Images of America – Yellowstone National Park
Yellowstone National Park is one of the earth’s most famous places. Established in 1872 as the world’s first national park, it has preserved remarkable natural wonders like Old Faithful Geyser and cultural icons such as Old Faithful Inn. For centuries, it was home to the Shoshone, Crow, Bannock, Blackfeet, and other Indian tribes, but these groups were banished in the 1870’s by park promoters who feared that tourists would not visit if American Indians lived there. Almost immediately after its establishment, Yellowstone became the primary destination for tourist travel to the American West following the Civil War. By 1900, it was a vast tourist success, and today it is both a world biosphere preserve and a world heritage site.
ISBN – 978-0-7385-4849-4
128 Pages
Softback
6 1/2″ x 9 1/4″
Arcadia Publishing, 2008
In the Image of A.J. Miller
Alfred J. Miller is the only artist known to have painted and sketched the daily happenings of the Rocky Mountain trapper in the year of 1837. To the students of the western fur trade, especially those interested in the beaver hunters of the period 1820-40, Miller’s sketches provide a rare glimpse into the daily happenings, dress, equipment and mode of travel of the famed “mountain men”.
With this book Alfred J. Miller’s most clear and complete drawings and paintings are taken into consideration to reproduce in photographs the clothing and equipment items that they show. In a sense it is a sketchbook, but using photography. A good clear photograph can tell a more complete story compared to a small drawing or sketch.
ISBN: 0-9722308-3-1
72 Pages
Softback
8 1/4″ x 10 3/4″
Historical Enterprises, 2005
Indian Scout Craft and Lore
The Life of the Indian boy–living close to nature, learning the ways of the wild animals, playing games and learning stories that develop the strength of body and spirit—has long been noted for its ability to develop character. In this book, a full-blooded Sioux Indian raised as a young warrior in the 1870’s and 80’s, describes that like–the lessons he learned, games he played, and feelings about life that he developed as he worked to become a young Indian scout.
Among the many areas of craft and lore described are the physical training of young boys, making friends with the wild animals, learning the language of footprints, hunting with slingshot and bow and arrow, trapping and fishing, making canoes, setting up camp, building wigwams, and other shelters, making fire without matches and cooking without pots, blazing a trail, using Indian signals, gesture language and picture writing, reading the signs of nature, and story telling, as well as information on winter and summer sports of the Indian boys, names and ceremonies of Indian boys and Indian girls, and the etiquette of the wigwam. Throughout, not only the practices but the reasons and feelings behind them are described. 27 illustrations show many of the crafts and signs described.
ISBN: 978-0-486-22995-9
190 Pages
Softback
5 3/8″ x 8″
Dover Publications, 1974
Indian Sign Language
Plains Indians from different tribes speaking different languages were nevertheless able to communicate facts and feelings of considerable complexity when they met. They used a language composed of gestures made almost entirely with the hands and fingers, probably the most highly developed gesture language to be found in any part of the world.
With this book, you will find it simple to use this language, which the author learned in the late 19th to early 20th centuries, principally from Sioux Indians in Wyoming. Drawings and short descriptions make clear the proper positions and motions of the hands to convey the meaning of over 870 alphabetically arranged common words – hungry, camp, evening, angry, fire, laugh, owl, cat, many times, brave, cold, heart, rain, spotted, together, river, etc. The words are then used in sample sentences. There are also brief sections on the pictography and ideography of the Sioux and Ojibway tribes, and on smoke signals.
ISBN: 978-0-486-22029-1
108 Pages
Softback
6″ x 9″
Dover Publications, 1969
Indian Tribes of North America – Coloring Book
This book contains 38 carefully researched, accurately drawn illustrations of the aboriginal inhabitants of North America, ranging from the Seminole of Florida to the Chilkat of Alaska. Other tribes represented include the Pequot, Mohawk, Iroquois, Seneca, Crow, Cree, Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Huron and many more.
