John Colter: His Years in the Rockies
by Burton Harris
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Book Summary Information
Author: Burton HarrisIntroduction: David Lavender
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1993-03-01
ISBN: 0803272642
Number of pages: 184
Publisher: Bison Books
Book Reviews of John Colter: His Years in the Rockies
Book Review: Better Adventure!
Summary: 5 Stars
Nevermind TV's Jack Bauer. If you want real pulse-pounding adventure then this book offers up one of the best extreme Mountain Man stories you're likely to come across! In 1803 John Colter joined the Lewis & Clark Expedition, Thomas Jefferson's 'Corps of Discovery' that opened up the West...well, make that pried open because as we all know from school it wasn't an easy journey for the intrepid troop.
Where our educations often leave off regarding those who made the dangerous journey is where this book picks up with the tale of one of the more amazing figures from it, John Colter.
On Lewis & Clarks' return trip Colter takes an Honorable Discharge at a Mandan Indian Village and stays behind in the west. Colter gets to the core of his own discoveries by being the first white man to find what we know today as Yellowstone Park. If he wasn't the first then he was at least one who was documented, Imagine anyone's surprise at finding bubbling mud, steaming geysers, and land that creaked and groaned under your feet with no postcards to show that you been there.
In the book you'll find out how he barely escaped from the Blackfeet Indians three times in one year. One of the most harrowing escapes you'll probably recognize from the movie The Mountain Men (great movie, by the way!) starring Charlton Heston and Brian Keith. The escape also formed the foundation for Cornel Wilde's movie, The Naked Prey (another great movie).
Colter's exploits in the Montana-Wyoming area from 1806 on were extraordinary and show how Lewis & Clark were lucky to have him on their expedition.
Colter died of jaundice in his early 40s (Eh, maybe. Nobody really knows his exact birthdate so we're left to guess his final age). He was buried in a simple graveyard in the Missouri territory in what the railroad refers to as 'Tunnel Hill.' It became Tunnel Hill when the railroad dug out a tunnel under the old graveyard where he was buried and then later through it esrasing his trace when it expanded the tunnel.
More than likely Colter's remains became part of the new track's foundation. However, his life's story is the foundation of bravery, dedication, fear and determination and uinliked Hollywood there were no stuntmen or retakes. No 9-1-1 service. And unlike Yellowstone Park today no rangers then to tell you what to keep away from.
The next time you're at Yellowstone Park pause a moment and give a nod to John Colter but read this book first to better appreciate the discovery that opened it up for the rest of us. Come to think of it, give another to Teddy Roosevelt for championing the need for National Parks.
Summary of John Colter: His Years in the Rockies
John Colter was a crack hunter with the Lewis and Clark expedition before striking out on his own as a mountain man and fur trader. A solitary journey in the winter of 1807-8 took him into present-day Wyoming. To unbelieving trappers he later reported sights that inspired the name of Colter's Hell. It was a sulfurous place of hidden fires, smoking pits, and shooting water. And it was real. John Colter is known to history as probably the first white man to discover the region that now includes Yellowstone National Park. In a classic book, first published in 1952, Burton Harris weighs the facts and legends about a man who was dogged by misfortune and "robbed of the just rewards he had earned."
This Bison Book edition includes a 1977 addendum by the author and a new introduction by David Lavender, who considers Colter's remarkable winter journey in the light of current scholarship.
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