Excerpt from History of Early Steamboat Navigation on the Missouri River, Vol. 1 of 2: Life and Adventures of Joseph La Barge, Pioneer Navigator and Indian Trader, for Fifty Years Identified With the Commerce of the Missouri Valley This event led to a material change in the plan of the work, and it was decided to make it, not merely a narrative of personal experiences, but a history of steamboat navigation on the Missouri River. Very few people now have any conception of the part which this remarkable business played in the upbuilding of. The West. There is no railroad system in the United States to-day whose importance to its tributary coun try is relatively greater than was that of the Missouri River to the trans-mississippi territory in the first seventy-five years of the nineteenth century. The busi ness of the fur trade, the intercourse of government agents with the Indians, the campaigns of the army throughout the valley, and the wild rush of gold seekers to the mountains, all depended, in greater or less degree, upon the Missouri River as a line of transportation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.