History of Early Steamboat Navigation on the Missouri River, Volume 1 (of 2) / Life and Adventures of Joseph La Barge

The book presents the life and memoirs of a long-serving Missouri River pilot, tracing ancestry, youth, and rise in the fur trade before chronicling decades of steamboat navigation on the river. It interweaves personal voyages and incidents—disease aboard boats, seasonal ice break-up, head-of-navigation achievements, and encounters at frontier posts—with descriptive chapters on river channels, snags, boat types, and piloting techniques. The narrative situates individual experience within broader economic and social change, showing how river transport enabled trade, military movements, and frontier settlement while charting the expansion and eventual decline of steamboat commerce.