Chardon's Journal at Fort Clark, 1834-1839

ISBN-13: 9780803263758 / Angielski / Miękka / 1997 / 458 str.

F. A. Chardon; Annie Heloise Abel; William R. Swagerty

Opis

Thirty years after Meriwether Lewis and William Clark passed through the Mandan villages in present-day North Dakota, the Upper Missouri River region was being plied by fur traders. In 1834 Francis A. Chardon, a Philadelphian of French extraction, took charge of Fort Clark, a main post of the American Fur Company on the Upper Missouri.The journal that Chardon began that year offers a rare glimpse of daily life among the Mandan Indians, including the Arikaras, Yanktons, and Gros Ventres. In particular, it is a valuable and graphic record of the smallpox scourge that nearly destroyed the Mandans in 1837. Chardon describes much of historical interest, including such figures as the interpreter Charbonneau, Sacajawea s husband, and the fantastic James Dickson, Liberator of all the Indians. By the time his account ends in 1839, the fur trade is already in decline."