An early day mountain man and fur trapper, the vanguard of frontier capitalism in the West.
A congressional survey of the
trapping profession was completed this year. The report
describes the mountain man's world in the following way: "The whole
operation is full of exexhaustion and disability. posures and
privations…leading to premature clck here for more
Few of those engaged in it reach an
advanced stage of life. The labor is excessive, subsistence
scanty, and the Indian are ever liable to sudden and violent
paroxysms of passion, in which they spare neither friend nor
foe."