Three Years in the Rocky Mountains

"David L. Brown met Bridger at the 1837 trapper's rendezvous." - Empire of Shadows: The Epic Story of Yellowstone (2012)

"David Brown...noted that Bridger had a thorough understanding of Indian character...put his faith in Indian superstitions." -Jim Bridger: Trapper, Trader, and Guide (2007)

"David Brown in his 'Three Years in the Rockies' speaks of Kit." -Kit Carson & His Three Wives (2003)

"At the 1837 Green River rendezvous, freshman trapper David L. Brown encountered...veteran mountain man James Bridger." -Making of the American West (2007)

How would veteran mountain man Jim Bridger and other trappers react when the leader of a hostile tribe tried to re-steal a horse from Bridger at the 1836 trappers rendezvous?

David L. Brown was a greenhorn mountain man who would join Jim Bridger's fur trapping brigade. Brown's short 20-page 1845 vivid narrative titled "Three Years in the Rocky Mountains," describes events during a sojourn with the William Drummond Stewart trapping party in 1836-39, and it was first published in the September 8-13, 1845 editions of the Cincinnati Daily Morning Atlas.

Seeking adventure, Brown joined Sir William Drummond Stewart, 7th Baronet, a Scottish adventurer and British military officer near Leavenworth Kansas in 1836, where they arranged to accompany a pack train to the rendezvous of mountain men at the Horse Creek Rendezvous in the Green River Valley of Wyoming. Here Brown met the famous mountain men Jim Bridger, Bill Williams, and Kit Carson.

Also on this trip was, as noted by Brown, was American artist, Alfred Jacob Miller, whom Stewart had hired in New Orleans. On this trip Miller would paint a notable series of works on the mountain men, the rendezvous, American Indians, and Rocky Mountain scenes.

Brown spends much of his book describing the mountain men which he met at Green River, including veteran mountain man Jim Bridger, Bill Williams, and Joe Meek. Brown notes that "individuals, who having once tasted the sweets of this roving and adventurous life, on returning to the haunts of civilization...have languished and pined after those irresponsible solitude where man...revels in the untrammeled liberty, of a fierce and all but animal existence."