Chiefs, warriors, squaws and children are shown in authentic costume among tepees, pueblos and other traditional dwellings; many are depicted hunting, making war, dancing and cooking. Detailed renderings recreate their weapons (knives, clubs, axes, bows and arrows, etc.), basketry, masks, canoes and sleds.
ISBN: 978-0-486-26303-8
46 Pages
Softback
8 1/4″ x 10 3/4″
Dover Publications, 1990
Indian Why Stories
The Native American was a true lover of nature and closer observer of the sights and sounds about him. He delighted in composing tales that offered imaginative explanations for everything — from simple stories about creation to fanciful accounts of how animals acquired certain physical characteristics.
This entertaining collection of 22 stories, compiled nearly a century ago by a devotee of Indian lore who considered them “well-worth saving,” recounts many of the legends told to him by members of the Blackfeet, Chippewa and Cree tribes.
ISBN: 978-0-486-28800-0
85 Pages
Softback
5 1/2″ 8 1/2″
Dover Publications, 1995
It Happened in Wyoming – Remarkable Events That Shaped History
Best known for its open spaces and outlaw ways, Wyoming is also the source of many strange and unusual tales, like that of Dr. John E. Osborne, the third governor of Wyoming who took the oath of office wearing shoes made of a man’s skin. It Happened in Wyoming goes behind the scenes to tell this story and many more, in short episodes that reveal the intriguing people and events that have shaped the Equality State.
ISBN – 978-0-7627-7211-7
182 Pages
Softback
6″ x 9″
Morris Book Publishing, 2013
Jedediah Smith and His Monuments
Bicentennial Edition
Celebrating the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Jedediah Smith.
Look at monuments for Jedediah Smith over eight different states. California, Kansas, Nevada, New York, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. Monuments for him went from thirty-one to sixty-six, as earlier reported in the 1984 edition of the same book.
The book will tell you the location of it (general and specific), if it is accessible, how it is constructed, wording it may have and a picture of the monument itself. This can be found for each of the sixty-six monuments.
ISBN – 0-9612094-1-0
80 Pages
Softback
8 1/2″ x 11″
The Jedediah Smith Society, 1999
Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West
In the exploration of the American West, Jedediah Strong Smith is overshadowed only by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. During his eight years in the West Jedidiah Smith made the effective discovery of South Pass; he was the first man to reach California overland from the American frontier, the first to cross the Sierra Nevada, the first to travel the length and width of the Great Basin, the first to reach Oregon by a journey up the California coast. He saw more of the West than any man of his time, and was familiar with it from the Missouri River to the Pacific, from Mexico to Canada.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-5138-0
458 Pages
Softback
5 1/8″ x 8″
University of Nebraska Press, 1964
Jedediah Smith, No Ordinary Man
Mountain man and fur trader Jedediah Smith casts a heroic shadow. The first Anglo-American to travel overland to California via the Southwest, Smith roamed through more of the West than anyone of his era, and his adventures quickly became the stuff of legend. In this biography, Barton H. Barbour includes recently discovered documents and sifts fact from legend to offer new insights on the life and adventures of this dynamic frontiersman.
Young Jedediah Smith was influenced by notable men who were his family’s neighbors, including a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. At twenty-three, hard times and wanderlust set him on the road west. Barbour delves into Smith’s journals and correspondence to offer compelling insights into the trader’s itineraries, personality, and passion for geographic discovery.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-4196-1
290 Pages
Softback
5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″
University of Oklahoma Press, 2009
Jim Beckwourth
Sometime around 1800 James Beckwourth was born a slave in Frederick County, Virginia, the natural son of Sir Jennings Beckwith and a female slave. In 1810 Sir Jennings moved with his family to the wilderness of St. Louis, Missouri, where Jim was educated and eventually apprenticed to a blacksmith. His father recorded a Deed of Emancipation in his name on three different occasions, sending young Jim out into the world with his blessings.
