front cover of The Brothers Robidoux and the Opening of the American West
The Brothers Robidoux and the Opening of the American West
Robert J. Willoughby
University of Missouri Press, 2012
Written in a unique biographical format, Robert Willoughby interweaves the stories of six brothers who shaped the American trans-Mississippi West during the first five decades of the nineteenth century. After migrating from French Canada to St. Louis, the brothers Robidoux—Joseph, Francois, Antoine, Louis, Michel, and Isadore—and their father, Joseph, became significant members in the business, fur trading, and land speculation communities, frequently interacting with upper-class members of the French society.

Upon coming of age, the brothers followed their father into the fur business and American Indian trade. The oldest of the six, Joseph, led the group on an expedition up the Missouri River as Lewis and Clark had once done, designating a path of trade sites along their journey until they reached their destination at present-day Omaha, Nebraska. Eventually the younger brothers set out on their own westward expedition in the mid 1820s, reaching both Colorado and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Joseph eventually became a town founder in northwest Missouri near Blacksnake Creek. Antoine and Louis traveled as far as California, finally settling in Santa Fe where they became prominent citizens. As a trapper and trader, Michel endured many hardships and close calls during his journey across the West. Francois and Isadore made their home in New Mexico, maintaining a close relationship with Joseph in Missouri.

Though frequently under contract by others, the brothers did their best work when allowed to freelance and make their own rules. The brothers would ultimately pass on their prosperous legacy of ranging, exploring, trading, and town-building to a new generation of settlers. As the nature of the fur trade changed, so did the brothers’ business model. They began focusing on outfitting western migrants, town folk, and farmers. Their practices made each of them wealthy; however, they all died poor.

To understand the opening of the American West, one must first know about men like the brothers Robidoux. Their lives are the framework for stories about the American frontier. By using primary sources located at the Missouri Historical Society, the Mexican Archives of New Mexico, and the Huntington Library, as well as contemporary accounts written by those who knew them, Willoughby has now told the Robidouxs’ story.
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Fur Trappers Traders Of The Far Southwest
Matthew Despain
Utah State University Press, 1997

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Moontrap
Don Berry
Oregon State University Press, 1962

Winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for best historical novel, Moontrap is a book of remarkable beauty and power about a man caught between his vivid past and an uncertain future.

The year is 1850, a transitional period in the new Oregon Territory, with settlers and lawmakers working to subdue the untamed region. Johnson Monday, a former mountain man, has been living on a bend of the Willamette River near Oregon City for seven years with his Shoshone Indian wife, struggling to make a place in settled society. One day, Webster T. Webster, a raucous, unrepentant trapper, arrives for an unexpected visit. With his earthy humor and stubborn adherence to the simple life, "Webb" leads Monday through adventures that flirt dangerously close to lawlessness, while helping him to rediscover his moral center. Through defiance, triumph, and tragedy, Moontrap follows Johnson Monday as he realizes that relinquishing the stark honesty of mountain life for the compromises of civilization may be too high a price to pay.

Following Trask in Don Berry's trilogy of novels set in the Oregon Territory, Moontrap offers a richly comic and intensely poignant portrayal of pioneer life.

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Rendezvous Reader
James H. Maguire
University of Utah Press, 1997

The early plans for Mount Rushmore called for blasting heroic likenesses of mountain men--Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, and John Colter-—into the solid mountain granite of South Dakota. Readers of this colorful volume will see the heroics and the brutally rugged individualism that made these fur trappers candidates for legend and infamy.

The accounts of the mountain men are spun from the experiences of a nation moving westward: a trapper returns from the dead; hunters feast on buffalo intestines served on a dirty blanket; a missionary woman is astounded by the violence and vulgarity of the trappers’ rendezvous. These are just a few of the narratives, tall tales, and just plain lies that make up A Rendezvous Reader.

The writers represented in this book include a dyed-in-the wool trappers, adventuring European nobles, upward-gazing eastern missionaries, and just plain hacks who never unsheathed a Green River knife or traveled farther west that the Ohio River. What these writers have in common is that all of them, whether they dealt mostly in fact of entirely in fantasy, helped to create a uniquely American icon: the mountain man.

Though A Rendezvous Reader will certainly be of interest to the historian and the historically curious, the true purpose of this anthology is to bring together in one volume the liveliest most readable accounts by and about the mountain men. Whether you sample or devour this anthology of mountain horrors and delights, it is a book guaranteed to entertain as well as inform.

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Trapline Twins
Julie and Miki Collins
University of Alaska Press, 2010
Identical twins Miki and Julie Collins lead a subsistence life in a remote area north of the Alaska Range in Alaska’s wild interior. This dual autobiography of adventure shines with their love of the wilderness and of the sled dogs that are their loyal companions
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Trask
Don Berry
Oregon State University Press, 2004
Set in 1848 on the wild edge of the continent, in the rainforests and rugged headlands of the Oregon coast, Trask follows a mountain man's quest for new opportunities and new land to settle. Elbridge Trask is a restless man, a gambler with God, nature, and life itself. Yearning for change, he sets out with Wakila, a young Clatsop Indian, and Charley Kehwa, a tamanawis man or spiritual leader of the tribe, on an extraordinary journey of discovery.

Trask is at once a gripping tale of adventure and a portrayal of one man's return to the naked simplicity of life. Inspired by his belief in the transcendent power of nature, his fascination with Eastern philosophy, and the lives of historical men and women, Don Berry created a story that is strongly imagined and powerfully rendered-a landmark work. This new edition of Berry's celebrated first novel includes an introduction by Jeff Baker, book critic for The Oregonian.
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