Download or read book A Life Wild and Perilous written by Robert M. Utley and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1998-10-15 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early in the nineteenth century, the mountain men emerged as a small but distinctive group whose knowledge and experience of the trans-Mississippi West exted the national consciousness to continental dimensions. Though Lewis and Clark blazed a narrow corridor of geographical reality, the West remained largely terra incognita until trappers and traders--Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick, Jedediah Smith--opened paths through the snow-choked mountain wilderness. They opened the way west to Fremont and played a major role in the pivotal years of 1845-1848 when Texas was annexed, the Oregon question was decided, and the Mexican War ed with the Southwest and California in American hands, the Pacific Ocean becoming our western boundary.