A Colorado History And The Excerpt Of Rufus Sages Rocky Mountain Life

Early Americas best explores of the Rocky Mountains were the fur trappers. These trappers would explore Colorado’s interior in search of beaver pelts. They would interact and trade with trappers and people of different nations. Because of the fur traders that ventured into Colorado they would become the guiding force that helped America expand west and be the leading cause to the decrease of beaver, bison and other large ungulates populations. From reading A Colorado History and the excerpt of Rufus Sages Rocky Mountain Life, I will answer the questions: Was the fur trade just a business venture for the people who engaged in it? Did explorers and traders serve as cultural middlemen, introducing one culture to another, in the area that would become Colorado? How does Rufus Sage's account differ from the information found in the textbook about the fur trade? Did Sage's account change the answers to the first two questions?

Were fur traders in it for the money? Fur trappers in Colorado weren’t very different than the people back in the east. They would trap as anybody

Such an example was when Sage himself wrote “The antelope, too seemed to have congregated from all parts, and covered the country in one almost unbroken band. Their numbers exceeded anything of the kind I ever witnessed before or since. We amused ourselves at times in shooting them merely for their skins, the latter being superior to those of deer or even sheep in its nicety of texture and silky softness.” This confirmed what had been mentioned in the book that trappers would go into an area and harvest animals sometimes just for their fur till they were no longer as prevalent. Sages account doesn’t provide much to his interactions with people other mentioning his comrades by no name. He seemed to write more about his observations of the natural world and interactions with the