The Prairie Traveler

The Prairie Traveler
Author: Randolph Barnes Marcy
Publisher: New York, Harper
Total Pages: 354
Release: 1859
Genre: History
ISBN:

How to survive on the trails to California and Oregon: food, wagon train management, pack animals, bivouacs, Indian fighting, hunting, etc.

The Prairie Traveler

The Prairie Traveler
Author: Randolph Barnes Marcy
Publisher:
Total Pages: 356
Release: 1859
Genre: Overland journeys to the Pacific
ISBN:

This was the indispensable handbook for American pioneers traveling west in the mid 19th century. Commissioned and published by the U.S. government and written in a straightforward and helpful voice by U.S. Army officer Randolph Barnes Marcy (1812-1887), it offers all the useful and necessary advice overland travelers to the far West needed to ensure a safe journey: . the different routes to California and Oregon . how to pack a wagon for the journey . finding and purifying water . repairing broken wagons . weathering storms . how to handle saddle wounds . the best way to make a fire on the prairie . interacting with Indians . hints on the best methods of hunting . and much more. Complete with all the original maps and illustrations, this replica edition is a remarkable artifact of one of the most exciting and dangerous eras in American history.

Prairie Dog Empire

Prairie Dog Empire
Author: Paul A. Johnsgard
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0803226047

For hundreds of years black-tailed prairie dogs inhabited the Great Plains by the millions, improving the grazing for bison and pronghorn antelope, digging escape holes and homes for burrowing owls and rodents, and serving as prey for badgers, coyotes, hawks, and bobcats. This book by the renowned naturalist and writer Paul A. Johnsgard tells the complex biological and environmental story of the western Great Plains under the prairie dog?s reign?and then under a brief but devastating century of human dominion. ø An indispensable and highly readable introduction to the ecosystem of the shortgrass prairie, Prairie Dog Empire describes in clear and detailed terms the habitat and habits of black-tailed prairie dogs; their subsistence, seasonal behavior, and the makeup of their vast colonies; and the ways in which their ?towns? transform the surrounding terrain?for better or worse. Johnsgard recounts how this terrain was in turn transformed over the past century by the destruction of prairie dogs and their grassland habitats, together with the removal of the bison and their replacement with domestic livestock. A disturbing look at profound ecological alterations in the environment, this book also offers a rare and invaluable close-up view of the rich history and threatened future of the creature once considered the ?keystone? species of the western plains. ø Included are maps, drawings, and listings of more than two hundred natural grassland preserves where many of the region?s native plants and animals may still be seen and studied.

The Prairie Traveller, a Hand-book for Overland Expeditions

The Prairie Traveller, a Hand-book for Overland Expeditions
Author: Randolph Barnes Marcy
Publisher: DigiCat
Total Pages: 41
Release: 2022-11-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

This book was published at the time of the great western trek across America of the early pioneers. It was essentially the only real handbook available to help those people to deal with the problems they encountered on their travels, besides also giving them maps.

The Prairie Traveler

The Prairie Traveler
Author: Randolph B. Marcy
Publisher:
Total Pages: 110
Release: 2018-07-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781387977260

Randolph Marcy wrote this guide for fellow travelers wanting to brave the wilderness of North America, at a time when the western reaches of the continent were barely settled. A captain in the U.S. military, Marcy wrote this guide partly to allay the many myths and fears of the Western frontier, and partly to offer guidance to the dangers which were actually manifest. The information within takes readers across two popular trails - northerly, ending in Oregon, and southerly, ending in Santa Fe. Written in 1859, this book is both a guidebook and an authentic history of the Wild West era. Various anecdotes are interspersed through the text - Marcy is careful to differentiate between friendly Indian tribes such as the Delawares and Shawnees, whom he admires. The Plains Indians however are considered to have hostile tendencies; Marcy instructs on how to sign, and gives a detailed account of how to safely sleep with a gun cocked and loaded.

The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California

The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California
Author: Lansford Warren Hastings
Publisher: Applewood Books
Total Pages: 157
Release: 1994
Genre: History
ISBN: 1557092451

Published in 1845, this guidebook for pioneers is a reproduction of one of the most collectible books about California and the Western movement. It was the guidebook used by the Donner Party on their fateful journey. In addition, because Hastings' shortcut route through the Rockies produced such tragedy, the War Department commissioned The Prairie Traveler.

Great Plains

Great Plains
Author: Ian Frazier
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2001-05-04
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1466828889

National Bestseller Most travelers only fly over the Great Plains--but Ian Frazier, ever the intrepid and wide-eyed wanderer, is not your average traveler. A hilarious and fascinating look at the great middle of our nation. With his unique blend of intrepidity, tongue-in-cheek humor, and wide-eyed wonder, Ian Frazier takes us on a journey of more than 25,000 miles up and down and across the vast and myth-inspiring Great Plains. A travelogue, a work of scholarship, and a western adventure, Great Plains takes us from the site of Sitting Bull's cabin, to an abandoned house once terrorized by Bonnie and Clyde, to the scene of the murders chronicled in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It is an expedition that reveals the heart of the American West.

The Prairie Traveler: A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions

The Prairie Traveler: A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions
Author: Randolph Barnes Marcy
Publisher: DigiCat
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2022-09-15
Genre: Travel
ISBN:

'The Prairie Traveler' is a travel guidebook to the western trails, written by Randolph Barnes Marcy. He was an officer in the United States Army. This book became a key handbook for the thousands of Americans wanting to cross the continent. It was written based on his own extensive experience of "more than thirty years of service in the United States Army, a large portion of the time on the frontiers" and in the mountains, deserts, and prairies, the book provided authoritative advice about reconnaissance, fieldcraft, provisions, and healthcare, that would save many lives on these perilous routes. It covered key topics like hunting and tracking, food and water supply, as well as specialist advice about the selection of horses, the avoiding of quicksands, the interpreting of smoke signals and sign language, and numerous other issues. 'The Prairie Traveler' was one of the best-selling books in the U.S. in the 19th century.

PrairyErth

PrairyErth
Author: William Least Heat-Moon
Publisher: HMH
Total Pages: 637
Release: 2014-03-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0547527470

This New York Times bestseller by the author of Blue Highways is “a majestic survey of land and time and people in a single county of the Kansas plains” (Hungry Mind Review). William Least Heat-Moon travels by car and on foot into the core of our continent, focusing on the landscape and history of Chase County—a sparsely populated tallgrass prairie in the Flint Hills of central Kansas—exploring its land, plants, animals, and people until this small place feels as large as the universe. Called a “modern-day Walden” by the Chicago Sun-Times, PrairyErth is a journey through a place, through time, and into the human mind from the acclaimed author of Here, There, Elsewhere: Stories from the Road. “A sense of the American grain that will give [PrairyErth] a permanent place in the literature of our country.” —Paul Theroux, The New York Times