A decade before the celebrated mountain men entered the Northern Plains and Rockies, some dozen little-known trading forays were launched into the plains of the Southwest. Anthony Glass led one of the most important. In 1808-1809, with a party of twelve hunter-traders, he acted as semi-official emissary of the U.S. government in the practically uncharted lands of the Taovaya-Wichita and Comanche Indians. His was the first party of whites ever to view the sixteen-hundred-pound meteorite venerated as a healing shrine by the Plains tribes. Alone among the early southwestern traders, Glass kept a lively journal detailing his route and experiences.

Forgotten for nearly two centuries, this journal appears here in its entirety with rich annotation and interpretation by editor Dan L. Flores. Flores offers a novel, sympathetic view of the Indian trader as a sometime instrument of Jeffersonian borderlands diplomacy, and he presents fresh data on the land and its inhabitants.

Landscape, photographs, historically important frontier maps, and contemporary paintings of the traders and the Indians, and their ways of life, further develop this tale of Anthony Glass, Indian trader.