mountain men

Terry C. Johnston Remembered

Terry C. Johnston on Broken Hoop Tour, Nebraska, 1998

Terry C. Johnston on Broken Hoop Tour, Nebraska, 1998

On March 25, 2001, we lost one of America’s foremost historic fiction writers – Terry C. Johnston.  His Plainsmen series covers the period of the Indian Wars between 1866 and 1877.

In this series we follow frontier scout Seamus Donegan from Ft. Phil Kearney in Wyoming to Ft. Robinson in Nebraska, from the Fetterman Massacre to the death of Crazy Horse.  Another series covered the era of the fur trade and the mountain men and it was to his character Titus Bass that Terry personally related.

Terry was the best of storytellers and his attention to historic detail phenomenal.  Although a writer of fiction, I considered Terry one of the best historians on Western History.

Nancy and I had the privilege of going on a “Terry Tour” with History America in 1996.  Our destination – the Northern Plains.  We both agree it was the best trip of our lives.  Spending an entire week surrounded by folks who love frontier history and having Terry there to explain in detail what had happened at each site was amazing.  Neither Nancy nor I wanted to leave that special “crack in time” and return to our everyday routine.

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Interview with Eric Jay Dolin

Eric Jay Dolin Frontier TravelerEric Jay Dolin, the author of Fur, Fortune and Empire, the Epic History of the Fur Trade in America, sat down with the Frontier Traveler to discuss the impact of the fur trade on the history of America.

FT: After writing Leviathan, did you see a similarity between the plight of the whale and the plight of the beaver?

EJD: Yes, it’s fundamentally the same issue, that of humans seeking to profit from nature, and what happens when there are no restraints whatsoever on human activity. Whale and beaver populations plummeted because there was money to be made, and the way to make it was by killing the animals and rendering from them useful products – useful to humans, that is.

Making money, of course, is a great goal, but the point is that when that is the only goal, and there are many people eric dolin book covercompeting for the same resource with nothing to check or regulate their activities, then almost inevitably the “Tragedy of the Commons” ensues. The good news is that the populations of beaver and many whale species have come back from their historic lows, and are doing fairly well, and in some areas, exceptionally well.

FT:  How did you get interested in the fur trade?

EJD:  I know the exact moment the idea for this book occurred. It was in the spring of 2007, while I was reading a book about the Founding of New England. The author wrote that “The Bible and the beaver were the two mainstays of” the Plymouth Colony in its early years. I understood the reference to the Bible, but I had no idea why beavers were thrown into the mix.

Intrigued, I read more, and soon the reference to beavers made sense. For more than a decade after their arrival in America, the Pilgrims’ main source of income had come from the sale of beaver pelts. Thus, the beaver was critical to the colony’s survival. This discovery was a surprise to me. What else, I wondered, didn’t I know about the American fur trade?

My curiosity piqued, I went to my local library and started reading about the fur trade. And within a couple of days, I realized that I could use the history of the fur trade to tell the broader and equally fascinating story of how America evolved into a transcontinental nation. I was hooked. [Click to read more]

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Ft. Union, North Dakota

Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade Fort Union Trading Post was the most important fur trading post on the upper Missouri from 1828 to 1867. At this post, the Assiniboine, Crow, Cree, Ojibway, Blackfeet, Hidatsa, and other tribes traded buffalo robes and other furs for trade goods such as beads, guns, blankets, knives, cookware, and cloth.

Fort Union Trading Post was established in 1828 by the American Fur Campany. It was not a government or military post, but a business, established for the specific purpose of doing business with the northern plains tribes. This trade business continued until 1867 making it the longest lasting American fur trading post. [Click to read more]