If you want to read a great adventure story right now, better than Capstick, all true and costing nothing, punch Project Gutenberg into your computer and then look up the autobiography of Peter (Pierre) Radisson. Its in fairly readable English.

Radisson was one of the founders of the Hudson Bay Company. The book starts with his capture and torture by the Iroquois just outside of the fortress of Quebec and goes on from there.

Radisson was the first white man to see the great plains, the plains indians (likely Sioux) and the Rocky Mountains.

The book talks at length about North America's first trophy hunters - the Iroquois (now called Six nations) - who made a habit of collecting human heads and who were to a certain extent cannibals. If you were on the war path eating your enemy extended your range.

The behavior of the Iroquois seemed to me to be identical to the behavior of some of the tribes now living along the Congo River both in the handling of their enemies and their diet.

Addenda to the above. There are some other good free books on project Gutenberg. I just read Stewart Edward White's,"Land of Foot Prints" which is about hunting East Africa by horse and oxcart. There were no vehicles on the first safaris. Then there is the biography of Kit Carson. I read it. He made US$30,000 in about 1840 by driving 5,000 sheep from Mexico to California through hostile Indian country. I read the biography of David Crockett which is not that interesting.

What was interesting was the reason people kept going west. they could get free land oif they would build a homestead. then they would sell it and get another. A poor man could not only get a farm but he could acquire capital as he kept moving west.

Samuel Baker's books such as "Wild Beasts and their ways are there as are Henry Morton Stanley's books. More and more every month. Its a great website.

But so far the best is Peter Radission's autobiography.

Addenda to the above;

The editors of the Radisson book mention his writing about a snake he found that is so fantastic it cannot be true. He was on a head hunting party with the Iroquois south of their homeland and they found this squat snake with four legs and a big head with big teeth. In those days the Iroquois ranged as far south as Chesapeake Bay. The raid was south of there maybe into North Carolina. No states in those days. No America either. What Radisson is obviously describing is an alligator, an animal he would not have known anything about in the early 1600's.

Ted,

Thanks for the tip. I was aware of the Gutenberg project but not that the scanns are available online.

Best regards;
Brett

You can read them online or print them out. I print them out at $2.00 a pop because my wife likes watching TV but I hate it. So I read while she watches the soaps. I found and read another about hunting grizzly bears in California and a bunch of E.T. Seton books. The California grizzly book is called "Bears I have Met" by Allen Kelly.

What I found interesting about the California grizzly book is the size of the bears. There were huge salmon runs in California in those days (all gone now) and it looks like the bears grew as large as Alaskan brown bears. Not only that but Mexican cowboys in early California used to lassoo them. Great stuff.

I also read "The Oregon Trail", Francis Parkman's classic about the wagon trains heading west.

Stewart Edward White has a second book about African hunting on Gutenberg and much is devoted to his voyage through the Suez canal to get to Africa and to Nairobi when it was a new city. Very detailed information. Notes on shooting lions from horseback. Good stuff.

Looks like I have some reading to look forward to. Just finished "How I found Livingstone in Central Africa" which was fasinating. S.E. White is an author I have always wanted to read.

I believe there are writings by Mead (of lake Mead Az. fame) included in the Gutenberg project. His expiditions down the Colorado river sometime after the Civil War are said to be well worth reading.

Brett