Beaver Hats: Material Culture in the Americas
by Maya Peters-Greño
This article looks at three North American communities – Euro-Americans, enslaved people and indigenous populations – to show how beaver top hats were used to navigate racial hierarchies from Early America through the post-Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Era.

The Eloquence of Mountain Man Lingo
by Jim Hardee
A mountaineer’s speech pattern is often as defining of a frontiersman’s character as are his actions, ranking as high as trapping beaver, hunting buffalo or fighting a grizzly bear – but it is truly accurate or based on historical works?

La Prairie de la Messe: Reconstructing Father De Smet’s Mass from the 1840 Rendezvous
by George Capps and Polly Capps Paule
by examining primary sources and material culture, this duo makes an artistic, yet historically correct, painting of Father Pierre-Jean De Smet’s Catholic Mass at the final rendezvous of the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Era.

Two Long Walks: James Clyman sand Thomas Fitzpatrick, 1824
by Scott Walker 
This article re-examines the dramatic adventures of two early mountain men in their attempts to get packs of fur from the Green River Valley, back across South Pass, and down the Platte River to market their catch.

Swords of the Fur Trade
by Donald Wade Douglas
It is easy to visualize swashbuckling Musketeers, Vikings, pirates and cavalry soldiers flashing their sabers about, but the idea of a mountain  man defending himself with a lengthy blade is less common. This article explores the presence and use of swords during the fur trade era.