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

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.

Biographies & Memoirs

Quaife, Milo Milton

Larpenteur, Charles

Regional U.S.

University Of Nebraska Press

<p>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.</p>

Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: The Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur, 1833-1872 (Bison Book S)

History

Americas

Bison Books

Forty Years a Fur Trader On the Upper Missouri: The Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur, 1833-1872

Nabu Press

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Historical

Andesite Press

lulu.com

<p>Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri immerses the reader in the life of a merchant in the Missouri River from the 1830s to the early 1870s. An autobiographical chronicle which sheds a light into a period and profession of history often ignored in the modern day, Forty Years a Fur Trader is an illuminating and lively chronicle of Charles Larpenteur's career as a fur seller. A man of tough resolve and hardy constitution, Larpenteur condenses his many years traversing the Missouri wilderness and trading posts into a series of episodic highlights, chronologically arranged. The Missouri River and Rocky Mountains were, at the time, dangerous but potentially lucrative proposition for a trader to undertake. Rough terrain, numerous wild animals, and the presence of Native American tribes made life as a fur trader unpredictable and fraught with danger. Yet a good set of high quality pelts would fetch high sums, demand being high especially for animals whose fur had scarcely before seen market.</p>

Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: The Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur, 1833-1872 (Hardcover)

This is a history of fur trading in the North American colonial period, which was often carried out by French settlers and Native Americans. From the intro: "The history of the West is still largely the story of discovery, exploration, survey, colonization, and the like; for aught else is of comparatively recent development—is contemporaneous, or nearly such. The bison was the original engineer, who followed the lay of the land and the run of the water; the Indian followed the bison; the white man followed the Indian; the gun and trap, the pick and shovel, the whiskey-jug, plow, and locomotive followed the white man, at little if any interval: this is the order of empire westward. Every step of this succession is of absorbing interest and momentous consequence; perhaps none more so than those taken during what I may style the picturesque period, when the plain was furrowed not by the plow but by the hoof of the bison, when no Indian war-whoop had been silenced by a steam-whistle, when the trapper and trader were romantic figures in scenes untamed to more prosaic industries. Such times as these call for chroniclers; and it is the purpose of the American Explorer Series, of which the present volumes form a continuation, to traverse this historic ground, perhaps to cultivate some corners of this fruitful field. What results may be expected are instanced in the case of the Journal of Jacob Fowler, with which the series began. Whoever heard of it, or of its author, till this year of grace 1898? A floating paragraph in one or two not well-known books was to the vague effect that a trader named Glenn took a party to Santa Fe in 1822—that was all. Now we have the narrative of that enterprise, complete in every detail, in an authentic, genuine, original, contemporaneous human document—and of such is the kingdom of history. Few persons now living may measure the full importance of the Fur Trade as a factor in the development of what has been called the " wild and woolly-West "—thereby giving occasion for Lummis' witty retort upon a " tame and cottony East." Fewer still can be aware of what iniquities and atrocities the seamy side of that indispensable industry reveals. Those who have read the Journals of Alexander Henry and David Thompson have had their eyes opened to the systematic swindling and debauching of Indians which characterized the traffic as conducted in Canada and some portions of the United States, and may readily believe that the pursuit of pelf in pelt was always tarred with the same stick. This identical subject—intrinsically important, in some respects repellent, never failing of tragic interest, albeit sordid and squalid—is continued in the autobiography of Charles Larpenteur. As Fowler's Journal and Fowler himself were until this year, so have Larpenteur and his narrative been hitherto—unknown. The latter, like the former, will be found composed of the very fiber that goes to the web of history. It is a notable and entirely novel contribution to our knowledge of the Fur Trade of the Upper Missouri for a period of more than an average lifetime, by one who lived the life and worked his way through it, from the position of a mere hand to that of one of its heads. Among other conclusions we may draw from this narrative, it would appear that the unpalliated and unmitigated evils were inherent in the system of traffic itself, red and white natures being what they respectively were; that there was a smoother than the seamy side of the business; that a good, kindly man might be about it, and die poor but honest; and that it called out some of the best as well as the worst of human qualities—some of the most manly, even heroic, traits, remote from cupidity and cruelty."

Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: Volume 1 of 2

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

This is a history of fur trading in the North American colonial period, which was often carried out by French settlers and Native Americans.   From the intro:  "The history of the West is still largely the story of discovery, exploration, survey, colonization, and the like; for aught else is of comparatively recent development—is contemporaneous, or nearly such. The bison was the original engineer, who followed the lay of the land and the run of the water; the Indian followed the bison; the white man followed the Indian; the gun and trap, the pick and shovel, the whiskey-jug, plow, and locomotive followed the white man, at little if any interval: this is the order of empire westward. Every step of this succession is of absorbing interest and momentous consequence; perhaps none more so than those taken during what I may style the picturesque period, when the plain was furrowed not by the plow but by the hoof of the bison, when no Indian war-whoop had been silenced by a steam-whistle, when the trapper and trader were romantic figures in scenes untamed to more prosaic industries. Such times as these call for chroniclers; and it is the purpose of the American Explorer Series, of which the present volumes form a continuation, to traverse this historic ground, perhaps to cultivate some corners of this fruitful field. What results may be expected are instanced in the case of the Journal of Jacob Fowler, with which the series began. Whoever heard of it, or of its author, till this year of grace 1898? A floating paragraph in one or two not well-known books was to the vague effect that a trader named Glenn took a party to Santa Fe in 1822—that was all. Now we have the narrative of that enterprise, complete in every detail, in an authentic, genuine, original, contemporaneous human document—and of such is the kingdom of history. Few persons now living may measure the full importance of the Fur Trade as a factor in the development of what has been called the " wild and woolly-West "—thereby giving occasion for Lummis' witty retort upon a " tame and cottony East." Fewer still can be aware of what iniquities and atrocities the seamy side of that indispensable industry reveals. Those who have read the Journals of Alexander Henry and David Thompson have had their eyes opened to the systematic swindling and debauching of Indians which characterized the traffic as conducted in Canada and some portions of the United States, and may readily believe that the pursuit of pelf in pelt was always tarred with the same stick. This identical subject—intrinsically important, in some respects repellent, never failing of tragic interest, albeit sordid and squalid—is continued in the autobiography of Charles Larpenteur. As Fowler's Journal and Fowler himself were until this year, so have Larpenteur and his narrative been hitherto—unknown. The latter, like the former, will be found composed of the very fiber that goes to the web of history. It is a notable and entirely novel contribution to our knowledge of the Fur Trade of the Upper Missouri for a period of more than an average lifetime, by one who lived the life and worked his way through it, from the position of a mere hand to that of one of its heads. Among other conclusions we may draw from this narrative, it would appear that the unpalliated and unmitigated evils were inherent in the system of traffic itself, red and white natures being what they respectively were; that there was a smoother than the seamy side of the business; that a good, kindly man might be about it, and die poor but honest; and that it called out some of the best as well as the worst of human qualities—some of the most manly, even heroic, traits, remote from cupidity and cruelty."

Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: Volume 2 of 2

Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: All Volumes

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Books by Larpenteur, Charles

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Larpenteur, Charles. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

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

Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: The Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur, 1833-1872 (Bison Book S)

Forty Years a Fur Trader On the Upper Missouri: The Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur, 1833-1872

Forty Years a Fur Trader On the Upper Missouri: The Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur, 1833-1872

Forty Years a Fur Trader On the Upper Missouri: The Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur, 1833-1872

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

Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: The Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur, 1833-1872 (Hardcover)

Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: Volume 1 of 2

Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: Volume 2 of 2

Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: All Volumes