The Beaver Men: Spearheads of Empire » (2nd Edition)

Mari Sandoz (1896–1966) is the noted author of The Buffalo Hunters, The Cattlemen, and The Battle of the Little Bighorn (all available in Bison Books editions).

Andrew R. Graybill is an associate professor of history at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and the author of Policing the Great Plains: Rangers, Mounties, and the North American Frontier, 1875–1910 (Nebraska 2007).

Covering more than two centuries, The Beaver Men recounts the beginning of the beaver trade along the St. Lawrence to the last great rendezvous of traders and trappers on Ham’s Fork, in what is now Wyoming, in 1834. The Beaver Men is the third in Mari Sandoz’s trilogy of books narrating the history of the American West in relation to an animal species.

New York Times Book Review

"The fate of the Plains Region was inextricably bound up with the fate of the buffalo; they fell together. This is the story Miss Sandoz has to tell, and she tells it beautifully, forcefully, epically. . . . A procession of interesting frontier figures, red and white [Wild Bill Hickok, Lonesome Charlie Reynolds, Buffalo Bill, Sheridan, Custer, and Indian chiefs Whistler, Yellow Wolf, Spotted Tail, Sitting Bull, passes through the narrative, briefly but sharply characterized."