The year is 1863 and the prairies are swarming with war parties from enemy tribes. The two boys must travel far and fight hard to keep their scalps and count coups

An elderly Blackfeet warrior tells the story of his youth, when his tribe owned and lived free on the great plains at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. During those days of freedom and plenty, they hunted the vast herds of buffalo, worshipped their ancient gods, and sought glory in war parties against their traditional tribal enemies. In order to achieve his adulthood in the tribe, Little Otter must face the dangerous vision quest to find his sacred helper and then risk death as a member of a daring war party. Most of all, though, Little Otter wants to become a Sun priest.

Steven Rinella (The MeatEater Podcast) brings to life the legendary wilderness exploits of men such as Jim Bridger, Jedidiah Smith, and Hugh Glass, who headed out to the Rocky Mountains to trap beavers in the decades following the Louisiana Purchase. Living off the land and dodging grizzly bears, these colorful characters carved out an existence defined by their relationships with Native people, their capacity to endure the most trying conditions, and their intimate knowledge of the western landscape.

Schultz weaves together the key events in Sacajawea’s story, from her traumatic childhood and adolescence, being captured and taken away from her home by a raiding party of Minnetaree to her unhappy marriage to the interpreter Toussaint Charbonneau, through to her life assisting in Lewis and Clark’s exploration of the Pacific Northwest.

I did not, of course, get Apauk’s story of his life in the sequence in which it is here laid down. On consecutive evenings he would relate incidents far apart in time, and only by later questionings would I be able to fill in the gaps. But at last I got together the whole of it, to my own satisfaction, and I hope the listener may get as much pleasure from the story as I did in the hearing of it.