The Language of Ruxton's Mountain Men

Abstract

GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON'S Life in the Far West provides an early and authentic record of the mountain men engaged in fur trading and trapping in the Rocky Mountains during the middle 1840s.1 Ostensibly a novel, Life in the Far West pays brief and perfunctory attention to a love plot with happy coincidences, about which it is kindest to say no more. The genuine quality of the book lies in its evocation of the comic and heroic spirit of the mountain men. Ruxton recreates the personalities of men who have since been identified as historical persons, their vital and independent manner of living, their relations with Indians and Spaniards, and their highly colorful mountain jargon. This last has proved to be a boon to modern historians and lexicographers. Appearing in the novel as himself, Ruxton, a young English authoradventurer, visited the Rocky Mountain region during 1846, and joined the trappers in their daily lives for four months of that year. Qualities of sympathy, keen observation, and literary skill enabled him to write clearly and accurately, without condescension or idealization. As far as he thought his readers would allow him, Ruxton attempted to reproduce the actual speech of the mountain men. He introduced their vocabulary and some of their syntax, and he even attempted to indicate the peculiarities of their pronunciation.