"Here is a valuable and rare document providing a woman's perspective on a western passage that has received little attention from historians. Margaret Dwight's journal gives us a first-hand account that goes way beyond the usual reckoning of miles traveled and notes on the weather. She provides an intimate view of the people on the trail. From her observations we get a sense of the back-country settlements of Pennsylvania and Ohio in 1810, the language, the sounds, and even the smells of this early American West. Her journal is full of witty and occasionally sarcastic remarks. For all her...
"Here is a valuable and rare document providing a woman's perspective on a western passage that has received little attention from historians. Margare...
"Gitlin's comprehensive portrait of mid-America's Francophone merchants demonstrates their importance as fur traders, town builders and advance agents of American empire. It adds a valuable new dimension to the story of national expansion and belongs on every western American history bookshelf."-William E. Foley, coauthor of The First Chouteaus
"Gitlin's comprehensive portrait of mid-America's Francophone merchants demonstrates their importance as fur traders, town builders and advance agents...
