Ride the Moon Down

Here is the hardy mountain veteran who has ranged these wilds for more than thirty years. Pecuniary emolument was perhaps his first inducement, but now he is as poor as at first. Reckless of all provision for the future, his great solicitude is to fill up his mental insanity by animal gratification. Here is the man, now past the meridian of his life, who has been in the country from his youth, whose connections and associations with the natives have identified his interests and habits with theirs.

—Philip Edwards,

missionary to Oregon in 1834