Home
US History I
Exploration of the West

Mountain Man by Vardis Fisher
Boise:  Opal Laurel Holmes, 1965

     It is not a story for the squeamish or faint of heart.  Mountain Man, written by one of Idaho's most famous authors of historical fiction, is the story of Sam Minard, a free trapper who endures incredible hardship in the Rocky Mountain wilderness of the 1840s.  Sam Minard is fictional, though his character is loosely based upon the life of the "Crow-killer" John Johnston.   The book inspired the movie "Jeremiah Johnson" starring Robert Redford.
     The novel begins in 1843, at the end of the mountain man era.  Many trappers, no longer able to earn a living trapping beaver, became trail guides responsible for leading the many thousands of pioneers on the Oregon Trail.  Sam Minard laments the passing of an era, and the influx of the greenhorns who will ultimately contribute to the end of his life of solitude in the mountains.
     After his beloved Indian wife is brutally murdered by the Crows, Sam swears vengeance against the entire Crow nation.  Though he succeeds in wreaking havoc on the Crows, as their arch-enemy he will know no peace.  He must evade the determined efforts of the Crow's greatest warriors to kill him.
     By 1843, the era of the mountain man was all but over.  While a few free trappers remained, Vardis chooses this time frame in order to include references to the Oregon trail pioneers, and to include the Indian massacre of the fictional Bowden family.  Kate Bowden is the only survivor, and she is central to the story.  Her character was inspired by Jane Morgan, whose family was slaughtered on the Musselshell River.

Comment
     This book should be used with caution.  It is very violent (e.g., explicit torture descriptions), and contains a few sexually explicit scenes.  However, these were truly violent times, and the fighting between the mountain men and the Indians, especially the Blackfeet, was notorious for its brutality.  Some mountain men did take Indian wives, and while most made poor husbands, some truly loved and respected their Indian brides.    
     In the preface to the book, Vardis quotes W. A. Ferris who wrote in his Life in the Rocky Mountains, "Strange, that people can find so strong and fascinating a charm in this rude, nomadic, and hazardous mode of life, as to be estranged themselves from home, country, friends, and all the comforts, elegances, and privileges of civilization; but so it is, the toil, the danger, the loneliness, the deprivation of this condition of being, fraught with all of its disadvantages, and replete with peril is, they think, more than compensated by the lawless freedom, and the stirring excitement, incident to their situation and pursuits."
     There are certainly other historical novels about mountain men that stick closer to the truth (e.g. Give Your Heart to the Hawks, also reviewed on this web site), though much of what we think we know is based on legend and the stories the mountain men left behind.  The mountain men were notorious liars and yarn-spinners, and it is often difficult to sort out the truth from the fiction.  Nevertheless, Mountain Man is an entertaining book that succeeds in immersing the reader in the adventures, hardships and dangers that confronted the mountain men of the early American West.  It also wrestles with many of the important issues of the time including Manifest Destiny, the impact of the early settlers, the complex relationship between the Indians and the mountain men, and the important role the mountain men played in exploring the Rocky Mountain region of the early American West.

Reading Level:  10.5 (Mackin, in my opinion less difficult)
Interest Level:  10 - Young adult
372 pages

Supports the Following Instructional Objective:

Trace the Exploration and Settlement of the West

Excerpt

     Side by side when eating or sleeping or riding Sam told her about the men he had met since coming west - Three-Finger McNees, a tall slender man as straight as a lodgepole, with coarse black hair and beard, a grave mien, and one eye cocked off at an angle of forty-five degrees from the other.  He was a tough critter in a fight - and so was Lost-Skelp Dan, a muscular scowling giant who kept putting a hand back over his hideless skull, as though to brush his hair.  Lord, how he hated the redmen!  It was Dan's ambition to scalp a thousand - and he didn't take off a mere topknot, but the hull thing, as Bill would say, clear down to the ears and halfway to the eyebrows.  She would see Jim Bridger soon; except for Kit Carson, he was about the most famous of them all, unless it was old Caleb Greenwood or Solomon Silver or Moses Harris or Jim Clyman.  Not all of those were free trappers.  The free trappers were a clan of their own, and man for man could lick any gang on earth or in all the spaces beyond.

"The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak" by Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) used with permission of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art at: www.metmuseum.org/collections/view1.asp?dep=2&full=0&item=07%2E123
Accessed June 13, 2002. 

Historical Fiction and Idaho U.S. History Curriculum
U.S. History I  U.S. History II  Books by Author  Author Links  Idaho Connections
© Blaine Davies, All Rights Reserved
E-mail Blaine Davies at blainedavies@cableone.net