Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri immerses the reader in the life of a merchant in the Missouri River from the 1830s to the early 1870s. An autobiographical chronicle which sheds a light into a period and profession of history often ignored in the modern day, Forty Years a Fur Trader is an illuminating and lively chronicle of Charles Larpenteur's career as a fur seller. A man of tough resolve and hardy constitution, Larpenteur condenses his many years traversing the Missouri wilderness and trading posts into a series of episodic highlights, chronologically arranged. The Missouri River and Rocky Mountains were, at the time, dangerous but potentially lucrative proposition for a trader to undertake. Rough terrain, numerous wild animals, and the presence of Native American tribes made life as a fur trader unpredictable and fraught with danger. Yet a good set of high quality pelts would fetch high sums, demand being high especially for animals whose fur had scarcely before seen market.

Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri immerses the reader in the life of a merchant in the Missouri River from the 1830s to the early 1870s. An autobiographical chronicle which sheds a light into a period and profession of history often ignored in the modern day, Forty Years a Fur Trader is an illuminating and lively chronicle of Charles Larpenteur's career as a fur seller. A man of tough resolve and hardy constitution, Larpenteur condenses his many years traversing the Missouri wilderness and trading posts into a series of episodic highlights, chronologically arranged. The Missouri River and Rocky Mountains were, at the time, dangerous but potentially lucrative proposition for a trader to undertake. Rough terrain, numerous wild animals, and the presence of Native American tribes made life as a fur trader unpredictable and fraught with danger. Yet a good set of high quality pelts would fetch high sums, demand being high especially for animals whose fur had scarcely before seen market.

The son of French immigrants who settled in Maryland, Charles Larpenteur was so eager to see the real American West that he talked himself into a job with the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in 1833. When William Sublette and Robert Campbell sold out to the American Fur Company a year later they recommended the steady and sober young Larpenteur to Kenneth McKenzie, who hired him as a clerk. For forty years, as a company man and as an independent agent, the Frenchman would ply the fur trade on the upper Missouri River. Based on Larpenteur's daily journals, this memoir is unparalleled in describing the business side and social milieu of the fur trade conducted from wintering houses and subposts in the Indian country. As Paul L. Hedren notes in his introduction, Larpenteur moved comfortably among Indians and all levels of the trade's hierarchy. But he lived during a time of transition and decline in the business, and his vivid recital of his personal affairs often seems to bear out his feeling that he was "born for misfortune." His lasting legacy is this book, which is reprinted from the one-volume Lakeside Classics edition of 1933.