IN THE OLD WEST By George Frederick Ruxton As it was in the Days of Kit Carson and The "Mountain Men" Edited by Horace Kephart Copyright 1915, Outing Publishing Company INTRODUCTION |When we bought the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon, in 1803, it was not from any pressing need of land, for we still had millions of fertile acres east of the Mississippi. The purchase was made to forestall complications with foreign powers, either with the arch-conqueror himself, whose ambition was supposed to be the mastery of the whole world, or with Great Britain, to which the western country was sure to fall in case France should be defeated. Possession of Louisiana was essential to our free navigation of the Mississippi. The vast domain thus added to our boundaries was _terra incognita_. Aside from, its strategic importance no one knew what it was good for. So Lewis and Clark were sent out from the frontier post of St. Louis to find a route to the Pacific and to report on what the new country was like. The only commercial asset that these explorers found which was immediately available was an abundance of fur-bearing animals. Fur may be called the gold of that period, and the news that there was plenty of it in the Rocky Mountains lured many an intrepid spirit of the border. Companies of traders proceeded at once up the Missouri to barter for peltries with the Indians. They established posts and arranged rendezvous in remote fastnesses of the mountains where they carried on a perilous but very profitable traffic. At the same time there went into the Far West many independent adventurers to hunt and trap on their own account. In the motley ranks of these soldiers of fortune the boldest and most romantic characters were the free trappers--those who went, as they expressed it; "on their own hook." The employees of the fur companies were under strict discipline that checked personal initiative. They were of the class who work for hire and see no compensation for an arduous life save the wages earned from their taskmasters. But the free trappers were accountable to nobody. Each of them fought his own fight and won the full fruit of his endeavors. Going alone, or in small bands who acknowledged no captain and would split up whenever the humor moved them, everyone a law unto himself and relying upon his own strong arm, they were men picked by nature for great enterprises and great deeds.