ML Archives and Special Collections

[Peter Skene Ogden], Traits of American-Indian Life and Character. By a Fur Trader. London, 1853. (Call #: SpColl-Phillips, 970.00497 O345t)

and

James Marsh, Four Years in the Rockies. New Castle, PA: W.B. Thomas, 1884. (Call #: SpColl-Phillips, 978 M365f)

These two new acquisitions illustrate the role of the fur trade in early history of what is now Montana.

Peter Skene Ogden was a fur trader with the Northwest Company, and he traveled throughout the northwest extensively during the 1820s. In late 1824 or early 1825 he passed through the area that is now Missoula. Traits of American-Indian Life provides sketches of life in the area, the fur trade, and the Native American inhabitants of the region. This particular copy is interesting for two other reasons: first, it has an ownership stamp of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Northwest Company’s rival, on the title page (image). Second, most of the book is unopened (image), meaning that the leaves haven’t been separated into individual pages, an indication that this particular copy was never actually read. This new addition joins other Special Collections materials relating to Ogden, including his Snake Country Journals and biographical works such as T.C. Elliot’s Peter Skene Ogden: Fur Trader.

Four Years in the Rockies narrates the adventures of Isaac Rose, a trapper who explored the west with notable characters such as Jim Bridger and Kit Carson. The title page describes it as “ONE OF THE MOST THRILLING NARRATIVES EVER PUBLISHED,” and it includes many descriptions of Native Americans, especially the Blackfeet.

Samuel Stearns, The American herbal, or Materia medica. Wherein the virtues of the mineral, vegetable, and animal productions of North and South America are laid open, so far as they are known; and their uses in the practice of physic and surgery exhibited…, Walpole, NH: D. Carlisle for Thomas and Thomas and the Author, 1801.

This recent addition to Special Collections is considered the first indigenous American herbal, a type of book that lists plants, their properties, and often, as is the case here, their medicinal uses. The American Herbal is also particularly notable for containing remedies used by Native Americans, although the accuracy of Stearns’ use these remedies is questionable. Most entries in the American Herbal (click here for a sample image) include a plant’s common and scientific name, a list of it’s salient features, and common medical uses and preparations.

As the WebMD of their time, herbals like this one would have been popular among the average user looking for home-medicine advice. But our copy also provides evidence of their professional usefulness too. The front paste-down includes an inscription indicating that the book was a presented as a gift from a doctor in Louisville, Kentucky to a doctor in Harrodsburg on November 16th, 1864.

Stearns himself led an interesting life. According to Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography (not necessarily a completely reliable source) Stearns was a Tory, and during the American Revolution he “suffered greatly from persistent attacks of the Sons of Liberty”. Before publishing the new country’s first herbal, he had already published its first nautical almanac and a number of other medical works.