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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