ble
collection of pioneer remedies yet published.

16. Mountain Men

AS USED HERE, the term "Mountain Men" applies to those trappers and
traders who went into the Rocky Mountains before emigrants had even
sought a pass through them to the west or cattle had beat out a trail
on the plains east of them. Beaver fur was the lodestar for the Mountain
Men. Their span of activity was brief, their number insignificant.
Yet hardly any other distinct class of men, irrespective of number or
permanence, has called forth so many excellent books as the Mountain
Men. The books are not nearly so numerous as those connected with range
life, but when one considers the writings of Stanley Vestal, Sabin,
Ruxton, Fer gusson, Chittenden, Favour, Garrard, Inman, Irving, Reid,
and White in this Seld, one doubts whether any other form of American
life at all has been so well covered in ballad, fiction, biography,
history.

See James Hobbs, James O. Pattie, and Reuben Gold Thwaites under "Surge
of Life in the West," also "Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail."

ALTER, J. CECIL. _James Bridger_, Salt Lake City, 1925. A hogshead
of life. Bibliography. OP. Republished by Long's College Book Co.,
Columbus, Ohio.

BONNER, T. D. _The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, 1856_;
reprinted in 1931, with an illuminating introduction by Bernard DeVoto.
OP. Beckwourth was the champion of all western liars.

BREWERTON, G. D. _Overland with Kit Carson_, New York, 1930. Good
narrative. OP.

CHITTENDEN, _H. M. The American Fur Trade of the_ _Far West_, New York,
1902. OP. Basic work. Bibliography.

CLELAND, ROBERT GLASS. _This Reckless Breed of Men: The Trappers and Fur
Traders of the Southwest_, Knopf, New York, 1950. Fresh emphasis on the
California-Arizona-New Mexico region by a knowing scholar. Economical in
style without loss of either humanity or history. Bibliography.

CONRAD, HOWARD L. _Uncle Dick Wootton_, 1890. Primary source. OP.

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 illustrated by reproductions of Alfred Jacob Miller.
DeVoto has amplitude and is a master of his subject as well as of the
craft of writing.

F