| Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: The Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur, 1833-1872 Contributor(s): Quaife, Milo Milton (Author), Larpenteur, Charles (Author), Quaife, Milo Milton (Introduction by) |
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ISBN: 0803279302 ISBN-13: 9780803279308 Publisher: Bison Books OUR PRICE: $17.96 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: April 1989 Annotation: The son of French immigrants who settled in Maryland, Charles Larpenteur was so eager to see the real American West that he talked himself into a job with the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in 1833. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History |
| Dewey: B |
| LCCN: 88038637 |
| Lexile Measure: 1170 |
| Series: Bison Book S |
| Physical Information: 0.91" H x 5.25" W x 7.99" (0.92 lbs) 388 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Plains |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: "The life-record kept by Charles Larpenteur is one of our most important sources of information concerning the fur trade of the Upper Missouri in the nineteenth century."-Milo Milton Quaife The son of French immigrants who settled in Maryland, Charles Larpenteur was so eager to see the real American West that he talked himself into a job with the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in 1833. When William Sublette and Robert Campbell sold out to the American Fur Company a year later they recommended the steady and sober young Larpenteur to Kenneth McKenzie, who hired him as a clerk. For forty years, as a company man and as an independent agent, the Frenchman would ply the fur trade on the upper Missouri River. Based on Larpenteur's daily journals, this memoir is unparalleled in describing the business side and social milieu of the fur trade conducted from wintering houses and subposts in the Indian country. As Paul L. Hedren notes in his introduction, Larpenteur moved comfortably among Indians and all levels of the trade's hierarchy. But he lived during a time of transition and decline in the business, and his vivid recital of his personal affairs often seems to bear out his feeling that he was "born for misfortune." His lasting legacy is this book, which is reprinted from the one-volume Lakeside Classics edition of 1933. Paul L. Hedren is National Park Service Superintendent at the National Historical Site of the Fort Union Trading Post, which was Larpenteur's home base, and the author of Fort Laramie in 1876: Chronicle of a Frontier Post at War (Nebraska 1988). |