By the golden age of the mountain man in the mid-19th century, there were perhaps only 3,000 living in the West. Their origins were disparate, although they included many Anglo-Americans. A good number hailed from wilderness regions of Kentucky and Virginia and throughout the newly purchased Louisiana Territory, which occupied the entire central section of the continent. French Canadians traveled from the North to work in the fur trade, while Creole Europeans represented approximately 15 percent of the men known to be living the isolated mountain life.

Others were of Métis, Spanish, American, Black, Indian, and mixed-blood origin, most often Iroquois or Delaware. Most came to the West in their late adolescent years, the oldest learning the trade in their 30s. Many roamed the West for as long as their constitutions would hold up under constant attacks on their health and personal safety. Some stayed too long and failed to survive the experience. Among the most famous, Jim Bridger arrived at the age of 16, while Edward Robinson was eventually killed in his 60s by what were known as “bad snakes”, a reference to the Snake tribe in Idaho country. Jim Beckwourth left the mountains at 68, and Old Bill Williams died at the age of 62 when a band of Utes “made him to come”.

In the same vein, Americans have always shared an ongoing fascination with what was for them the realm of the “exotic” in the collective imagination. Such a preoccupation with alternative experience extends to a preoccupation with prerecorded history, as it did in the furor over the discovery of extinct dinosaurs’ first fossils. Similarly, stepping out of the familiar could satisfy the urge for both danger and wonder by contemplating the future and the question of what might or might not exist. To this day, such a powerful imaginative force has underpinned the abundant science fiction and horror genres of modern films, including dramatic attempts at reviving and dominating massive and ancient beasts.

Among the people who aimed to thrive in this deadly business, few became as famous or acclaimed as Seth Kinman. A tendency toward the eccentric is evident in many of the famous frontiersmen. The dangerous and solitary nature of such a life calling appears to require it, and the months of hardship between islands of human communication frequently creates it. Kinman, a notable early settler in Humboldt County, California, stands among the most diverse in his unorthodox frontier life. While most Northern trappers were occupied almost solely with furnishing products to the European fur trade, Kinman, a more social person with eclectic skills, reveled in his associations with four American presidents and adoring crowds on the East Coast.