Jim Beckwourth’s apprenticeship as a fur trapper was served with General William Ashley’s grueling 1824 winter expedition to the Rocky Mountains. Except for a short stint as an army scout during the Seminole campaign, Jim spent the remainder of his long, eventful life in the West, dying among the Crow Indians whom he loved. He was a fur trapper, trader, scout, war chief of the Crow Nation, explorer, hotelkeeper, dispatch carrier, storekeeper, prospector, Indian agent for the Cheyennes-in short a mountain man extraordinaire.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-1555-9
248 Pages
Softback
5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″
University of Oklahoma Press, 1972
Jim Bridger – By J. Cecil Alter
J. Cecil Alter tells us Jim Bridger “was among the first white men to use the Indian trail over South Pass; he was first to taste the waters of the Great Salt Lake, first to report a two-ocean stream, foremost in describing the Yellowstone Park phenomena, and the only man to run the Big Horn River rapid on a raft; and he originally selected the Crow Creek-Sherman-Dale Creek route through the Laramie Mountains and Bridger’s Pass over the Continental Divide, which were adopted by the Union Pacific Railroad.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-1509-2
358 Pages
Softback
5 1/2″ x 8 1/2”
University of Oklahoma Press, 1962
Jim Bridger – Mountain Man, Stanley Vestal
Even among the mighty mountain men, Jim Bridger was a towering figure. He was one of the greatest explorers and pathfinders in American history. He couldn’t write his name, but at eighteen he had braved the fury of the Missouri, ascending it in a keelboat flotilla commanded by that stalwart Mike Fink, By 1824, when he was only twenty, he had discovered the Great Salt Lake. Later he was to open the Overland Route, which was the path of the Overland Stage, the Pony Express, and the Union Pacific. One of the foremost trappers in the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, he was a legend in his own time as well as ours. He remains one of the most important scouts and guides in the history of the West.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-5720-7
333 Pages
Softback
5 1/4″ x 8″
University of Nebraska Press, 1970
Jim Bridger – Trailblazer of the American West
Even 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 Black-feet 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.
The Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Journal has published three articles about Jim Bridger by Jerry Enzler while he was researching and writing the new biography:
Volume 5, 2011 – Tracking Jim Bridger: Finding the Trail of Old Gabe
Volume 9, 2015 – Jim Bridger Challenges the HBC in Post-Rendezvous Era
Volume 11, 2017 – Otholoho and Grohean: Two Fast Horses, One Set of Tracks
ISBN: 978-0-8061-6863-0
371 Pages
Hardback
6 1/4″ x 9 1/4″
University of Oklahoma Press, 2021
Joe Meek – The Merry Mountain Man
Born in Virginia, Joe Meek became a trapper, Indian fighter, pioneer, peace officer, frontier politician, and lover of practical jokes and Jacksonian democracy. He was a boon companion to two other larger-than-life mountain men, Kit Carson and Jim Bridger, and just as important in frontier history.
In 1829, our nineteen-year-old hero joined the Rocky Mountain Fur Company of Jedediah Smith and the Sublettes and headed west on an odyssey of hair-raising high adventure and hilarious low comedy. For the next twelve years, the Rockies rang with tales of Joe’s wild exploits. After the Last Rendezvous in 1840, he helped drive the first wagons to Oregon, served in the legislature of the provisional government, and went to Washington as a special envoy to President Polk. He later returned to Oregon to live out his days in the community that he helped build.
ISBN – 978-0-8032-5206-6
336 Pages
Softback
5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″
University of Nebraska Press, 1963
John Colter – His Years in the Rockies
John Colter was a crack hunter with the Lewis and Clark expedition before striking out on his own as a mountain man and fur trader. A solitary journey in the winter of 1807-1808 took him into present day Wyoming. To unbelieving trappers he later reported sights that inspired the name of Colter’s Hell. It was a sulfurous place of hidden fires, smoking pits, an shooting water. And it was real. John Colter is known to history as probably the first white man to discover the region that now includes Yellowstone National Park. In a classic book, first published in 1952, Burton Harris weighs the facts and legends about a man who was dogged by misfortune and “robbed of the just rewards he had earned.”
ISBN: 978-0-8032-7264-4
180 Pages
Softback
6″ x 9″
University of Nebraska Press, 1952
