He attained the honorary rank of major because of his work as an Indian agent, a role in which he helped shape part of our state’s boundary line. One writer said, “It is difficult to conceive of any one “Mountain Man” who was both an eye-witness and a key participant in more western frontier episodes.” His career spanned the early days of the fur trade on the upper Missouri to the Civil War, and his stately home in western Missouri survived him by more than a century before fire destroyed it in 1963.
