cooking and brewing, basketmaking, dyeing, making soap and candles, and 18th century needlework are some of the topics covered.
Written in the form of letters to fictional friend on the frontier, Mistress Gilgun shares information on all aspects of Colonial life. In her “letters,” she passes on news and information covering the skills and activities of daily life in 18th century America, as well as entertaining details about the latest fashions and word of goods newly available in the East Coast markets.
ISBN: 1-880655-04-7
277 Pages
Softback
8 1/2″ x 10 3/4″
Scurlock Publishing Co., 1993
The Encyclopedia of Trade Goods – Volume 3, Tools & Utensils of the Fur Trade
This third volume is 462 pages long and contains 600 illustrations, most in color. This book contains chapters covering: axes, knives, kettles and cookware, traps, fishing gear, wood working tools, horse equipment, optics, smoking pipes and paraphernalia, sewing tools including needles and scissors, tanning equipment, hoes and other agricultural tools, grooming items including combs and mirrors, and much, much more!
It represents over 60 years of research in Europe and North America. These books have each received national awards as the best references published in the United States.
ISBN – 978-0-912611-20-4
462 Pages
Hardback
11 1/4″ x 11 1/4″
Museum of the Fur Trade, 2019
Trappers of the Far West
In the early 1800’s vast fortunes were made in the international fur trade, an enterprise founded upon the effort of a few hundred trappers scattered across the American West. From their ranks came men who still command respect for their daring, skill, and resourcefulness.
ISBN: 0-8032-7218-9
334 Pages
Softback
5″ x 8″
University of Nebraska Press, 1983
Undaunted Courage – Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West
In this sweeping adventure story, Stephen E. Ambrose, the bestselling author of D-Day, presents the definitive account of one of the most momentous journeys in American history. Ambrose follows the Lewis and Clark Expedition from Thomas Jefferson’s hope of finding a waterway to the Pacific, through the hart-stopping moments of the actual trip, to Lewis’s lonely demise on the Natchez Trace. Along the way, Ambrose shows us the American West as Lewis saw it – wild, awesome, and pristinely beautiful. Undaunted Courage is a stunningly told action tale that will delight readers for generations.
ISBN: 978-0-684-82697-4
521 Pages
Softback
6″ x 9 1/4″
Simon & Schuster, 2005
Upper Missouri Outfit: AMM Handbook
The purpose of the handbook was to tap the knowledge and experience of the UMO brothers and put it in accessible form for new members to help them along their “pilgrim’s journey.” This handbook would help them “come up to speed” while avoiding many common mistakes and wasting of their time and money in making and buying improper gear.
It is also a valuable resource for senior members of the Upper Missouri Outfit.
131 Pages
Spiral Bound Softback
9 1/4″ x 11″
Upper Missouri Outfit, 1996
Upper Missouri Outfit: UMO Cayuse Handbook
This book is a compilation of some of the old-time “horse sense,” re-learned and practiced today by the Montana Brigade of the American Mountain Men known as the Upper Missouri Outfit. These men are dedicated to recreating the use of the horse in their fur trade activities. It is an ongoing effort and undergoes constant revision as the skills and knowledge are tested on rides and pack trips throughout the Rocky Mountains.
174 Pages
Spiral Bound Softback
9″ x 11″
Book design and layout designed by:
L. Lasater – American Mountain Man #803 and Liberty Graphics, 2005
