"Narrative of the Adventures of Zenas Leonard" is a journal describing the adventures of a company of 70 men, who left St. Louis in the Spring of 1831, on an expedition to the Rocky Mountains, for the purpose of trapping for Furs, and trading with the Indians. Zenas Leonard's narrative is comprised of a minute description of the incidents of the adventure, and a valuable history of this immense territory -- not from maps and charts, but from personal observation. Zenas Leonard (1809 - 1857) was an American mountain man, explorer and trader. He was born in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania. As a young adult, he worked for his uncle in Pittsburgh before moving to St. Louis and working as a clerk for the fur company, Gannt and Blackwell. In 1831 Leonard went with Gant and Blackwell's company of about 70 men on a trapping and trading expedition. They survived, in part, by trading with Native Americans. Among the more helpful tribal members he reported encountering was a negro who claimed to have been on Lewis & Clark's expedition, and who may have been the explorer-slave York. In 1835 Leonard returned to Independence, Missouri with enough wealth in furs to establish a store and trading post at Fort Osage. He continued to trade along the river for the rest of his life.

This eBook edition of "The Adventures of Zenas Leonard, Fur Trader & Trapper" has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. "Narrative of the Adventures of Zenas Leonard" is a journal describing the adventures of a company of 70 men, who left St. Louis in the Spring of 1831, on an expedition to the Rocky Mountains, for the purpose of trapping for Furs, and trading with the Indians. Zenas Leonard's narrative is comprised of a minute description of the incidents of the adventure, and a valuable history of this immense territory — not from maps and charts, but from personal observation. Zenas Leonard (1809 – 1857) was an American mountain man, explorer and trader. He was born in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania. As a young adult, he worked for his uncle in Pittsburgh before moving to St. Louis and working as a clerk for the fur company, Gannt and Blackwell. In 1831 Leonard went with Gant and Blackwell's company of about 70 men on a trapping and trading expedition. They survived, in part, by trading with Native Americans. Among the more helpful tribal members he reported encountering was a negro who claimed to have been on Lewis & Clark's expedition, and who may have been the explorer-slave York. In 1835 Leonard returned to Independence, Missouri with enough wealth in furs to establish a store and trading post at Fort Osage. He continued to trade along the river for the rest of his life.

For all of fur's contentious position in American culture today, historian Eric Jay Dolin shows its centrality in our nation's ever-surprising history. He argues that the trade in animal skins turned colonial America into a tumultuous frontier where global powers battled for control. From the seventeenth century right on up to the Gilded Age, the developed world's appetite for fur made the new continent, with its wealth of fur-bearing wildlife, a seemingly inexhaustible resource. The result was a major boost in the evolution of the colonies into a powerful new player on the world stage. Dolin sheds insight on the ways the fur trade created international tensions--in New England, the Great Lakes, and in the expanding West. Fur traders were often the first white men to map major rivers, forests, and mountains, then soon pushed Native Americans off their lands as John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company attempted to monopolize the West.--From publisher description.