Adventures of Captain Bonneville

Bibliographic Data

ID20081920
AuthorsWashington Irving (corresponding author)
Year2021
Pages319-355
Publication date2021-11-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueTravels, Explorations and Empires, 1770-1835, Part I Vol 1 (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.4324/9781003113317-13
OpenAlexW591029776
ISBN9781003113317
LanguageEN
Citations received8

In the 1832 Nathaniel J. Wyeth, with a party of inexperienced New Englanders, arrived on the Missouri aiming to profit from the fur and the fishing on the Columbia. That same year, Captain Benjamin Bonneville of the US Army also reached the area with 110 employees; travelling, for the first time in the Rocky Mountains, in the covered wagons. Captain Bonneville was born in France in 1796. Brought up in New York, he became a career soldier on the frontier. In 1831 he obtained leave and financial backing from New York businessmen, and began organising an expedition. Washington Irving was an experienced and successful author when, in March 1836, he paid Bonneville $1,000 for the manuscript journal of the expedition. Irving had already published A Tour on the Prairies and was at work on Astoria – his account of the trading post on the Columbia

Adventure · Art · Art history · Australian History and Society · Colonialism, slavery, and trade