Upper Louisiana Territory, early 1800s: a mostly lawless frontier of beaver trappers and hired killers, a coonskin Thunderdome whose only moral code was the brutal law of naked survival. Many territory residents drank more whiskey than water. Amoral swindlers peddled vitriolic elixirs from one isolated trading post to the next. Lunatic backwoods messiahs commanded private armies of fevered fanatics, while predators, both animal and human, stared hungrily from the... More >>>