Born 1798,
Near Fredericksburg, Virginia
Died September 1867
In the American West
Ambitious and restless, Jim Beckwourth was never able to settle down in one place for long. He lived as a trapper, trader, and pioneer among several groups of Native Americans and became a war chief of the Crow tribe. He discovered and promoted one of the main entry routes from the east into northern California during the California Gold Rush. A best-selling book on his adventurous life in the American West made him into a legend during his own lifetime.
Born a slave, Beckwourth was the son of Sir Jennings Beckwith, a descendant of a prominent Virginia family, and one of Beckwith’s slaves, “Miss Kill,” who herself was of mixed ancestry. He was given the name James Pierson Beckwith but was known as Jim. When Sir Beckwith moved to Missouri in 1806, he took Jim and Jim’s mother with him. They settled on a large farm close to the meeting of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and near the town of St. Charles. Jim’s father sent him to school in St. Louis from 1810 until 1814, when the boy became an apprentice to a blacksmith in St. Charles. After a fight with the blacksmith, Jim returned to his father’s farm. Although he was set free on his nineteenth birthday, he remained at home for a while longer. At some point he adopted the name “Beckwourth,” his own version of the family name.
Beckwourth may have made an earlier trip west, but it is known definitely that he traveled to the West in 1824, when he joined a trapping and trading expedition led by William Henry Harrison, an American fur trader and explorer. Beckwourth’s later account of the journey casts him in a favorable light and plays up his role in the expedition. His tendency to exaggerate has led many historians to question the truth of his accounts, but quite often his stories seem to have been based on actual events.
During one verified episode of the expedition, Beckwourth had a brush with death. Sent ahead to buy horses from the Pawnee tribe, he was unable to find the Pawnees. While trying to reach a trading post, he ran out of food. Had a band of Native Americans not helped him he would have starved to death. Throughout his life Beckwourth would continue to associate with many groups of Native Americans. In 1827 he married a woman from the Blackfoot tribe.
Once when he was unable to pay a debt, he took refuge among his friends in the Crow tribe, and during this period he married again. Beckwourth later claimed to have married eight women while staying with the Crow. Because he led a successful raiding party against another tribe, Beckwourth was made a chief of the Crow. In later years Beckwourth led the Crow in a great battle against their Blackfoot enemies. He boasted that all the Blackfoot were killed, while the Crow lost only 30 or 40 warriors.
Beckwourth trapped and sold furs to the American Fur Company of St. Louis until 1837, when he became a scout and mule driver for the U.S. Army. He joined the war against the Seminole tribe of Florida, and took part in the Battle of Okeechobee on December 25, 1837. Soon, however, he became bored with military life and returned to Missouri and the fur trade. Beckwourth then led a trading party west down the Santa Fe Trail to Taos, New Mexico, where he married a Mexican woman. In October 1842 he and his wife moved north to what is now Colorado. They opened a trading post next to the Arkansas River on a site that would eventually become the city of Pueblo.
In 1843 Beckwourth left Pueblo with a trading party of 15 and headed for California, which was then a part of Mexico. They arrived in Los Angeles in January 1844. When the local residents rebelled against the Mexican officials, Beckwourth joined their side in the “Battle” of Cahuenga, which took place in 1845.
Beckwourth continued to travel and work throughout the West. Leaving California for New Mexico, he traded along the Santa Fe Trail for several years. He was hired then by an official of the U.S. War Department to guide a party to Los Angeles and then north to Monterey, which at the time was the capital of California. At one point he even found himself leading a posse. He had taken a job as a courier to a ranch near the present-day city of Santa Maria, located north of Los Angeles. On his way to the ranch he discovered a massacred family, who had been living in the old Mission of San Miguel. Beckwourth joined the posse that successfully tracked down the murderers.
When gold was discovered in northern California, Beckwourth joined the California Gold Rush. He did not actively pan for gold but made his living among the prospectors by gambling and trading horses. One day in the spring of 1850 he was traveling in the remote mining areas of the Sierra Nevada, near present-day Lassen Volcanic National Park, and noticed what looked like a low pass just west of the California-Nevada border, about 30 miles north of Reno, Nevada. At the end of April he led three men to the pass, which was subsequently named Beckwourth Pass. Realizing that it was an excellent passage into the gold mining region, Beckwourth and his companions spent the summer and fall of 1850 opening a road for prospecting miners.
During the spring of 1851 Beckwourth actively promoted his “New Emigrant Route,” obtaining capital for development from the merchants of Marysville, California. In the summer of 1851 Beckwourth guided the first wagon train through the pass. When the wagon train arrived in Marysville that fall, there was so much celebration that the town almost burned down.
In the spring of 1852 Beckwourth decided to settle in the valley to the west of Beckwourth Pass, where he built a house and a hotel for travelers. The hotel soon became one of the main entry points for pioneers traveling through the pass to California.
Among the visitors to the hotel was a man named T.D. Bonner, who had previously met Beckwourth. Beckwourth reportedly dictated his life story to Bonner, who turned it into Beckwourth’s “autobiography.” Bonner took the manuscript to New York, where Harper and Brothers published it in 1856. Grandly titled The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, Mountaineer, Scout, Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation, the book gave an account of tall tales and exciting adventures, making it a best-seller. Beckwourth was suddenly a celebrity.
Beckwourth lived on his ranch on the site of present-day Beckwourth, California, until late 1858. When he made a trip back east to Missouri, the St. Louis and Kansas City newspapers recorded the visit of the famous mountain man. Beckwourth later moved to Denver, Colorado, where he married once again and managed a general store.
Even toward the end Beckwourth’s life was never routine. He had several scrapes with the law, including a charge of manslaughter, of which he was acquitted on the grounds of self-defense. He rejoined the U.S. Army as a scout and took part in several actions against the Cheyenne tribe. He was visiting a Crow village on a mission for the army when he died sometime in late 1867.
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