Mountain Men Essay, Research Paper
?Thoughts on the Mountain Man and the Fur Trade? Critique
This article was somewhat interesting; it was not a very appealing title for
the author to have chosen to write about. He talks about the importance of Fur
Trade in the 1800?s, even though there are those who say it was not a very
important export that required few men I strongly believe that this did play a very
big role in history. What I found very interesting in this article was the fact that
even though the mountain men seemed to have very many conflicts with the Native
Americans they were still attracted to the Native American women. They kept clean
because of these Native American women. The Mountain Men, if married to a
Native American, they would turn their lives to ranching and this I believe helped
industrialization. There are a lot of different things that helped the
industrialization time, but this was one of them. I also thought about how the times
then relate to the way we live now. We are again very similar to past people. One
thing that really caught my attention was that the way we women and men are is
exactly the way it was before. The example that I can think about right now is when
young teenage women go out, they tend to get dressed and put on make-up and
really clean themselves up to try to impress the opposite sex. They try their hardest
to really have the attention from the opposite sex. I personally know that when I go
out that I try to look the best so that I can have a little attention from the opposite
sex. So in a very similar way we resemble the past life of Mountain Men and Native
Americans. I think another example that I can use is when the Latin men get angry
because for some strange reason most Latin women are very attracted to African
American men. This makes the Latin men upset and causes rage between these two
races. I think that maybe the reason for so much conflict between Mountain men
and Native American man might even have been because Mountain men were
taking Native American women away from the Native Americans. This is an issue
that really stands out in my head and I strongly believe that if we looked into this
issue deeper we might find a major reason of so much conflict between these two
people in those past times. The article also states that when the mountain men would
lose a skirmish all they would do is find their way back home, just the way a some
people today after an argument or a fight. One last important thing that he points
the way to is the economic development of Louisiana Territory. I think this article
was not as interesting as the others that I have read, but it still points out a lot of
important parts of history. There are a lot of important events that are a part of
history, but I see this as just a minor part of history and not very major. I would
however recommend it to anyone that is maybe in the college level. It would only be
appropriate for them because there are a few parts that are difficult to understand.
Overall it was a good article that may interest some readers or some history majors.
In my opinion I think the write could have made much more interesting by maybe
going more into detail about the types of relationships that the mountain men
carried with the Native American women. We all as humans find articles that are
about relationships, life, and gossip to be more interesting than a treaty between two
countries. This is only my opinion on the article and every person is different and
may have different thoughts, but that is what makes all of us human beings.
Hanson is an okay writer that does help some people understand history better.
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