Brackenridge's Journal of a voyage up the river Missouri, 1811; Franchère's…
Brackenridge's Journal of a voyage up the river Missouri, 1811; Franchère's… by H. M. Brackenridge and Gabriel Franchère is a collection of historical travel narratives written in the early 20th century. It reprints firsthand accounts of early 19th-century exploration and the fur trade, from a voyage up the Missouri with Manuel Lisa to the Astorian venture on the Northwest Coast, highlighting river navigation, frontier settlements, encounters with Indigenous nations, and the emerging
American West. The opening of the volume frames the texts with an editor’s preface that sketches both writers’ careers and the significance of their narratives, then begins with Brackenridge’s own preface and journal. He explains the Missouri Fur Company’s aims and setbacks, Manuel Lisa’s leadership, and his plan to overtake Wilson Hunt’s party for safer passage through Sioux country. The narrative then launches from St. Charles, detailing difficult river work, storms, islands and tributaries, hunters’ camps, wildlife encounters, and scattered settlements, culminating in a stop at Fort Osage with observations of the Osage people and the factory before pushing onward, still intent on catching Hunt upriver. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Brackenridge's Journal of a voyage up the river Missouri, 1811; Franchère's Voyage to Northwest Coast, 1811-1814
Original Publication
Cleveland: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1904.
Series Title
Early western travels 1748-1846, volume 6
Credits
Carol Brown, Greg Bergquist and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
Reading Level
Reading ease score: 64.8 (8th & 9th grade). Neither easy nor difficult to read.
