Description

By John G. Neihardt

First volume of the celebrated epic poem A Cycle of the West, covering the era of fur traders.

The Mountain Men celebrates the brave men and women who explored, trapped, and traded across the Old West during the early decades of the nineteenth century. From the Missouri River to the Great Salt Lake, the Yellowstone River to Spanish California, their moving and inspiring stories are deftly told by the brilliant epic poet John G. Neihardt. It was the age of individualism, a time when a person’s own character and fortitude more than the collective ensured survival and success. Neihardt himself traversed the same waterways and rugged country as the early trappers and traders in order to better understand them and their world.

This is the first volume in John G. Neihardt’s acclaimed A Cycle of the West, containing The Song of Three Friends, The Song of Hugh Glass, and The Song of Jed Smith. The Twilight of the Sioux, the second volume in A Cycle of the West, is also available as an Excelsior Edition.

“Neihardt’s epic—and it is the most truly epic of anything we have in American poetry—already is a part of American culture … His achievement is unique in American letters.” — Washington Post