Introduction: The Edge Rover.
Chapter One. The Ordeals of a Father (1755–1782)
John Slover, Isaac’s father, is a captive of the Miami and the Shawnees from ca. 1763–1775 before returning to White society. As a militia scout, he is recaptured in 1782 and tortured before escaping. Young Isaac is raised on a Western Pennsylvania farm that is continually subject to Indian and British Ranger depredations during the Revolutionary War.
Chapter Two. Down by the Riverside: Coming of Age Along the Ohio River (1790–1818)
The Slover family ventures down the Ohio River to Kentucky where they start a farm and stay vigilant for Indian and outlaw attacks. In 1800 Isaac marries Peggy Lowder and fathers seven children over the next sixteen years. They move across the river to Indiana around 1809. Peggy dies in 1816 after the birth of twin sons.
Chapter Three. Land of Moral Darkness: An Interlude in the Arkansas Territory (1818–1821)
Isaac takes his five oldest children down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, then up the Arkansas to the Three Forks area. There, along the Grand River near a missionary outpost, an Osage village, and several trading posts, they farm and hunt in the perilous middle of hostilities between the Osage, the migrating Cherokees, and the encroaching White squatters. Forced from his Grand River farm by intensifying Indian threats and by government removal orders, Isaac relocates his children to Tennessee.
Chapter Four. Wayfaring Stranger: With the Glenn-Fowler Expedition (1821–1822)
Isaac returns alone to the Three Forks area and signs up with Hugh Glenn for a twenty-one-man fur-trapping trek along the Arkansas River to the Southern Rockies. After nerve-wracking encounters with Indians on the prairie, Isaac leads six men on a frigid trek into the Rockies to trap beaver. He returns to spend an icy, Indian-tormented month near present-day Pueblo. When he and his colleagues get word that they have permission to trap in New Mexico, they head south to Taos.
Chapter Five. Adventures in Peltry: Trapping the San Luis Valley and Returning East (1822)
At Taos, the Glenn-Fowler men break into small trapping groups of four to six each and seek beaver north up the Rio Grande and the San Luis Valley, dealing with freezing weather and mischievous Ute Indians. Isaac leads one trapping group. By early May, they all return to Taos with furs and recuperate for the trip back east to sell their pelts. They join the James-McKnight group before separating at the Arkansas Bend.
Chapter Six. The Taos Valley: New Home, New Wife, New Friends (1823–1824)
Isaac returns to Taos and marries Maria Barbara Aragon in September. Their marriage ignites a church dispute about how strict to be in approving nuptials of the French and American newcomers to local Catholic women. He befriends William Wolfskill, Ewing Young, and other Americans and French who arrive in Taos to make their fortune off trapping and trading beaver pelts.
Chapter Seven. Southwestern Sojourns: The Search for Fresh Waters (1824–1826)
In late 1824, Isaac joins a large group of trappers who venture far to the west and north for new and bountiful beaver habitats. Most break off to trap streams along the way, but Isaac, Wolfskill, and Young continue beyond the San Juan River basin to the Colorado River basin. They return with a huge pack of pelts and are paid around $10,000 for their plew. Isaac and friends turn their trapping attention to Arizona and the Gila River and its tributaries.
Chapter Eight. Quest Without Pity: The Disastrous Pattie Expedition (1827–1828)
Isaac and about two dozen men trap the Gila to near the Colorado where they split into two groups. Isaac joins the eight-man crew that chooses to trap farther down the Colorado, then head west to the coast to sell their pelts to shippers. They battle Indians and finally cache their furs and trek by foot across Baja deserts. Isaac almost dies of thirst on a sand hill, but he is saved by a last second discovery of water. Ultimately, he and his group of eight make it to Santa Catalina Mission. Mexican forces escort them up the coast to San Diego where they are put in jail. Eventually Isaac and others are allowed to return to the Colorado, but they find their cache flooded and the furs ruined. Having passports issued by the governor, he and George Pope head east back to Taos.
Chapter Nine. The Beaver Decline and Search for New Habitats (1828–1837)
Now in his fifties, Isaac may have joined the expedition of his friend Ewing Young to California in 1829 down the Gila River route through Arizona. Under the name “Juan Loba,” he accompanies William Wolfskill’s 1830 trapping trip along the Old Spanish Trail to California. This excursion faces severe winter conditions and finds few beaver. In California, Wolfskill decides it is too late in the season to continue trapping and disbands the twenty-one-member party. While Wolfskill remains in California and eventually launches a successful career in wine-making and citrus crops, Isaac returns to Taos and, perhaps, moves with Barbara to Abiquiu by 1834. As beaver vanish and New Mexico becomes more treacherous for foreigners, he decides to resettle in California.
Chapter Ten. The Old Spanish Trail: The Relocation to Alta California (1837–1842)
In late 1837, Isaac and George Pope, with their wives, travel the northern route of the Old Spanish Trail and reach Los Angeles where they reestablish friendships with Wolfskill, Pryor, and other former Taoseans. While his friends, including Pope, become entrepreneurial land grantees, Isaac bides his time, hoping to acquire land east in the San Bernardino Valley.
Chapter Eleven. Home in a Violent Valley: Agua Mansa and the Indian Defense (1842–1846)
Around 1842, Isaac and New Mexicans from Abiquiu settle near present-day San Bernardino to provide a defensive buffer zone from desert Indian and White outlaw stock rustling. Often led by neighbor B. D. Wilson, Isaac joins in attempts to fight off Indian raiders. He and Barbara have a twenty-five-acre farm alongside the Santa Ana River. He is often lured into the nearby mountains, which are heavily populated by his favorite prey, the California grizzly.
Chapter Twelve. Caught in the Middle: Mexican War, Gold Rush, Mormon Migration (1846–1854)
Caught in the middle of American invaders and resisting Californios, Isaac becomes a prisoner of war, held by Jose Flores and his rebels, who have surrounded the meager American forces at Fort Hill in Los Angeles. He is a part of a prisoner exchange which thrusts the seventy-year-old into the ranks of the besieged American forces. The Americans capitulate and are ushered to San Pedro from where they ultimately retreat by ship down the coast to San Diego. Apparently, Isaac accompanies the Kearny-Stockton forces in their drive north to retake Los Angeles and end the war in California. Then, back with his wife, Barbara, in Agua Mansa, Isaac seeks to return to a simple life of farming with occasional pleasure hunts into the mountains, but the desert Indians still rustle the stock of nearby ranches. Then, the Gold Rush brings a havoc of desperate prospectors through the valley, and on their heels, a Mormon migration arrives to set up a township at nearby San Bernardino. Isaac finds peace elusive.
Chapter Thirteen. The Last Cabib: Disaster in the Mountains (October 1854)
With a local friend, Isaac rides north into El Cajon Pass and into the San Gabriel Mountains to hunt grizzlies. He shoots a grizzly and dismounts to finish him off, but the wounded animal lunges at Isaac and mangles his body. The grizzly then lies down to die, and Isaac’s partner carries the maimed hunter a safe distance away and tries to tend to his injuries. He leaves to get help and returns with others the next day. Isaac hangs on for one more day before expiring.
