So Wild a Dream

by Win Blevins

FRENCHMAN Usually in the West, a métis, man of French and Indian blood. The French-Canadians preceded the Americans in the Western beaver trade, explored much of the country, learned the Native peoples, and developed many of the ways. They also brought many words to the mountain man’s vocabulary.

  FROZE FOR MEAT Hungry; starved; without meat for a long time, and meat was the large majority of the mountain man’s diet.

  FUSIL A muzzle-loading musket of the type the Hudson’s Bay Company and Northwest Fur Company traded to the Indians; a trade musket.

  GAGE D’AMOUR A heart-shaped hide pouch that hung around the neck of a mountain man, usually holding a clay pipe. Normally it was decorated with beads or quills by an Indian lover.

  GALENA Lead for balls for a muzzle-loading rifle. It usually came in blocks and was formed into balls of the needed caliber by the trapper himself. Thus the phrase duPont and galena, powder and lead, the most critical of all mountain man possessions.

  GALL BITTERS A drink popular among mountain men, water mixed with buffalo gall. Also known as prairie bitters.

  GO UNDER To die. Said to be from the sign-language motion for dying.

  GREEN RIVER A knife of the beaver men, according to much popular history. In fact it probably came to the West only after the heyday of the mountain men was past.

  HAIR OF THE BEAR A mountain man expression for bulldog courage, and a high compliment—“He’s got the hair of the bear in him.”

  HANG ONTO YOUR HAIR Watch yourself; take care of yourself. Literally, don’t get scalped. Same as mind your hair, watch your hair. See LIFT HAIR, LOST HIS HAIR, RAISE HAIR.

  HAWKEN A muzzle-loading rifle made by St. Louis gunsmiths Jacob or Samuel Hawken from the 1820s until the Civil War. Though popularly regarded as the mountain man rifle, most Hawkens probably got to the mountains relatively late in the heyday of the trade.

  HIVERNANT French-Canadian term for an experienced beaver trapper or trader; literally, a “winterer,” a man who has spent winters in the wilderness instead of returning to Montreal.

  HUMP RIB A prolongation of the vertebrae that support the hump of the buffalo and the meat on them. The mountain men prized this meat. The fleece was the fat alongside the hump ribs, also thought good eating by men whose diet included little fat.

  KINNIKINNICK A mixture of tobacco and other ingredients, especially dried sumac leaves and the inner bark of the willow or dogwood, for smoking. Though ceremonial among the Indians, smoking among the white men was mostly for pleasure.

  KNOW WHAT WAY THE STICK FLOATS, WHICH WAY THE STICK FLOATS If you didn’t know what way the stick floats, you didn’t know which side was up, know your ass from a hole in the ground, etc. Same as know POOR BULL FROM FAT COW.

  LIFT HAIR, RAISE HAIR To kill people, usually Indians; literally, to scalp.

  LODGEPOLE (someone) To thrash someone, usually your Indian mate. Lodgepoles were the long pieces of debarked timber from lodgepole pines used to hold the tipi (lodge) up.

  LOST HIS HAIR Died. Literally, got scalped, and the term was extended to other forms of death.

  MAKE MEAT To kill game for eating.

  MANGEUR DE LARD A beginner, a greenhorn. Literally, a man who eats pork. The French-Canadians fed canoemen pork in their corn mush on the river routes between Montreal and Lake Superior, while canoemen of the further interior were skilled at living AUX ALIMENTS DU PAYS (off the land).

  MEAT BAG Stomach.

  MEDICINE Castor, used as bait on beaver traps. Another meaning is to conjure in the manner of the Indians, to make medicine; as they adopted Indian ways, more and more mountain men did this.

  MOUNTAINEER The name the mountain men first called themselves most commonly; the beaver trapper of the Rocky Mountains during the period 1822–1840.

  MOUNTAIN PRICE The price for an item of manufactured goods in the West, usually at RENDEZVOUS or at a trading post. This was the price to a trapper, who would then either use it himself or trade or give it to an Indian. A mountain price might be many times what the trader paid for it back in the settlements, due to difficulty of shipment, hardship, danger, and greed. This system did its part to enrich the trader rather than the trapper.

  NOR’WESTER A man of the Northwest Company, the one-time competitor of the Hudson’s Bay Company for the furs of Canada and the American Northwest. The Northwest blanket and Northwest gun (or fusee or fusil), a smoothbore musket, were trade items of this fur company.

  OLD EPHRAIM The grizzly bear, which was also called a silvertip.

  ON THE PERAIRA Free, as in, “He gave me a pound of coffee on the peraira.” Peraira was dialectical for prairie.

  PACK A bundle of beaver hides, grained and ready for shipment to the States, weighing either about 52 or about 100 pounds.

  PARFLECHE A rawhide box, usually painted decoratively, for storing belongings. Or the rawhide (hair off) such a box was made from.

  PARK A natural clearing, an area of open meadows, surrounded by mountains; also called a hole. South Park was a paradise of the mountain men. The trappers loved this region in Colorado around the head of the South Platte River for its abundant game and generally shining times.

  PARTISAN The leader of a brigade of trappers. (See also FREE TRAPPER for similar terms.)

