One of the byproducts of American citizens expanding to the West was the emergence of white trappers known as Mountain Men. For years American depended on the help of Native Americans to attain furs, but all this changed when the call of manifest destiny motivated people to seek a new life out West. Though the West were not as urbanized as back East and required pioneers to gain outdoor survival skills. Mountain Men could live off the land as well as Native Americans and explored areas no one else would dare go. There adventures and talents become the stuff of legends during their time and make their way of life idolized by others (Boyer et al, 2011). Written accounts describing Mountain Men ranged from idolatrizing their choice of life style …show more content…
The experience of being a Mountain Men was very isolating and required living away from civilization. Though a majority of Mountain Men hoped fur trading could lead to better opportunities and would quickly leave their dangerous career for civilization. The Mountain Men worked along with companies to make a profit because to them trapping was a job to them despite many framed the activity as just a game. Though there were Mountain Men who did work for themselves many chose to work under the management of others. Also the men who chose trapping as a profession knew about the reputation that came with being a Mountain Men. Since there were people at the time interested in stories about Mountain Men many of them were able to sell their stories. When the trapping field was not profitable anymore many Mountain Men left to trapping to pursue different occupations. Proving that being a Mountain Men had nothing to do with enjoying the freedom of nature or wanting to be in charge (Goetzmann, 1963). People expectants of what it means to be a Mountain Men might be the romantic notion most associate with living among nature. Neither are the Mountain Men the savages other try to make them out to be. They were men looking for economic opportunities and willing to do some hard work to achieve a chance of upping their status in society. Mountain Men did not care whether or not they had to work for a company because they saw trapping as a being a part of a
There are many ways in which we can view the history of the American West. One view is the popular story of Cowboys and Indians. It is a grand story filled with adventure, excitement and gold. Another perspective is one of the Native Plains Indians and the rich histories that spanned thousands of years before white discovery and settlement. Elliot West’s book, Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers and the Rush to Colorado, offers a view into both of these worlds. West shows how the histories of both nations intertwine, relate and clash all while dealing with complex geological and environmental challenges. West argues that an understanding of the settling of the Great Plains must come from a deeper understanding, a more thorough knowledge of what came before the white settlers; “I came to believe that the dramatic, amusing, appalling, wondrous, despicable and heroic years of the mid-nineteenth century have to be seen to some degree in the context of the 120 centuries before them” .
In the introduction, Hämäläinen introduces how Plains Indians horse culture is so often romanticized in the image of the “mounted warrior,” and how this romanticized image is frequently juxtaposed with the hardships of disease, death, and destruction brought on by the Europeans. It is also mentioned that many historians depict Plains Indians equestrianism as a typical success story, usually because such a depiction is an appealing story to use in textbooks. However, Plains Indians equestrianism is far from a basic story of success. Plains equestrianism was a double-edged sword: it both helped tribes complete their quotidian tasks more efficiently, but also gave rise to social issues, weakened the customary political system, created problems between other tribes, and was detrimental to the environment.
Long hunters were men who crossed into Native American hunting grounds in Tennessee to hunt. The expeditions would take the men away from their homes and families for months at a time, hence the term “long hunters.” They were very crafty and skilled, poaching game from the Native Americans, diminishing their herds. Besides hunting on sacred grounds in order to provide settlers with illegally attained pelts and fur, long hunters brought back stories of the lands and Native Americans to the West. The most identifiable long hunter was Daniel Boone.
Any discussion of the American culture and its development has to include mythology, because that is where most of the information about early America is found. Mythology is a unique source in that it gives a shared understanding that people have with regard to some aspect of their world. The most important experience for American frontiersmen is the challenge to the “myth of the frontier” that they believed in – “the conception of America as a wide-open land of unlimited opportunity for the strong, ambitious, self-reliant individual to thrust his way to the top.” (Slotkin, 5) In particular, the challenge came from Indians and from the wilderness that they inhabited.
Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.
The West has always held the promise of opportunity for countless Americans. While many African Americans struggled to find the equality promised to them after the Civil War, in the West black cowboys appeared to have created some small measure of it on the range. Despite this, their absence from early historical volumes has shown that tolerance on the range did not translate into just treatment in society for them or their families.
Hunting Coats: many of the Mountain Men wore a leather open front hunting coat. These coats had fringes along the shoulders, sleeves and fronts and bottoms. They range in length from middle thigh and are generally shown with fitted sleeves and collars. The coats do not have buttons but they were closed by using ties.
The cowboys of the frontier have long captured the imagination of the American public. Americans, faced with the reality of an increasingly industrialized society, love the image of a man living out in the wilderness fending for himself against the dangers of the unknown. By the end of the 19th century there were few renegade Indians left in the country and the vast expanse of open land to the west of the Mississippi was rapidly filling with settlers.
