the trapper himself preceded the explorers--witness Lewis's and Clark's
meetings with trappers on their journey. The trapper's hard-earned
knowledge of the vast empire lying beyond the Missouri was utilized by
later comers, or in a large part died with him, leaving occasional
records in the documents of fur companies, or reports of military
expeditions, or here and there in the name of a pass, a stream, a
mountain, or a fort. His adventurous warfare upon the wild things of the
woods and streams was the expression of a primitive instinct old as the
history of mankind. The development of the motives which led the first
pioneer trappers afield from the days of the first Eastern settlements,
the industrial organizations which followed, the commanding commercial
results which were evolved from the trafficking of Radisson and
Groseillers in the North, the rise of the great Hudson's Bay Company,
and the American enterprise which led, among other results, to the
foundation of the Astor fortunes, would form no inconsiderable part of a
history of North America. The present volume aims simply to show the
type-character of the Western trapper, and to sketch in a series of
pictures the checkered life of this adventurer of the wilderness.

The trapper of the early West was a composite figure. From the Northeast
came a splendid succession of French explorers like La Verendrye, with
_coureurs des bois_, and a multitude of daring trappers and traders
pushing west and south. From the south the Spaniard, illustrated in
figures like Garces and others, held out hands which rarely grasped the
waiting commerce. From the north and northeast there was the steady
advance of the sturdy Scotch and English, typified in the deeds of the
Henrys, Thompson, MacKenzie, and the leaders of the organized fur trade,
explorers, traders, captains of industry, carrying the flags of the
Hudson's Bay and North-West Fur companies across Northern America to the
Pacific. On the far Northwestern coast the Russian appeared as fur
trader in the middle of the eighteenth century, and the close of the
century saw the merchants of Boston claiming their share of the fur
traffic of that coast. The American trapper becomes a conspicuous figure
in the early years of the nineteenth century. The emporium of his
traffic was St. Louis, and the period of its greatest importance and
prosperity began soon after the Louisiana Purchase and continued for
forty years. The complete histo