  PATRON Among VOYAGEURS and other fur men, the master or steersman of a boat.

  PEMBINA The highbush cranberry of the Red River of the North. Also the name of several French-Canadian trading posts in that area.

  PEMMICAN The universal preserved food of the Indians who lived on the buffalo, and later of the mountain men and other frontiersmen who learned Indian ways. Pemmican was made from buffalo meat that was dried, pounded fine, mixed equally by weight with marrow fat, and stored in PARFLECHES or sewn into other skin sacks. Often dried berries were added, especially chokecherries and serviceberries. Preserved in this way, pemmican lasted for several years.

  PLEW The pelt of a beaver. The term derived from the French-Canadian plus, which sounds similar and meant “more,” perhaps suggesting a superior hide. Among the American trappers, it became the word for any beaver skin. During the height of the Rocky Mountain trade, ordinary beaver skins brought about four dollars per pound on the open market and a prime plew brought six dollars or more.

  POOR BULL FROM FAT COW A descriptive expression for a greenhorn’s ignorance, from the idea that a greenhorn could not differentiate the poor, stringy meat of a buffalo bull from the fat, juicy meat of a cow. Same as KNOW WHAT WAY THE STICK FLOATS.

  PORKEATER Same as MANGEUR DE LARD.

  POSSIBLES, POSSIBLE SACK, POSSIBLES SACK Belongings, accoutrements, personal gear, especially camping gear. The mountain men usually carried their possibles in a sack of buffalo hide.

  QUILLWORK Decoration made by Indian women with dyed porcupine quills; the predecessor of BEADWORK.

  RED RIVER MÉTIS An English, Scotch, or French-Cree mixed-blood of the settlements of the Red River of the North or the Saskatchewan River in Canada. The French-Cree métis (often disliked and distrusted by early Americans) were very dark-skinned and noted for dressing entirely in black, except for a brightly colored sash around the waists of the men. Many of the fur men on the Missouri River before the Americans arrived were Métis.

  RENDEZVOUS The annual trade fair of the mountain men during the heyday of the mountain fur trade, held midsummer almost every year from 1825 through 1840. As many as several hundred trappers and several thousand Indians would gather at a preappointed spot (most often along the Green River) to meet the pack caravan from the settlements. The official business was exchanging beaver pelts for powder, lead, tobacco, beads, maybe some clothing, maybe some traps or a new gun, and almost certainly some whiskey. The unofficial agenda was to have a blowout.

  ROCKY MOUNTAIN COLLEGE The mountain man custom of reading during the winter, or learning to read; Shakespeare, Byron, Scott, Miss Jane Porter, and the Bible were favorites.

  RUB OUT To kill. The expression may have derived from the Plains Indian sign meanin
g “to kill,” a rubbing motion.

  SAGAMITÉ Corn gruel, the primary subsistence of the French-Canadian canoemen on their annual journey from Montreal to Lake Superior and back.

  SHINE, SHINING When something was terrific, the mountain man said, “That shines,” or “Them was shinin’ times.” A converse expression was, “You can’t shine in this crowd.”

  SIFFLEUR The term of the French-Canadian trappers for the marmot, or rockchuck.

  SISKADEE The name of the mountain men for the Green River; it means “sage hen.” Spelled with wonderful creativity—not only Siskadee but Siskeedee, Seedskeeder, and so on. This river was heaven on earth for the mountain men, who found in its valley beaver a-plenty and friendly Indians, the Shoshone. Most of their rendezvous were held near or on the Siskadee.

  SOME An adjective of admiration, as in “He was some hoss.” Sometimes used as an emphatic positive, as in “That hoss could shoot some.”

  SQUAW MAN A denigrating term of white people, especially Oregon Trail emigrants, for a mountain man whose wife and children were Indian.

  STROUD, STROUDING A wool cloth common as a trade item in the fur trade. Named for Stroud, Gloucester, where it was made.

  TAOS LIGHTNING Firewater popular among the mountain men. It was available at Taos, the closest settlement to the trapping country.

  THERE GOES HOSS AND BEAVER Mountain man talk for, “We just lost everything,” which they too often did to raiding Indians, raging waters, and so on.

  TRAVOIS The Plains Indian equivalent of a wagon. A travois was made by taking a pair of LODGEPOLES (which you already had for the tipi), crisscrossing the small ends on a horse’s back, letting the butt ends drag behind, slinging skins (or straps of skin) in between, and tying gear on.

  UP TO THE GREEN RIVER to the hilt, all the way, an expression of the 1840s. On the hilt of the usual trapper knife at that time were stamped the words “Green River.” To go up Green River was to die.

  UP TO TRAP Said by mountain men of an experienced trapper, a man who knew what he was doing. Same as up to beaver and opposite of don’t know what way the stick floats.

  VOYAGEUR A French-Canadian canoeman. A beginning voyageur was called a MANGEUR DE LARD. See also ENGAGÉ.

  WAGH! An exclamation of vigorous approval, admiration, wonder, etc. Perhaps from the Spanish exclamation Gua!, meaning something like “Gracious!”

