Jedediah Smith

No Ordinary Mountain Man

By: Barton H. Barbour

Narrated by: Douglas R Pratt

Mountain man and fur trader Jedediah Smith casts a heroic shadow. He was the first Anglo-American to travel overland to California via the Southwest, and he roamed through more of the West than anyone else of his era. His adventures quickly became the stuff of legend. Using new information and sifting fact from folklore, Barton H. Barbour now offers a fresh look at this dynamic figure.

Barbour tells how a youthful Smith was influenced by notable men who were his family's neighbors, including a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. When he was 23, hard times leavened with wanderlust set him on the road west. Barbour delves into Smith's journals to a greater extent than previous scholars and teases out compelling insights into the trader's itineraries and personality. Use of an important letter Smith wrote late in life deepens the author's perspective on the legendary trapper. Through Smith's own voice, this larger-than-life hero is shown to be a man concerned with business obligations and his comrades' welfare, and even a person who yearned for his childhood. Barbour also takes a hard look at Smith's views of American Indians, Mexicans in California, and Hudson's Bay Company competitors and evaluates his dealings with these groups in the fur trade.

Dozens of monuments commemorate Smith today. This book is another, giving modern listeners new insight into the character and remarkable achievements of one of the West's most complex characters.

The book is published by University of Oklahoma Press.

©2009 University of Oklahoma Press (P)2017 Redwood Audiobooks

More than I expected

This book offered more than I expected. I have previously listened to “A Life Wild and Perilous” (which I highly recommend), “The Adventures of the Mountain Men”, and a few other works on the “mountain men”. I did not expect to learn much more about Jedediah Smith with this book. In that I was wrong because this book offers much more about his California and Oregon travels and much deeper incite into the man. If you are interested in Smith or the broader topic of the western fur trade and the mountain men, this book is a must.

That is the good. The bad come from the author and narrator. The narrator has a strange choppy style that puts odd emphasis on words that feels strange. It feels like the narrator is reading the book for the first time. His performance is good enough that I didn’t stop listening but I do think a better narration could have made this a much more enjoyable book to listen too. Additionally there are a lot of unnecessary and awkward adjectives used throughout the book. I couldn’t tell if it was the author filling space or if these were actually words from the characters that the narrator did a poor job conveying as such.

Jedediah S. Smith

I enjoyed the writing and history making it more storyline. Never a dry fact but color in the knowledge of the recorded times and articles collected through the century after his death.
I will listen again soon. There's a lot to digest.
I was thinking that he may have been a highly functioning person with autism. An idiot savant of sorts. Most definitely and Ironman.

Could not listen through the intro

More of a history than a story. Narrator was awful, quit before getting through the introduction. Returning

This takes you back in history

A great collection of source material, put together to give a glimpse of a famous Pioneer in his wild glory trapping and exploring, to imagine what America was like in the early wild days

The dichotomy of Smith's personality.

The book made Smith into a flesh and blood human being whose pious nature contrasted sharply with the time and place he lived.