Hardy as Bears

The first white men in the Rocky Mountains were trappers who became known as Mountain Men, arriving decades before Lewis and Clark. Many were of French descent and came by way of Canada. These men were loners who lived off the land and trapped beaver—the Mountain Man’s gold. They lived more like the Indians they married and with whom they traded rather than their own people. An insatiable desire to see what lay beyond the horizon and to find new streams to trap made them explorers, as