WARNING: LONG WOLFY STORY!
A couple of years ago I read a book consisting of translated letters, written by a German-speaking surveyor with the Fremont Expedition, to his wife back home on the East coast. It gave insights into the personalities of some of the more famous mountain men that were hired as guides by Fremont, the camping conditions, hardships and Fremont's stubborn & extreme quirkiness. If those letters had been lost, we would never have known a lot about those guys and how they interacted on a day-to-day basis. The author was constantly complaining about camp conditions, Fremont himself, the guide's route-picking decisions, etc., so many of the incidents he wrote about were downright hilarious to read.
A couple of years ago when we were visiting The Museum of The Fur Trade in Chadron, I found a book that I would have purchased that day if I hadn't already been paying a small fortune for the ones had already selected. When I was deep in a brain-picking session with Dr. James Hanson in his office at the museum, Heather clandestinely slipped back into the book section and bought it for me for a Christmas present. She is a GOOD wife!
I just ran across it a couple of days ago and, since I had not yet had the chance to read it, read the preface again and re-discovered why I wanted it in the first place.
The title is THIS FAR-OFF LAND.....The Upper Missouri Letters of Andrew Dawson by Lesley Wischmann and Dawson's descendent, Andrew Erskine Dawson. Andrew Dawson was a Scot, as were many of the American Fur Company fort factors and fur company clerks and bookkeepers of that period. He left his mother and siblings back home in Scotland, but wrote long, hand-to-hand-carried letters to his mother with the intent that they should be passed on to his brothers to read, also. They are written in 'cross-hatch' style, which was common then. He would write until the page was full, turn the paper 90 degrees and then write over it until the page was full again. It must have been a real nightmare to translate!
All of the surviving letters were written over a period of several years when he was stationed at Forts Berthold, Clark and Benton in Montana on the upper Missouri as the Mackinaw boats were being replaced by shallow-draft steamboats. He was a very descriptive writer, so his mother saved all of his letters in cubbyhole in an old writing desk.
Long story, I know, but the gist of it is that the letters lay undiscovered in that old desk through four generations and three trips across the Atlantic before they came to light! If his direct descendant, Andrew Erskine Dawson had not recognized there historical worth, we would have lost that very interesting, educational and valuable facet of American history!
