Flagg's The Far West, 1836-1837, part 2; and De Smet's Letters and Sketches, 1841-1842

The collection combines two nineteenth-century accounts of the trans-Mississippi West: travel essays that trace French settlements along the Mississippi and Illinois valleys, describing village life, customs, fortifications such as Fort Chartres, ancient mounds, geology of the American Bottom, and settler hardships; and a series of Jesuit missionary letters and sketches from extended residence among Rocky Mountain Indigenous peoples, offering detailed ethnographic observations, travel narratives, scenes of worship and daily life, and a symbolic catechism adapted for local communities. Together the pieces blend historical reminiscence, landscape description, and firsthand cultural reportage.