Trails Through Western Woods

The author blends travel writing and regional description with collected Native myths and oral histories of the Selish people of the Bitter Root Valley. Ethnographic sketches convey customs, social habits, and legends gathered from elders and interpreters, including portraits of chiefs and communal practices. Vivid landscape passages depict mountain lakes, glaciers, trails and seasonal atmospheres, often illustrated from photographs. The narrative interlaces accounts of missions, the waning buffalo herds, and settler encroachment, preserving place-based tales, trail observations, and the impressions of a changing wilderness.