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NEW TO OUR SHELVES
Updated 01/01/10
The Great Northwest Fur Trade: A Material Culture, 1763-1850 by Ryan Gale.
(Track of the Wolf, 2009) $33.00
The book is a comprehensive look at the material culture of the fur trade. This book deals primarily with the Canadian fur trade but also the American trade around the Great Lakes. Gale uses high quality images as well as written first-hand accounts. The pictures of material items of the fur trade are in color and are interspersed with drawings and paintings of scenes by period artists. Gale's book is informative, entertaining, and visually appealing. It would be a good book for both the general reader
and the history enthusiast. Topics discussed include Native Americans, the trade, transportation, the voyagers, the officers, diet and health, the forts, winter, and conflict.
Rethinking the Fur Trade: Cultures of Exchange in an Atlantic World, edited by Susan Sleeper-Smith
(Nebraska Press, 2009) $40.00
This book is a collection of essays by scholars on a variety of aspects of the fur trade. The essays show how the role of Native Americans was far more instrumental in the conduct and outcome of the fur trade than previously suggested.
Fort Buford: Sentinel at the
Confluence, by Carla Kelly (Fort Union Association, 2009). $10.95.
This is a site handbook, both a chronological and topical overview history of the 19th century military post at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers. Fort Buford, active from 1866-1895, was built to help police the Sioux and their tribal allies. Kelly details life at the post, commanding officers, building construction, everyday life of the enlisted man, army dependents, as well as the larger story of the military dealing with Sioux resistance to white encroachment. The book is greatly enhanced by Fort Buford photographs and a map supplied by the State Historical Society of North Dakota.
Other new books in the last 12 months:
Fort Laramie: Military Bastion of the High Plains by Douglas C. McChristian (University of Oklahoma Press, 2009). $45.00
Very well written, McChristian gives us a complete account of this most important 19th century military post which was at the center of westward expansion. Initially a fur trading post, later a key refuge for overland travellers, and finally, a center of interaction and conflict with native peoples on the northern Great Plains. Emphasizing the fort's military history, McChristian documents the army's vital role in ending American Indian resistance to U.S. occupation and settlement of the region. He also gives thorough accounts of the 1851 Horse Creek and 1868 Fort Laramie treaties.
Jedediah Smith: No Ordinary Mountain Man by Barton H. Barbour (University of Oklahoma Press, 2009) $26.95
A much needed update on the life of this truly unique mountain man, Barbour includes new information as well as digs deeper into what motivated Smith. A survivor of three major Indian fights in which most or many of his companions were killed, a severe grizzly bear mauling, as well as confrontations with Mexicans in California and Hudson Bay Company trappers, Smith pushed the envelope until the odds caught up with him. Barbour gives us the most detailed account of Smith's death at the hands of Comanches on the Santa Fe Trail in 1832.
A to Zs of Fort Union: A Coloring and Activity Book for Kids by Briana Lassey (Fort Union Association, 2009) $5.00
Lassey's coloring book is designed for ages 3-7 of which she has two children herself. The book's unique format, in which the alphabet is used, is designed for younger children to identify key figures and items of the 19th century fur trade at Fort Union.
