The Splendid Wayfaring

This is an exciting story of the fur traders and trappers who explored and opened up the American West in the first decades of the nineteenth century. As told by the acclaimed poet and writer, John G. Neihardt, the era of the mountain men unfolds through the legendary exploits of Jedediah Smith, the first white man to cross the Sierra Nevada and Great Basin from west to east; and the first to travel by land to California and northward to the Columbia River. The Splendid Wayfaring also reveals the triumphs and challenges of other fur traders, many in the employ of William H. Ashley and Andrew Henry.