12. James Pierson Beckwourth 1824-1866
James Pierson Beckwourth was born a slave in Frederick County Virginia around 1798. Beckwourth’s mother was a mulatto slave and his father, Sir Jennings Beckwith, was an Irish and English nobleman. In 1809, Sir Beckwith moved James, his mother, and thirteen children to St. Louis, where he freed Jim, sent him to school for four years and apprenticed him to a blacksmith.
In 1824, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company hired Beckwourth as a wrangler where he quickly earned a reputation as an efficient and superior trapper. The next year, Beckwourth claimed that Crow Indians kidnapped him while on a trapping expedition. Reality may have been that the Rocky Mountain Fur Company arranged for Beckwourth to live in the Crow nation as a means to strengthen trade.
For eight years, Jim lived with the Crow and participated in raids upon other native tribes and white settlements. Through his successful participation, he was given status of chief, married two or three Crow women, and sold his furs to the American Fur Company, owned by New York mogul John Jacob Astor. When his contract with Astor expired, he left the Crow nation and returned to St. Louis in 1837.
His stay in Missouri was short-lived. Later in 1837, he participated as a civilian wagon master, transporting items for the US Army during the Second Seminole War in Florida. After the war, he traveled west and had short stints as a trapper, trader, and shopkeeper. In 1848, he operated a shop but turned professional gambler, taking advantage of the gold seekers in California. To provide a new route into gold country, Beckwourth widened an old Indian trading route so that it could accommodate wagons. In 1851, he led the first wagon train of settlers through the Sierra Mountains to Marysville, California at 5,221 feet.
Beckwourth had settled in Denver by 1859 and was a shopkeeper and an Indian Agent. The US Army hired him as a scout in 1864 as part of its military campaign to eliminate all Indian resistance in the Colorado Territory. During his tenure, Beckwourth participated in the Sand Creek Massacre and Red Cloud’s War where Native American tribes, mostly women and children, were mutilated and killed.
Beckwourth was well known in his lifetime and his exaggerated exploits were published in 1856 as The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth. While in Montana in October 1866, Beckwourth suffered a sever headache and a nosebleed that would not stop. He bled to death due to presumed extreme hypertension. Crow Indians placed Beckworth’s body on an elevated platform, leaving it to the elements in the customary funerary practice.