Description 2025 Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Journal, Volume 19 Beaver Hats: Material Culture in the Americas by Maya Peters-Greño This article looks at three North American communities – Euro-Americans, enslaved people and indigenous populations – to show how beaver top hats were used to navigate racial hierarchies from Early America through the post-Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Era. The Eloquence of Mountain Man Lingo by Jim Hardee A mountaineer’s speech pattern is often as defining of a frontiersman’s character as are his actions, ranking as high as trapping beaver, hunting buffalo or fighting a grizzly bear – but it is truly accurate or based on historical works? La Prairie de la Messe: Reconstructing Father De Smet’s Mass from the 1840 Rendezvous by George Capps and Polly Capps Paule by examining primary sources and material culture, this duo makes an artistic, yet historically correct, painting of Father Pierre-Jean De Smet’s Catholic Mass at the final rendezvous of the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Era. Two Long Walks: James Clyman sand Thomas Fitzpatrick, 1824 by Scott Walker This article re-examines the dramatic adventures of two early mountain men in their attempts to get packs of fur from the Green River Valley, back across South Pass, and down the Platte River to market their catch. Swords of the Fur Trade by Donald Wade Douglas It is easy to visualize swashbuckling Musketeers, Vikings, pirates and cavalry soldiers flashing their sabers about, but the idea of a mountain man defending himself with a lengthy blade is less common. This article explores the presence and use of swords during the fur trade era. Museum of the Mountain Man, 2025
