Dave Lloyd

Fort Sarpy Dave Lloyd

Publisher Marketing: Fort Sarpy tells the story of the American Fur Company's most dangerous post. The fort was built on the Yellowstone River in 1850 for the trade with the Crow. At this time, the tribe was located in a triangle between the Tongue and the Bighorn River, with its northern boundary the Musselshell River. In 1850, the Crow were a small tribe, at one time combined with the Gros Ventre before they split off in the 1700's. They'd been hit hard by the smallpox epidemic in the 1830's. Because of strong and numerous enemies - the Sioux, the Cheyenne and the Arapahoe - the Crow had not had general access to the white man's trade goods unless they traveled out of their country, always a dangerous situation. Therefore, piercing this ring of foes and establishing a post for them was a precarious enterprise. Riverboats were an ideal means of hauling white man's goods to trade for the Crow furs from the plentiful Montana wildlife. The job of establishing a post in Indian territory was undertaken by Robert Meldrum, a man who lived with and knew the Crows like no other white man. Caleb Shaw, the young man who goes with him to erect the post, becomes his able assistant and a full-fledged mountain man. This book is about Fort Sarpy, the American Fur Company men who dared to build it in the wilderness, and the Crow tribe, who owe their existence to its creation. This can be read as a standalone novel or enjoyed as the first part of a fascinating trilogy about the steamboats traveling the rivers of the old west and the daring men who made the trips into the wilderness. Contributor Bio:  Lloyd, Dave Dave Lloyd is a 4th generation Montanan whose great-grandmother came up the Yellowstone on a steamboat to the head-of-track outside Miles City. She knew and told her family stories of the men and the women who lived at the time. Dave grew up listening to her and his grandmother, the first white baby born in the county, as they reminisced of that era's rowdy times. As a young man, Dave was a working cowboy and became assistant ranch-manager on one of the largest ranches in the state, Western Cattle Company, with hundreds of sections of land and cattle numbering in the thousands. The harsh Montana winters gave Lloyd the incentive to leave the rigorous ranching life and get a higher education. After attending college and becoming an educator, then school superintendent, Lloyd began to write of the early beginnings of the state he loves. He researches his books and tries to make them historically accurate, with their characters true to the times. Now retired, Lloyd and his wife, Donna divide their time between Lake Havasu City, Arizona, and Helena, Montana.