  YARN To tell a tale, probably an adventure, and probably a tall tale. Yarning was a primary mountain man entertainment. Some greenhorns mistook yarning for prevaricating: A Montana newspaper editor missed an international scoop by refusing to report the existence of the fabulous Yellowstone region—he didn’t want to get caught printing old Jim Bridger’s lies.

  Note: This glossary emphasizes terms of American mountain men in the fur trade of the West. Those interested in more Canadian terms or terms from the Eastern U.S., or simply in fuller definitions, are referred to my Dictionary of the American West.

  A Reading List and Sources for This Novel

  The reader who wants to delve further into the history of this fascinating era of American history would do well to begin with this short and select list:

  A Reader’s Guide

  About mountain men and the fur trade: My favorite general books are Bernard DeVoto’s Across the Wide Missouri, Don Berry’s A Majority of Scoundrels, and my own Give Your Heart to the Hawks. Journals and other writings of the time are very much worth reading—see Frances Fuller Victor’s story of the life of Joe Meek, River of the West, and Osborne Russell’s Journal of a Trapper. The best biography of a mountain man, perhaps, is Dale Morgan’s Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West. Fred Gowans’s Rocky Mountain Rendezvous is full of useful information about each rendezvous.

  Good historical fiction may be the best way to get a full sense of what people of a particular time were like. The classics about mountain men are Stewart Edward White’s The Long Rifle and A. B. Guthrie, Jr.’s The Big Sky. And John G. Neihardt’s epic poems about the mountain men, The Song of Three Friends, The Song of Hugh Glass, and The Song of Jed Smith are still magnificent.

  About rivermen of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys: Michael Allen’s Western Rivermen is indispensable. For a good sense of this eastern frontier, though it is written about life a generation later, Bernard DeVoto’s Mark Twain’s America.

  About gamblers and con men of the nineteenth century: Robert DeArment’s Knights of the Green Cloth.

  About the Crow Indians: Robert Lowie’s The Crow Indians.

  Principal Sources

  Anyone who attempts to write historical fiction about America in the nineteenth century without Howard Lamar’s The New Encyclopedia of the American West at hand is at sea from the start. I also depended on the Encyclopœdia Britannica and, to discover what words were and were not in use at the time, on Mitford Mathews’s A Dictionary of Americanisms, on Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, and on my own Dictionary of the American West.

  For the mountain men and the principal action of this book I have worked with the following volumes within reach: Dale Morgan’s The West of William H. Ashley, a superb source for Ashley’s letters and other letters and documents of these years. Morgan’s Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West. James Clyman’s Journal of a Mountain Man, edited by Linda Hasselstrom, which offers the recollections of a key figure of the Ashley-Henry years. Hiram Chittenden’s The American Fur Trade of the Far West, the first general history of the era. LeRoy R. Hafen and Harvey L. Carter, Mountain Men and Fur Traders of the Far West and Trappers of the Far West.

  For an understanding of the Crow people: Robert Lowie’s The Crow Indians and my several years in close contact with them.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to:

  Andy Smith, my old high school classmate, who went the extra mile to help me with the look and feel of Cincinnati in 1823.

  David K. Records, who helped me with the natural history of the Ohio River area.

  The novelist Gregory Tobin, for help with the history of the Catholic Church in Maryland.

  The poet Barney Bush, for help with the language and customs of the Shawnee people.

  Dick James, for years and years of teaching me about the physical culture of the mountain men, and for emergency looks into books I don’t own.

  Lana Latham, my interlibrary loan warrior in this remote outpost—you’re essential, Lana.

  Gil Bateman, for help on the Internet and uplift of spirits.

  Clyde Hall, who set my feet on the road of the sacred pipe.

  Richard Wheeler, for two decades of friendship and a great, inspiring dialogue about writing and the West.

  Dale Walker, my editor of nine years. You teach me, you make me write better, and you make me aspire to more.

  My wife, Meredith, is the center of my living, loving, and being. It’s all thanks to you, love.

  About the Author

  Win Blevins is the author of thirty-one books. He has received the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Contributions to Western Literature, has thrice been named Writer of the Year by Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers, has been selected for the Western Writers Hall of Fame, and has won two Spur Awards for Novel of the West. His novel about Crazy Horse, Stone Song, was a candidate for the Pulitzer Prize.

  A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Blevins is of Cherokee and Welsh Irish descent. He received a master’s degree from Columbia University and attended the music conservatory of the University of Southern California. He started his writing career as a music and drama reviewer for the Los Angeles Times and then became the entertainment editor and principal theater and movie critic for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. His first book was published in 1973, and since then he has made a living as a freelance writer, publishing essays, articles, and reviews. From 2010 to 2012, Blevins served as Gaylord Family Visiting Professor of Professional Writing at the University of Oklahoma.

  Blevins has five children and a growing number of grandchildren. He lives wi
th his wife, the novelist Meredith Blevins, among the Navajos in San Juan County, Utah. He has been a river runner and has climbed mountains on three continents. His greatest loves are his family, music, and the untamed places of the West.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Win Blevins

  Cover design by Mimi Bark and Amanda Shaffer

  978-1-5040-3308-4

  This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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