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Rafinesque’S Names For Western American Mammals, Including The Earliest Scientific Name For The Coyote (Canis Latrans Say, 1822), Based On The Apocryphal Journal Of Charles Le Raye, Neal Woodman
Neal Woodman
In 1817, the naturalist Constantine S. Rafinesque named nine new species of mammals from the American West, indicating the recently published journal of Charles Le Raye as the primary source for his descriptions. Le Raye was purported to be a French Canadian fur trader who, as a captive of the Sioux, had traveled across broad portions of the Missouri and Yellowstone river drainages a few years before the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806) traversed much of the same region. Le Raye’s journal was relied upon by generations of scholars as a valuable source documenting the native peoples and natural history …