T.D. Bonner - The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth: Mountaineer, Scout, Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians

THE LIFE AND ADVENTUR ES

OF

JAMES P. BECKWOURTH,

MOUNTAINEER, SCOUT, PIONEER, AND CHIEF OF THE CROW NATION OF INDIANS

WRITTEN FROM HIS OWN DICTATION

BY

T. D. BONNER

THOUGH THERE HAS BEEN FOR more than thirty years a vast manufacture of cheap romances of the Scalp Hunter and Bandits of the Plains description, it is still true that works setting forth the frontier life of America by men who have really experienced it, are actually rare, and this is specially the case as regards real residence on familiar terms among the Red Indians. This is to be regretted, because every student of History will, in another generation, wonder at this indifference as regards a state of society which is, even by us, regarded as intensely interesting. The chief reason for this is that those who were best qualified by experience were in most cases the worst fitted as regards education, to observe, or record, what they had lived through. Young people very generally believe that the mere fact of having seen much of the world, or the having travelled, qualifies anybody to describe well, when, on the contrary, a man who has not keenly cultivated the arts of observation and writing, generally acquires nothing of the kind. On the contrary, as we often see in sailors, constant change makes him indifferent to everything save mere personal interests. Like the stork who had travelled every year of his life from Antwerp to Egypt or India, yet could tell of nothing except where the best swamps and pools were with the fattest frogs and largest worms, so men who have travelled most can, very often, only tell us where are the best restaurants and hotels.

James Beckwourth was a man who had really had a very wild and varied life on the frontier, all of which might have remained unknown had he not chanced upon Mr. T. D. Bonner, who, as this work indicates, wrote English in a straightforward manner, and knew how to elicit narratives from his subject in a straightforward style. Beckwourth had lived among Indians in the old buffalo dayswhich means, without exaggeration, that he had perhaps held his life in his hand, on an average about once a dayhad really been recognized by the United States Government as a man who was capable of influencing and restraining the formidable tribe of Crow Indians, for which very badly performed duty he was for a long time paid a high salary, and finally he had, beyond all question, undergone hundreds of adventures as wild and characteristic as any described in this book. I would here protest that so far as I am concerned, the revising and editing this work is by no means a piece of literary hack-work, since it was my intention to write on this man thirty years ago. Through personal channels I had often heard of him. Mrs. General Ashley, so celebrated for her grace and refinementof whom Beckwourth speaks so admiringlywas an intimate friend of my mother, and I have often conversed about Beckwourth himself with Mr. Chouteau. But it was to Mr. Robert P. Hunt, of Saint Louis, who had known Beckwourth well in his wildest life in the Plains, that I was chiefly indebted for my knowledge and interest in this strange semi-outlaw, and of him I will speak anon.

I am also very much indebted, and hereby return my most cordial thanks, to Horace Klephart, Esq., Librarian of the Mercantile Library of Saint Louis, Missouri, for kindly taking the pains to look up for me the two following paragraphs which supply the principal data of Beckwourths life not given in Mr. Bonners book, or which are subsequent to it as to time.

James P. Beckwourth was born in Virginia of a negro slave mother and an Irish overseer. He resided for a time in the valley of the Sierra Nevada, but being implicated in certain transactions which attracted the notice of the vigilants, fled and went to Missouri. When the migration to Colorado was at its height in 1859, he proceeded to Denver, and was taken into partnership with Louis Vasquez and his nephew. Being tired of trade, he went to live on a farm, and took a Mexican wife, but fell out with her, and finally relapsed into his former mode of savage life, dying about 1867 (Montana Post, February 23, 1867).

The following note is pencilled on the margin of the copy of Bonners Life of Beckwourth, in the Mercantile Library of Saint Louis:

He now (1865?) lives three miles south of Denver City, on Cherry Creek, Colorado; has a ranch, and was in the engagement against the Cheyennes at Sand Creek, November 29 (November 27, 1864), and is a noted old Her (sic).

This last word brings us to a critical point in the Beckwourthiana. It recalls the anecdote that some one said of him that some men are rarely worthy of belief, but that Jim was always Beckwourthy of un-belief. At the same time we are told that this man who was so splendide mendax was really in a fight with the Cheyennes, of which it may be truly said that no lying whatever was necessary to enable a participant to tell a perfectly true and thrilling tale.

That Beckwourth had the very general frontier weakness of spinning marvellous yarns, and that he seldom narrated an adventure without making the utmost of it, even when it was perfectly needless, is probably true. I once knew a woman whose authentic adventures are matter of history, and who had really led the most marvellous life in every corner of the globe, yet whose imagination and love of exciting astonishment were so great that I always discounted fifty per cent, from her reminiscences. So it may have been with the Crow chief. In relation to this weakness, I find the following from an American newspaper:

There was a camp of miners in California to whom Beckwourth was well known, and when his life appeared they commissioned one of their number, who was going to San Francisco to obtain stores, to purchase the book. Not being very careful, he got by mistake a copy of the Bible. In the evening, after his return, the messenger was requested to read aloud to the rest from the long-expected work. Opening the volume at random, he hit upon and read aloud the story of Samson and the foxes. Whereupon one of the listeners cried: Thatll do! Id know that story for one of Jim Beckwourths lies anywhere!

Against this cloudy reputation it may be remarked that perhaps the most extraordinary, desperately daring, and highly creditable adventure of his life, the account of which I had from an eye-witness who was a truthful gentleman, if such a man ever existed, and who had been at the same university where I myself graduatedis not mentioned in Bonners life. It was as follows:

I do not think that Beckwourth was ever head chief among the Crows, though I dare say he made himself out to be such; but that he was really a sub-chief is true, for I myself was on the ground when they made him oneand a strange sight it was. Beckwourth was a very powerful manhe had been a blacksmithand he certainly was a desperately brave fighter.

A very large grizzly bear had been driven into a cave, and Beckwourth asked of a great number of Crows who were present whether any one of them would go in and kill the creature. All declined, for it seemed to be certain death. Then Beckwourth stripped himself naked, and wrapping a Mexican blanket round his left arm, and holding a strong sharp knife, entered the cave, and after a desperate fight, killed the bear. I came up to the place in time to see Beckwourth come out of the cave, all torn and bleeding. He looked like the devil if ever man did. The Crows were so much pleased at this that he was declared a sub-chief on the spot.

This same authority stated that Beckwourth was the offspring, not of a negress, but of a quadroon and a planter. I incline to believe this. If Beckwourths mother had been a