?Frenchmen were far ahead of Englishmen in the early Far West, not only prior in time but greater in numbers and in historical importance,? writes Janet Lecompt

Through a detailed analysis of their unique occupational culture, Making the Voyageur World reexamines the French Canadian workers who dominated the fur trade i

John Jacob Astor's dream of empire took shape as the American Fur Company. At Astor's retirement in 1834, this corporate monopoly reached westward from a depot

"In stressing the exploitation and destruction of the physical and human environment rather than the usual frontier romanticism, David Wishart has provided for