In the early 1800s vast fortunes were made in the international fur trade, an enterprise founded upon the effort of a few hundred trappers scattered across the

The legendary mountain men—the fur traders and trappers who penetrated the Rocky Mountains and explored the Far West in the first half on the nineteenth centu

The history of John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company, from the land and sea expeditions to found Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River to the sale of

?Frenchmen were far ahead of Englishmen in the early Far West, not only prior in time but greater in numbers and in historical importance,? writes Janet Lecompt

In this comprehensive history, David J. Weber draws on Spanish, Mexican, and American sources to describe the development of the Taos trade and the early penetr