Gustave Aimard

Gustave Aimard (1818–1883), born Olivier Gloux, was a French writer of adventure novels set in the Americas. Abandoned as a child, he went to sea as a cabin boy and spent years in Mexico, the American Southwest and South America, living, by his own account, among trappers and Native peoples. Returning to Paris, he produced from 1858 onward a flood of frontier romances, Les Trappeurs de l'Arkansas, The Pirates of the Prairies, The Trail-Hunter, The Treasure of Pearls and dozens more, which were quickly translated into English and made him the French Fenimore Cooper. He died in a Paris asylum.