
Zenas Leonard was a member of the Joseph Walker Expedition that inadvertently discovered the Yosemite Valley as it hunted and trapped its way from across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean during its 4-year trek in the 1830s. As it is in the public domain, there are numerous reprints. It includes many details of the different tribes with which his parties interacted. Moore of Clearfield, Pennsylvania in 1839, after being serialized in the Clearfield Republican. Leonard's journal was published in book form by D.W. He continued to trade along the river for the rest of his life. In 1835 Leonard returned to Independence, Missouri with enough wealth in furs to establish a store and trading post at Fort Osage. Among the more helpful tribal members he reported encountering was a negro who claimed to have been on Lewis & Clark's expedition, and who may have been the explorer-slave York. They survived, in part, by trading with Native Americans. Living off the land (Leonard reported that "The flesh of the Buffaloe is the wholesomest and most palatable of meat kind"), Leonard and his associates endured great privation while amassing a fortune in furs the horses died in the harsh winter and the party was at times near starvation. In 1831 he went with Gant and Blackwell's company of about 70 men on a trapping and trading expedition. Louis and working as a clerk for the fur company, Gannt and Blackwell. As a young adult, he worked for his uncle in Pittsburgh before moving to St.

Leonard was born in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania.

Zenas Leonard (1809 – 1857) was an American mountain man, explorer and trader, best known for his journal Narrative of the Adventures of Zenas Leonard.
