Contested empire
Subtitle: Peter Skene Ogden and the Snake River expeditions
By: John Phillip Reid ; foreword by Martin Ridge.
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Norman
Language: eng
Number of pages: 258
Subjects: Ogden, Peter Skene, 1790-1854 -- Travel -- Snake River Valley (Wyo.-Wash.); Ogden, Peter Skene, 1790-1854 -- Relations with Americans.; Ogden, Peter Skene, 1790-1854 -- Relations with Indians.; Hudson's Bay Company -- Biography.; Fur trade -- Social aspects -- Snake River Valley (Wyo.-Wash.) -- History -- 19th century.; Indians of North America -- Snake River Valley (Wyo.-Wash.) -- History -- 19th century.; Frontier and pioneer life -- Snake River Valley (Wyo.-Wash.); Fur traders -- Canada -- Biography.; Snake River Valley (Wyo.-Wash.) -- Description and travel.; Snake River Valley (Wyo.-Wash.) -- Ethnic relations.
Genres: Biography.
Description: "Do law and legal procedures exist only so long as there is an official authority to enforce them? Or do we have an unspoken sense of law and ethics?".

"To answer these questions, John Phillip Reid's Contested Empire explores the implicit notions of law shared by American and British fur traders in the Snake River country of Idaho and surrounding areas in the early nineteenth century. Both the United States and Great Britain had claimed this region, and passions were intense.

Focusing mainly on Canadian explorer and trader Peter Skene Ogden, Reid finds that both sides largely avoided violence and other difficulties because they held the same definitions of property, contract, conversion, and possession.".

"In 1824, the Hudson's Bay Company directed Ogden to decimate the fur-bearing animal population of the Snake River country, thus making the region a "fur desert." With this mandate, Great Britain hoped to neutralize any interest American furtrappers could have in the area.

Such a mandate set British and American fur men on a collision course, but Ogden and his American counter-parts implicity followed a kind of law and procedure and observed a mutual sense of property and rights even as the two sides vied for control of the fur trade.".

"Failing to take legal culture into consideration, some previous accounts have depicted these conflicts as mere episodes of lawless frontier violence. Reid expands our understanding of the West by considering the unspoken sense of law that existed, despite the lack of any formalized authorities, in what has otherwise been considered a "lawless" time."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [231]-246) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: List of Maps ix; title: Foreword by Martin Ridge xi; title: Chapter 1: To Prevent Disputes and Differences 3; title: Chapter 2: The Wild and Untrammelled Life 13; title: Chapter 3: One of the Most Unprincipled Men 19; title: Chapter 4: We Hold This Country by So Slight a Tenure 36; title: Chapter 5: They Are Too Lazy To Come In with Their Furs 49; title: Chapter 6: No Money Would Induce Me to Risk Again 62; title: Chapter 7: Let Rules Be Made They Will Soon Be Broken 75; title: Chapter 8: We Must Endeavour to Annoy Them 87; title: Chapter 9: Do You Know in Whose Country You Are? 101; title: Chapter 10: Go We Will Where We Shall Be Paid 114; title: Chapter 11: They Are Now to Be Found in All Parts; title: of the Snake Country 135; title: Chapter 12: The Cheapest Shop Will Carry the Day 148; title: Chapter 13: It Is a Lottery with All Expeditions 161; title: Chapter 14: Our Own People Are Now Perfectly Satisfied 171; title: Chapter 15: The Country Virtually Falls into Our Keeping 191; title: Notes 205; title: Short Title List 231; title: Acknowledgments 247; title: Index 249.