Wahb: The Biography of a Grizzly - Softcover

Ernest Thompson Seton (author), Jeremy M. Johnston (editor) & Charles R. Preston (editor)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0806150823 ISBN 13: 9780806150826

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015

Synopsis

In the bright morning of his youth Lewis H. Garrard traveled into the wild and free Rocky Mountain West and left us this fresh and vigorous account, which, says A. B. Guthrie, Jr., contains in its pages "the genuine article-the Indian, the trader, the mountain man, their dress, and behavior and speech and the country and climate they lived in."On September 1, 1846, Garrard, then only seventeen years old, left Westport Landing (now Kansas City) with a caravan, under command of the famous trader Céran St. Vrain, bound for Bent's Fort (Fort William) in the southeastern part of present-day Colorado. After a lengthy visit at the fort and in a camp of the Cheyenne Indians, early in 1847 he joined the little band of volunteers recruited by William Bent to avenge the death of his brother, Governor Charles Bent of Taos, killed in a bloody but brief Mexican and Indian uprising in that New Mexican pueblo. In fact, Garrard's is the only eyewitness account we have of the trial and hanging of the "revolutionaries" at Taos.Many notable figures of the plains and mountains dot his pages: traders St. Vrain and the Bents; mountain men John L. Hatcher, Jim Beckwourth, Lucien B. Maxwell, Kit Carson, and others; various soldiery traveling to and from the outposts of the Mexican War; and explorer and writer George F. Ruxton.

About this title

Review

"The tale of Wahb has been a classic of 'Yellowstonia' since the book was first published in 1900. In a 1903 magazine, journalist Ray Stannard Baker included a drawing of a lady tourist on a Yellowstone stagecoach reading a copy of the book. Jeremy Johnston and Charles Preston have done us a favor by making Seton's timeless story available again, this time accompanied by the relevant discussions of nature fakers and evolving science that are so important to appreciating the work."--Lee Whittlesey, Historian, Yellowstone National Park

About the Author

Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946) was a British-born author, wildlife artist, cofounder of the Boy Scouts of America, and an early pioneer of the modern school of animal fiction writing whose best-known book is Wild Animals I Have Known.

Jeremy M. Johnston is Curator of the Buffalo Bill Museum and Western American History, and Managing Editor of The Papers of William F. Cody at the McCracken Research Library, Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming.

Charles R. Preston is the Willis McDonald, IV, Senior Curator of Natural Science at the Draper Natural History Museum, Buffalo Bill Center of the West, in Cody, Wyoming. His publications include Golden Eagle: Sovereign of the Skies (with G. Leppart, photographer) and An Expedition Guide to the Nature of Yellowstone and the Draper Museum of Natural History.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0806150823
• ISBN 13: 9780806150826
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 240