In August 1830 James Ohio Pattie traveled back to the United States after a five-year odyssey through the mountains, canyonlands, and arid plains of the region between Santa Fe, New Mexico and San Diego, California. He had set out to make a fortune in the fur trade, but returned with neither money nor possessions. The only asset he possessed was the remarkable story of his extensive travels. He collaborated with Timothy Flint, whose frontier histories include a biography of Daniel Boone and a novel set in New Mexico, to produce The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie (1831), one of the earliest American-authored works in which the Southwest is described. The book records a relentless slaughter of beaver, bears, and buffalo, and details frequent interactions with Native Americans that vary from mutual accommodation to outright violence. While the factual value of the account is in parts suspect, Pattie's frontier narrative nevertheless provides fascinating insights into a region that was little known to Americans until the 1820s and 1830s.