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From Slave to Early American Explorer: James Pierson Beckwourth

James Pierson Beckwourth

By KATHLEEN MULROY

James Pierson Beckwourth, a former slave, shattered boundaries as an early American mountain man, explorer, scout, fur trader, warrior both for and against Native Americans, and story teller.

The adventurer, known as Jim, was born in Virginia sometime between 1798 and 1805. His mixed-race mother, whose name was not recorded, was a slave owned by his white father, a former American Revolutionary War soldier named Jennings Beckwith.

Because of the mother’s enslavement by Beckwith, her children were considered to be owned by their father. After the family moved to St. Louis, Mo., Jim’s father freed him. Jim then completed four years of schooling, followed by several years as a blacksmith’s apprentice.

In 1825, restless with life in St. Louis, James Pierson Beckwourth—for unknown reasons he added the middle name and changed the spelling of his last name—joined General Ashley’s Rocky Mountain Fur Trading Company.

This group of civilians and former soldiers was tasked with exploring the Rocky Mountains, but within a year, Beckwourth decided to leave the expedition to become a fur trapper and trader.

He lived for several years among the Crow Nation in what is now the state of Montana, continuing to trap and trade. According to his autobiography, he became famous for his skill in fighting, eventually achieving the highest-ranking level of war chief in the Crow Nation.

He wrote that he was dubbed “Bloody Arm” and “Bull Robe” by the Crow, “White-handled Knife” by the Snake people, and “Dark Sky” by the Apache. Beckwourth described in detail several of the Crow raids in which he participated, attacking neighboring enemy nations and, occasionally, white men who ventured into the tribe’s territory.

After leaving the Crow, Beckwourth spent the next couple of years as a Indian trader. He and partners built a trading post in Colorado, which eventually developed into the community of Pueblo. In 1842, he traveled to Florida, where he participated in the Second Seminole War as either a wagon master or a soldier (accounts vary). Beckwourth then served as a courier with the U.S. Army in the California-Mexican War and participated in the successful 1846 California Revolution against Mexico.

With the start of the California Gold Rush in 1848, Beckwourth became General John Fremont’s head scout. In that role, Beckwourth discovered a safer route for travelers and pioneers who were heading West through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. He built a ranch and trading post in the Sierras, and made improvements to the Beckwourth Trail, which thousands of settlers used to make their way to central California.

Today, the former Native American trail is called Beckwourth Pass in his honor.

Beckwourth was hired in 1864 by Colonel Chivington, the commander of the 3rd Colorado Cavalry Regiment, to be a scout in a military campaign against the Cheyenne and Apache. Tragically, this campaign resulted in the Sand Creek Massacre, in which the Regiment killed an estimated 70 to 163 friendly Cheyenne men, women, and children who were living peacefully in a camp. Deeply angered by Beckwourth’s association with the massacre, the Cheyenne banned him from trading with them.

For the next two years, Beckwourth worked as a trapper and scout for the U.S. Army at Fort Laramie and Fort Phil Kearney, in what is now Wyoming. In October of 1866, he died of mysterious causes while visiting the Crow Indians along the Bighorn River in Montana.

Beckwourth married a number of times and had several children. According to his autobiography, his first two wives were sisters who were the daughters of a Crow chief. He wrote of the marriages,
“[I considered] this was an alliance that would guarantee my life as well as enlarge my trade.” He indicated that he later married another Crow woman, and records suggest that he may also have married a Spanish or Mexican woman and one other woman.

Much of what we know about Beckwourth’s remarkably adventurous life comes from the autobiography he dictated to Thomas Bonner, a traveling justice of the peace. The book was published in New York City and London in 1856 as The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth: Mountaineer, Scout and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians. A translation was also published in France.

Beckwourth’s book is considered to be a valuable source of detailed information about both the Crow Nation and the early settlement of the American West. MSN

 

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