Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri

Jean-Baptiste Truteau (1748–1827) was an explorer, trapper, fur trader, surveyor, and Canadian French teacher. Raymond J. DeMallie is Chancellors’ Professor of Anthropology, co-director of the American Indian Studies Research Institute, and curator of North American Ethnology at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures at Indiana University. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Lakota Belief and Ritual (Nebraska, 1991). Douglas R. Parks is a professor of anthropology and co-director of the American Indian Studies Research Institute at Indiana University. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Traditional Narratives of the Arikara Indians, volumes 1–4 (Nebraska, 1990–92). Robert VÉzina is a linguist specializing in North American French historical lexicology. He is currently the president and chief executive officer of the Office quÉbÉcois de la langue franÇaise (Quebec Office of the French Language). Mildred Mott Wedel (1912–95) was a pioneer in ethnohistory and recipient of multiple awards, including a Distinguished Service Award for lifetime achievement from the Plains Anthropological Society.

“This is the finest critical and textual edition ever crafted for presenting a fur trade journal. The full Truteau manuscript here is absolutely essential to the history of the fur trade in the United States and Canada. . . . We simply cannot adequately understand Plains ethnohistory without it.”-Gilles Havard, research director at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris and author of Histoire des coureurs de bois“A major and unique contribution to the fields of anthropology, ethnohistory, history, linguistics, and travel literature. This is the first and only complete, reliable, and thoroughly researched edition of Truteau’s writings.”-Denys DelÂge, professor emeritus in the department of sociology at Laval University, QuÉbec, and author of Bitter Feast: Amerindians and Europeans in Northeastern North America, 1600–64