Blackfeet, Blood, and Beaver

Blackfeet, Blood, and Beaver is a fact-based historical novel about the 1809-1810 hunting and trading season, when American fur traders were expanding their trade into the Louisiana Territory. Manuel Lisa of the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company had built Fort Raymond at the mouth of the Bighorn and Yellow Stone Rivers. The company had also built, then abandoned Fort Henry at the Three Forks—the headwaters of the Missouri River. The Oregon Territory, north of the Columbia and east to the Rocky Mountains, was controlled by the British. David Thompson of the North West Company established three trading posts west of the Rockies, claiming those lands for the Crown.

Blackfeet, Blood, and Beaver is the story of George Morris, a Missouri farm boy who decides it is time to head west to see faraway places he had heard about. He hires on with the Missouri Fur Company as a hunter and is paired with veteran hunter and scout Will Haywood. Under Will’s guidance he begins learning about the dangers of traveling and hunting in Indian territory.

Most of the adventures George encounters are based on true historical events as he and Will travel hundreds of miles along actual fur-trade routes shown on maps of the time. Blackfeet, Blood, and Beaver involves the reader in life-and-death challenges faced by fur traders on the early frontier. Readers will feel the stress and tension of the characters, will share cold, often hungry days and nights in the Rocky Mountains, and feel the fear and tension experienced when necessary to avoid losing their lives or scalps.