In this sweeping survey, Milo Milton Quaife traces the events leading from Chicago's emergence as a key outpost at the edge of the frontier to its establishment as the crossroads of American commerce.

Quaife narrates the opening of trade and the course of European exploration, facilitated by the Chicago portage and subsequent construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. He profiles the personalities who shaped the early Chicago area, from the French explorers La Salle, Marquette, and Joliet to the ambitious Champlain, who set the course for decades to come by securing for New France the...

Daniel Harmon Brush came to southern Illinois from Vermont with his parents in the 1820s and found a frontier region radically different from his native New England. In this memoir, Brush, the eventual founder of Carbondale, Illinois, describes his early life in the northeast, his pioneer family s move west, and their settlement near the Illinois River in Greene County, Illinois. Beginning as a store clerk, Brush worked hard and became very successful, serving in a number of public offices before founding the town of Carbondale in the 1850s, commanding a regiment in the Civil War, and...

"Notice is hereby given to all persons, that Christopher Carson, a boy about 16 years old, small of his age, but thick-set; light hair, ran away from the subscriber, living in Franklin, Howard County, Missouri, to whom he had been bound to learn the saddler's trade. . . . One cent reward will be given to any person who will bring back the said boy.'' This notice appeared in the Missouri Intelligencer of October 6, 1826, at about the same time that Kit Carson, in the humble role of "cavvy boy" in Bent's Santa Fe caravan, embarked upon his notable career. Thirty years later, a postgraduate of...

Although the American Fur Company dominated the Upper Missouri fur trade during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, a number of small, independent firms (known as the "Opposition") flourished briefly at this time.

From 1858 until 1862, a young Philadelphian, Henry A. Boller, was one of the Opposition traders, serving first as clerk in Clark, Primeau and Company and then as a partner in Larpenteur, Smith and Company. His account of these years, based on his journals, presents a remarkably realistic picture of the daily life of the Indian as he existed more than a century...

Yellowstone Kelly: The Memoirs of Luther S Kelly.

Britton Davis's account of the controversial "Geronimo Campaign" of 1885-86 offers an important firsthand picture of the famous Chiricahua warrior and the men who finally forced his surrender. Davis knew most of the people involved in the campaign and was himself in charge of Indian scouts, some of whom helped hunt down the small band of fugitives Robert M. Utley's foreword reevaluates the account for the modern reader and establishes its his torical background.

When James B. Gillett joined the newly created Texas Rangers in 1875, its duties were as varied and its members as unorthodox as its methods were irregular. First published in 1921, Gillett's now classic account of his six years of service depicts with freshness and authenticity how the Rangers maintained law and order on the frontier-and occasionally dispensed summary justice. From the Mason County War to the Horrell-Higgins feud, the capture of Sam Bass, and the pursuit of Victorio's rebellious Apaches, Gillett saw the kind of action that established the Rangers' enduring reputation for...

On a frosty day in November 1831, Rebecca Burlend and her husband, John, and their five children debarked at New Orleans after a long voyage from England. They took a steamboat up the Mississippi to St. Louis and from there went to the wilds of western Illinois. It was a whole new world for a family that had never been more than fifty miles from home in rural Yorkshire. Rebecca's narrative, written with the help of her son, was first published in 1848 as a pamphlet for people of her own class in England who might be considering migration to America. It records the daily struggle and also the...

"Strong mental faculties and a vigorous constitution" were among the attributes of Zenas Leonard, according to the publisher of the 1839 edition of this book, which the Bison Books edition reproduces. In the spring of 1830, Leonard, a native of Clearfield, Pennsylvania, "ventured to embark in an expedition across the Rocky Mountains, in the capacity of clerk to the company. The last letter received by his parents, left him at the extreme white settlement Independence, Missouri], where they were busily occupied in making preparations for the expedition to the mountains-from whence he promised...

"The life-record kept by Charles Larpenteur is one of our most important sources of information concerning the fur trade of the Upper Missouri in the nineteenth century."-Milo Milton Quaife 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...