HUNTING AND TRADING ON THE GREAT PLAINS HARDBACK FIRST EDITION

Description: FIRST EDITION 1986. Review by Reid M. Wilson: Hunting And Trading On The Great Plains, 1859-1875 is about the life of James R. Mead (May 3, 1836 -- March 31, 1910), who left his home near Davenport, Iowa in 1859 to travel to Kansas, where he lived most of the rest of his life. Mead started out hunting animals and making a home in the wild land, soon becoming involved with trading activities with Native Americans, and then later in his life, he was active in various business activities that led to the creation of the town of Wichita. In Chapter 2 -- Hunter's Paradise on page 68, it was interesting learning that Mead gave names to streams he explored that were later used by U.S. Surveyors. Mead's writing highlights many lively experiences in the wild land: ten-foot sunflowers that conceal huge buffalo bulls, playful ravens gliding through the air on their backs for short distances, howling wolves in the night, Confederate Civil War raiders taking the guns and horses from the small town of Salina on September 19, 1862, Native Americans who were honest and honorable in trading, wild-riding Native Americans that looked like they would attack but did not, the close and unearthly screams of mountain lions, Pawnee and white horse thieves, and the lone horseman Native American who showed his ability with a bow and arrow by splintering his arrow on a buffalo skull. Young Mead was wrong in his view that the buffalo would always be a part of the Kansas landscape as he did surplus killing to have the social advantage of more money; in one hunt, he killed 330 buffaloes, and in another hunt, he killed 302 wolves. In the last chapter, Mead rides the railway through places he visited in his youth by horse and is saddened by the forced changes to the land, the essence of which he contributed to by his own development actions in the past. There are photographs of people, footnotes of information, and maps of Mead's journeys in the book. Mead's writing is a vibrant historical record of the pristine, dangerous, and hazardous Kansas-Oklahoma region in the second half of the 19th century.

Price: 150 USD

Location: Wichita, Kansas

End Time: 2025-02-01T01:18:09.000Z

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