Across the Wide Missouri

This book deals with the Rocky Mountain fur trade during the years of its climax and decline.  I have tried to describe the mountain fur trade as a business and as a way of life:  what its characteristic experiences were, what conditions governed them, how it helped to shape our heritage, what its relation was to the western expansion of the United States, most of all how the mountain men lived.

Illustrated with Paintings by:  Alfred Jacob Miller, Charles Bodmer and George Catlin.