Beyond the Old Frontier: Adventures of Indian-Fighters, Hunters, and Fur-Traders

Grinnell, George Bird, 1849-1938Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.9
Word count
534K words
Chapters
54

Tags

English Originals World History Historical ReappraisalMilitary StrategyNature ObservationPortrait GalleryAdventure JourneyDocumentary Narrative

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Beyond the Old Frontier: Adventures of Indian-Fighters, Hunters, and Fur-TradersAuthor: Grinnell, George Bird, 1849-1938,Language: English, Class: F590.3: United States local history: The West. Trans-Mississippi Region. Great Plains, Release Date: Feb 7, 2017

Editor's review

Based on firsthand experience and interviews, George Bird Grinnell's narrative of the old West focuses on the activities of Indian fighters, hunters, and fur traders in the Trans-Mississippi region. Its value lies not in romanticizing frontier legends but in preserving, in relatively plain prose, details of nineteenth-century Western trade, hunting, and interethnic contact—useful for understanding fur-trade routes, tribal relations, and the daily life of settlers. Grinnell had long contact with Western peoples and frontier life, and his account often carries the observer's sense of presence, keeping people and scenes from becoming abstract. As a public-domain ebook, it serves as a supplementary introductory read on Western history and the fur trade, and as casual browsing for readers who enjoy adventure narratives and historical anecdotes. Read it as a product of its time: its language and stance bear the marks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and its treatment of Native peoples calls for a critical eye, ideally read alongside contemporary ethnography or Western history scholarship.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Start with the table of contents and chapter introductions, then choose chapters on the fur trade or a particular tribe.
  2. Keep a simple map of the North American West on hand and mark trade routes and place names as you read.
  3. When encountering judgments about Native peoples, compare with contemporary Western history works and read critically.
  4. Consider reading a Chinese translation or introduction first for background, then return to the original to appreciate its narrative tone.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a historical narrative? It is a frontier narrative based on firsthand observation and interviews, with the flavor of historical anecdote and adventure story. It is neither a work of fiction nor a strict academic monograph. Read it as a record of its era's observations, not a systematic compilation of historical sources.
How difficult is the English, and what background is needed? The original is late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century English, with fairly traditional sentence structures and vocabulary related to hunting, trade, and place names. A college-level reading ability in English is enough to make progress; skip unfamiliar place names rather than looking up every word.
Are the book's depictions of Native peoples reliable? The book preserves details of period observation, but its language and stance carry the limitations of a Western author of the time and may be simplified or biased. Read it as historical material and compare it with contemporary ethnography, tribal self-accounts, or modern Western history scholarship.
Is it suitable as an introduction to fur-trade history? It works as a supplementary introduction, offering vivid material on people, scenes, and trading activity, but it lacks systematic analysis and annotation. For a serious understanding of the fur trade, read it alongside general histories or specialized studies.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Grinnell, George Bird, 1849-1938 Author

George Bird Grinnell (1849–1938) was an American naturalist and writer who devoted long attention to Native American life and the history of the western frontier. Twelve of his works are held here, mostly story collections and historical narratives, including Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People, Blackfeet Indian Stories, and Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales, which record the legends and hero tales of peoples such as the Blackfoot and the Pawnee. Other titles, among them Beyond the Old Frontier, When Buffalo Ran, and Trails of the Pathfinders, as well as the juvenile-adventure "Jack" series, deal with hunters, fur traders, and western exploration. His writing draws on firsthand experience, with a plain style that combines folkloric record with popular history. Because public information is limited, no conjecture is offered here about the details of his life or honors.