Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri. The Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur 1833 - 1872.

Larpenteur, Charles. - Historical Introduction by Milo Milton Quaife. - Introduction to the Bison Book Edition by Paul. L. Hedren. -

ISBN 10: 0803279302 / ISBN 13: 9780803279308

Published by University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 1989., 1989

About this Item

20 x 13,3 cm. Original Paperback with illustrated cover in color. XXV, 388 pages with a double-side map and a portrait-photo as frontispice. Good condition. --- Original-Taschenbuch mit illustriertem Cover. XXV, 388 Seiten mit einer doppelseitigen Karte und einem Porträtfoto als Frontispiz. Guter Zustand. Reprint, originally published by Lakeside Press, Chicago 1933. -- Bitte Portokosten außerhalb EU erfragen! / Please ask for postage costs outside EU! / S ' il vous plait demander des frais de port en dehors de l ' UE! // Bitte beachten Sie auch unsere Fotos! / Please also note our photos! / Veuillez noter nos photos -- Wir kaufen Ihre werthaltigen Bücher! Amer.

Seller Inventory # 506857

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri. The Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur 1833 - 1872.
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 1989.
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803279302
• ISBN 13: 9780803279308
• Binding: Softcover
• Seller catalogs:
  • Amerika

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

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).