Mountain Men of the American West, by James A. Crutchfield, Tamarack Books Inc., Boise, Idaho, 1997, $17.95 paperback.
Quite a lot has been written about the fur trade era, including Robert Utley’s A Life Wild and Perilous (see interview/review in the October 1997 Wild West), and with good reason. It was a time when the West was really wild, adventure was unavoidable, and men were mountain men. There is certainly room, even in the late 1990s, for James Crutchfield’s professional peek at the players in the 19th-century “skin game” (roughly 18061846). Crutchfield, an award-winning historical writer, delivers a concise history of the Western fur trade period in Part I, thumbnail biographies of almost 100 mountain men and associated entrepreneurs in Part II, and a bibliographical bonanza in Part III. You won’t find everybody “Who Was Who” in the West’s exciting “Leave it to Beaver” era (which ended in the 1840s when stylish men took to silk hats, thus slicing into the demand for beaver fur), but most readers won’t notice any names missing. You have your ABC’s of the fur trade–William Ashley, John Jacob Astor, Jim Beckwourth, various Bents, Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, John Colter, Robert Campbell, etc.–all the way to your XYZ’s, although there are no X’s or Z’s (The Y’s, by the way, are Ewing Young and George Young).
