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"Rejoicing In The Beauties Of Nature" The Image Of The Western Landscape During The Fur Trade, Kerry R. Oman

Great Plains Quarterly

While traveling along the Platte River on May 18, 1834, William Marshall Anderson stopped to pick up a human skull bleaching in the prairie sunlight. Anderson was from Louisville, Kentucky, and had been sent west by his physician to accompany a fur-trade caravan to the Rocky Mountains in hopes of regaining lost physical strength. He came west not as a typical trader or trapper, but as an attentive observer. What Anderson lacked in physical strength and fortitude, he made up for with a commanding vernacular and lively imagination. Later in the day, after carrying the skull for several miles, he …