River of the West

v. 2: The Oregon Years: Here Joe Meek continues his collaboration with Frances Fuller Victor, telling the story of his own colorful life and the tale of his times in The River of the West, a memoir that proved immediately and enduringly popular upon its publication more than a century ago. In the first half of their book, published as Volume One of this new edition, Meek and Mrs. Victor presented the young Joe in his role as a dashing and gallant trapper. In this volume they show him as a pioneer, sheriff, U.S. Marshall, even legislator -- Citizen Joe. Through Meek's pungent recollections, his engaging memoir also becomes an important history of Oregon's turbulent formative years -- the struggles of the missionaries, the other early settlers, the Hudson's Bay Company, and the Indians that shaped a territory and finally a state. - Jacket flap.