The protagonist begins his journey with no knowledge of the intolerable conditions ahead. Soaring all the way to “seventy-five degrees below,” temperatures are unbearable (London 3). However, the protagonist claims “the temperatures did not matter” (2). Reaffirming the protagonist’s lack of competence on the dangers of the yukon. Being a “newcomer” to the land, the “strangeness and weirdness of it all. . .” did not deter him from continuing(2). His previous “quick and alert[ness] in the things of life” gave him the false pride in his own skill set (2). No veteran of the yukon would dare “travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below” (6). However, the protagonist separates himself from “the old-timers rather womanish. . .” doctrine by “keep[ing] his head” (6). Only moments after this claim, by his own ignorance, the protagonist’s last hope fire is “blotted out” echoing “his own sentence of death” (6). Such irony can be explained by Jeanne Campbell Reesman, “the kind of knowledge the unnamed hero possesses and the kind he needs, [is] a discrepancy that costs him his life.” Accordingly, the protagonist’s pride self destructs not only any hope of meeting up with the boys but also any chance of living another
... at these low temperatures and tries to hold back. The man ushers on and because of his foolish ego, he falls victim to it and freezes to death. In this story, the man’s arrogant choice to counter the dangerous terrain of the Yukon reveals that nature cannot be tamed under any circumstances. “The animal, a creature of instinct untainted by pride, is better adapted to the environment than the man” (Welsh).
His innate caution took hold, and he drew back to examine it at greater length. Wary of what he saw, he circled the batholith and then climbed to the ridge behind it from which he could look down upon the roof. What he saw from there left him dry-mouthed and jittery. The gigantic upthrust was obviously a part of a much older range, one that had weathered and worn, suffered from shock and twisting until finally this tower of granite had been violently upthrust, leaving it standing, a shaky ruin among younger and sturdier peaks. In the process the rock had been shattered and driven by mighty forces until it had become a miners horror. Wetherton stared, fascinated by the prospect. With enormous wealth here for the taking, every ounce must be taken at the risk of his life” (L’Amour 149-150). The mountain contained at the time’s worth thousands and thousands of dollars worth of gold, and during the old west thousands of dollars would bring a person a long ways. Since there was so much gold presented to Wetherton in one spot, greed got the best of him, having the mindset of “one more day” of mining and there being so much and the gold being very concentrated, the trap of
Myths of the Jesuit treasure, Dutchman's Lost Gold Mine, Peralta gold and other lost gold mine stories have still attracted many from different places. Centuries old stories of Indian history add to the mountain’s lore. The Pimas called the mountain Ka-Katak-Tami to mean The “Crooked Top Mountain.” One can observe the enormity of this rocky mountain, from th...
Stubbornness is a horrible character flaw of the man in the story. He discards all warnings of the weather that he received from those with experience. Full of himself and ambition the man embarks on his final trail. He sights no big problem regarding the weather and is sure of the fact that he will meet with his fellows in the camp in planned time. Soon however the cold hit harder and harder. The absence of heat grew as the man’s strength and confidence shrunk. Here the words of his advisors began to make way into the front of his mind, the theme as well ever-present. The theme that suggested the potential of nature compared to that of man’s. The theme which so clearly exhibited how blind stubbornness would not lead to stoicism and victory but rather painful demise. Witnessed in this story was just that theme. The miserable man was killed not by the dreadful cold but by his own free will and lack of knowledge. Had he taken just a fragment of the native’s advice or read the warning on the wall inside the heat-infiltrated house perhaps he would breathe another breath, step another step, or live to tell of his encounter.
The man towards the end refers to himself being a part of the boys. “He did not belong with himself any more, for even then was out of himself, standing with the boys and looking at himself in the snow” (527). Although, this might be what the man ultimately wanted, it was far from being true. The boys might not have had as much knowledge as the old-timer, but they at least had enough to know that they need to stay together and stay on the direct route to camp. The man goes off the trail because he wants to check out timber prospects, this could be because he wanted to impress the boys. He was a newcomer, maybe he felt as if he had to earn his way into the group. The boys represent safety. When they are referred to in the story, its always in relation to food and fire, the two things needed to survive in the wilderness. “The boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot supper would be ready” (519). Even to the dog, the boy represented fire and
The author discusses the reactions that the person had to the eruption. She writes down journal entrees detailing the explosion day to day and uses some of the entrees in the essay. The author uses entrees as throughout the essay in an effort to give a more realistic view. The more real it seems the easier it is to convince you of her train of thought. She thinks that a mountain should be seen as a person with a personality. In giving examples of the how the mountain has characteristics of emotion. The author is trying to win you over by example after example of how the mountain could be looked at as having the qualities giving in the examples. “She [the volcano] put on hats of cloud and took them off again, and tried a different shape, and sent them all skimming off across the sky”(p.178). It is in this last statement the author puts the mountain in a view of being able to put on cloths. In doing that the mountain could be looked at in some kind of humanistic way.