The Tall Trapper

This dime novel, published by Beadle and Adams, features "The Giant Trapper; or, The Flower of the Blackfeet" by Albert W. Aiken. The narrative begins at Fort Benton on the upper Missouri River, where the steamboat "Mountain Belle" arrives carrying passengers bound for the western frontier. Two men meet aboard: Roderick Wright, a fifty-year-old of commanding presence, and Harry Courtney, a twenty-five-year-old gentleman reduced to poverty after his father's bankruptcy. Wright reveals he possesses a mysterious map marking a route through Cadotte's Pass into Blackfoot territory to "Elk City," where he claims knowledge of something worth fifty thousand dollars. He proposes Courtney join his expedition into the dangerous country of the unconquered Blackfeet, offering him ten thousand dollars should they succeed. Courtney, having no prospects, accepts. The narrative includes authorial commentary dismissing newspaper correspondents' dismissive accounts of Native Americans as inaccurate.