Part 10 (1/2)

COYNER, D. H. _The Lost Trappers_, 1847.

DAVIDSON, L. J., and BOSTWICK, P. _The Literature of the Rocky Mountain West 1803-1903_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1939. Davidson and Forrester Blake, editors. _Rocky Mountain Tales_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1947.

DEVOTO, BERNARD. _Across the Wide Missouri_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1947. Superbly ill.u.s.trated by reproductions of Alfred Jacob Miller.

DeVoto has amplitude and is a master of his subject as well as of the craft of writing.

FAVOUR, ALPHEUS H. _Old Bill Williams, Mountain Man_, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1936. Flavor and facts both. Full bibliography.

FERGUSSON, HARVEY. _Rio Grande_, 1933, republished by Tudor, New York.

The drama and evolution of human life in New Mexico, written out of knowledge and with power. _Wolf Song_, New York, 1927. OP. Graphic historical novel of Mountain Men. It sings with life.

GARRARD, LEWIS H. _Wah-toyah and the Taos Trail_, 1850. One of the basic works.

GRANT, BLANCHE C. _When Old Trails Were New--The Story of Taos_, New York, 1934. OP. Taos was rendezvous town for the free trappers.

GUTHRIE, A. B., JR. _The Big Sky_, Sloane, New York, 1947 (now published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston). ”An unusually original novel, superb as historical fiction.”--Bernard DeVoto. I still prefer Harvey Fergusson's _Wolf Song_.

HAMILTON, W. T. _My Sixty Years on the Plains_, New York, 1905. Now published by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio.

INMAN, HENRY. _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, 1897.

IRVING, WAs.h.i.+NGTON. _The Adventures of Captain Bonneville_ and _Astoria_. The latter book was founded on Robert Stuart's Narratives. In 1935 these were prepared for the press, with much illuminative material, by Philip Ashton Rollins and issued under the t.i.tle of _The Discovery of the Oregon Trail_.

LARPENTEUR, CHARLES. _Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri_, edited by Elliott Coues, New York, 1898. As Milo Milton Quaife shows in an edition of the narrative issued by the Lakeside Press, Chicago, 1933, the indefatigable Coues just about rewrote the old fur trader's narrative. It is immediate and vigorous.

LAUT, A. C. _The Story of the Trapper_, New York, 1902. A popular survey, emphasizing types and characters.

LEONARD, ZENAS. _Narrative of the Adventures of Zenas Leonard_, Clearfield, Pa., 1839. In 1833 the Leonard trappers reached San Francis...o...b..y, boarded a Boston s.h.i.+p anch.o.r.ed near sh.o.r.e, and for the first time in two years varied their meat diet by eating bread and drinking ”Coneac.” One of the trappers had a gun named Knock-him-stiff.

Such earthy details abound in this narrative of adventures in a brand new world.

LOCKWOOD, FRANK C. _Arizona Characters_, Los Angeles, 1928. Very readable biographic sketches. OP.

MILLER, ALFRED JACOB. _The West of Alfred Jacob Miller_, with an account of the artist by Marvin C. Ross, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1950. Although Miller painted the West during 1837-38, only now is he being discovered by the public. This is mainly a picture book, in the top rank.

PATTIE, JAMES OHIO. _The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie of Kentucky_, Cincinnati, 1831. Pattie and his small party went west in 1824. For grizzlies, thirst, and other features of primitive adventure the narrative is primary.

REID, MAYNE. _The Scalp Hunters_. An antiquated novel, but it has some deep-dyed pictures of Mountain Men.

ROSS, ALEXANDER. _Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River_ (1849) and _The Fur Hunters of the Far West_ (1855). The trappers of the Southwest can no more be divorced from the trappers of the Hudson's Bay Company than can Texas cowboys from those of Montana.

RUSSELL, OSBORNE. _Journal of a Trapper_, Boise, Idaho, 1921. In the winter of 1839, at Fort Hall on Snake River, Russell and three other trappers ”had some few books to read, such as Byron, Shakespeare and Scott's works, the Bible and Clark's Commentary on it, and some small works on geology, chemistry and philosophy.” Russell was wont to speculate on Life and Nature. In perspective he approaches Ruxton.

RUXTON, GEORGE F. _Life in the Far West_, 1848; reprinted by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1951, edited by LeRoy R. Hafen.

No other contemporary of the Mountain Men has been so much quoted as Ruxton. He remains supremely readable.

SABIN, EDWIN L. _Kit Carson Days_, 1914. A work long standard, rich on rendezvous, bears, and many other a.s.sociated subjects. Bibliography.

Republished in rewritten form, 1935. OP.