The English flanks no longer needed protection. The way west was open and the frontier was boundless! Settlers spilled through the gaps of the Appalachians, into Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois. And the fur traders, making way for them as they pressed upon their trading grounds, pushed on, ever westward, across the plains after the turn of the century to the Rocky Mountains and the coastal rivers of the Pacific. But the era of the early fur trader, typified by the white trader and the Indian hunter, had come to an end. As the frontier began rolling across the great plains of America, the white man became trapper as well as trader. When he took over the function of the Indian, who had formerly caught the beaver, a whole new conception of the fur trade in America was born. A new era commenced--that of the fur trapper. The fur trader of early America had played out his historically important role. Bibliography and Acknowledgements Adams, Charles Francis, _Three Episodes in Massachusetts History_, Cambridge, 1892. _Adventures of Marco Polo_, ed. by Richard J. Walsh, New York, 1948. _Adventurers of Purse and Person, Virginia, 1607-1625_, compiled and ed. by Anna Jester and Martha Woodruff Hiden, Princeton, 1956. Alvord, Clarence Walworth, and Bidgood, Lee, _The First Explorations of the Trans-Allegheny Region by the Virginians, 1650-1674_, Cleveland, 1912. Andrews, Charles M., _The Colonial Period of American History_, 4 vols., New Haven, 1934-38. Arber, Edward, _The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers_, Boston, 1897. _Archives of Maryland_, ed. by William Hand Browne, Baltimore, 1883-. Arnold, Samuel Greene, _History of the State of Rhode Island, 1636-1700_, 2 vols., New York, 1874. Bachrach, Max, _Fur_, New York, 1953. Bacon, Janet Ruth, _The Voyage of the Argonauts_, London, 1925. Baxter, James Phinney, _Pioneers of New France in New England_, Albany, 1894. Beauchamp, William M., _A History of the New York Iroquois_, in _New York State Museum Bulletin No. 78_, Albany, 1905. Biggar, H. P., _The Early Trading Companies of New France_, Ottawa, 1901. ----, _The Precursors of Jacques Cartier, 1497-1534_, Ottawa, 1911. Bicknell, Thomas Williams, _History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation_, New York, 1920. _Book of Ser Marco Polo_, 2 vols., trans. and ed. by Colonel Sir Henry Yule, London, 1903. Bozman, John Leeds, _A Sketch of the History of Maryland During the First Three Years_, Baltimore, 1811. Bradford, William, _Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647_, ed. by Samuel Eliot Morison, New York, 1952. Browne, William Hand, _Maryland_, Boston, 1890. Bruce, Philip Alexander, _Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century_, 2 vols., New York, 1895. Buffington, Arthur Howard, _New England and the Western Fur Trade, 1629-1675_, in _Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Vol. XVIII_, Boston, 1916.