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{{Short description|Explorer, born into slavery}}{{Infobox person
| name = James Beckwourth
| image = James Beckwourth.jpg
| caption = James P. Beckwourth, circa 1856
| birth_name = James Pierson Beckwourth
| birth_place = ], U.S.
| birth_date = April 26, 1798 or 1800
| death_place = ], ], U.S.
| death_date = October 28, 1866 or 1867 (aged 66–69)
| resting_place = Crow Indian Settlement, Burial Ground, ], ], ], U.S.
| other_names = James Beckwith
| occupation = blacksmith, trapper, wrangler, soldier, rancher, hotel keeper, store keeper, author, scout
| module = {{Infobox military person|embed=yes
| allegiance = {{flagcountry|United States}}
| branch = {{army|United States}}

{{flag|Colorado}} ]
Colonel ]'s ]
|serviceyears =
|rank = U.S. Army wagon master (1837–?), U.S. Army scout (1866)

Territorial militia scout (1864)
|commands=
|unit=
|battles= ] (1835–1842)
* ] (1864)

] (1866–1868)
|relations=
|laterwork=}}
| employer = enslaver, ], ], Bent, St. Vrain, & Company, ], self employed
| known for = Being one of the few African-American ], on the American Western Frontier
| spouse = An African-American wife and several Native American wives
| children = 4
}}

'''James Pierson Beckwourth''' (born '''Beckwith''', April 26, 1798<ref name=Wilson>{{cite book
|first=Elinor
|last=Wilson
|title=Jim Beckwourth – Black Mountain Man, War Chief of the Crows
|location=]
|publisher=]
|year=1972
|url=https://archive.org/details/jimbeckwourthbla0000wils/page/n9/mode/2up
|isbn=0-8061-1555-6}}</ref>{{rp|30}} or 1800 – October 29, 1866 or 1867), was an American ], ], and explorer. Beckwourth was known as "'''Bloody Arm'''" because of his skill as a fighter. He was ] and born into ] in ]. He was freed by his white father (and owner) and apprenticed to a blacksmith so that he could learn a trade.

As a young man, Beckwourth moved to the ], first making connections with fur traders in ]. As a fur trapper, he lived with the ] for years. He is credited with the discovery of ] through the ], between present-day ], and ], during the ] years. He improved the Beckwourth Trail, which thousands of settlers followed to central California.

Beckwourth narrated his life story to ], who was described as "an itinerant ]", but was also a temperance speaker<ref>{{cite news
|title=A Temperance Address
|newspaper=] (])
|date=16 Dec 1841
|page=3
|via=]
|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/84640099/temperance-address-by-thomas-d-bonner/}}</ref> and journalist,<ref>{{cite news
|title=Five dollars
|newspaper=] (])
|date=10 August 1865
|page=3
|via=]
|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/84640233/thomas-d-bonner-edits-massachusetts/}}</ref> who, according to his preface, by chance was present in Beckwourth's rustic California hotel when he decided to dictate his memoirs. The book was published in ] and ] in 1856 as ''The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth: Mountaineer, Scout and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians''.<ref name=BeckwourthAutobiography>{{cite book
|editor-last=Bonner
|editor-first=Thomas D.
|first=James P.
|last=Beckwourth
|authorlink=James Beckwourth
|title=The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, Mountaineer, Scout, and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians. With Illustrations. Written from His Own Dictation
|date=1856
|publisher=]
|location=New York
|isbn=9780665279447
|url=https://archive.org/details/cihm_27944/page/n5/mode/2up=}}</ref> A translation appeared in ] in 1860.<ref name=MemoirFrench>{{cite book|last1=Noblet|first1=Pierre|title=Beckwourth le Chasseur. Scènes de la vie sauvage en Amérique traduit de l'anglo-américain par Noblet|date=1860|location=Paris|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ihtdAAAAcAAJ|access-date=3 August 2014}}</ref>

The reliability of Beckworth's autobiography was called into question from the beginning; an editor of it quoted the observation "that some one said of him that some men are rarely worthy of belief, but that Jim was always Beckwourthy of un-belief."<ref>{{cite book
|title=The life and adventures of James P. Beckwourth, mountaineer, scout, and pioneer, and chief of the Crow Nation of Indians. Written from his own dictation by T. D. Bonner
|others=Preface to the new English edition, by ]
|last=Beckwourth
|first=James P.
|authorlink=James Beckwourth
|editor-last=Bonner
|editor-first=T. D.
|date=1892
|publisher=]
|location=London}}</ref>{{rp|7}} "I knew Jim intimately and he was the biggest liar that ever lived." A review when it appeared called it "half fiction":

{{quote|arts of the tale smack of the "fish story." Mr. Beckwourth, or his narrator, has it all his own way, and we can fancy a lurking smile at the thought how glibly he puts together such a discordant mass of material brought out from the storehouse of memory, where there is no one at hand positively to contradict him.<ref>{{cite news
|title=The Review
|newspaper=] (Washington, DC)
|date=21 Aug 1856
|page=1
|via=]
|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/84637441/review-of-bckwourths-autobiography/
}}</ref>}}

Elinor Wilson has defended Beckwourth's narration as a valuable source of social history, especially for life among the Crow, although not all its details are reliable or accurate.<ref name=Wilson/> The ] of the 1960s celebrated Beckwourth as an early African-American pioneer. He has since been featured as a role model in children's literature and textbooks.

==Early life==
James was born in 1798 or
1800 into slavery in ].<ref name=Early/> Of mixed race, he had an enslaved, African-American mother. His white father was their owner, Sir Jennings Beckwith, a descendant of ]. Little is known about Beckwourth's mother, but James was said to be third of her thirteen children.

Jennings Beckwith moved to ] around 1809, when James was young, taking his mother and all their children with him. Although Beckwith acknowledged and raised his mixed-race children as his own, he legally held them as owner. His father arranged to apprentice him to a blacksmith so that he could learn a good trade. At age 19, he was fired by the artisan after getting into an argument with him.<ref name=Early>{{cite web
|url=https://beckwourth.org/Biography/early.html
|title=Beckworth's Early Years
|accessdate=August 25, 2021}}</ref> His father freed Beckworth by ], by deed of ] in court in 1824, 1825, and 1826.<ref name=Early/>

==Career==
===Fur trade and Crow Nation===
In 1824 as a young man, Beckwourth joined General ]'s ]. He worked as a ] during Ashley's expedition to explore the ]. In the following years, Beckwourth became known as a prominent trapper and mountain man. In July 1825, ], trapper and colleague ] told the campfire story of Beckwourth's being the child of a Crow chief. He claimed Beckwourth had been stolen as a baby by raiding ] and sold to whites. This lore was widely believed, as Beckwourth had adopted Native American dress and was taken by some people as an Indian.

]
Later that year, Beckwourth claimed to have been captured by Crow while trapping in the border county between the territories of Crow, Cheyenne, and ]. According to his account, he was mistaken for the lost son of a Crow chief, so they admitted him to the nation. Independent accounts suggest his stay with the Crow was planned by the Rocky Mountain Fur Company to advance its trade with the tribe.<ref>, James Beckwourth Website, accessed 6 Oct 2009</ref> Beckwourth married the daughter of a ]. (Marriages between Native Americans and fur trappers and traders were common for the valuable alliances they provided both parties.)

For the next eight to nine years, Beckwourth lived with a Crow band. He rose in their society from warrior to chief (a respected man) and leader of the "Dog Clan". According to his book, he eventually ascended to the highest-ranking war chieftaincy of the Crow Nation.<ref>''The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth'', 1865, </ref> He still trapped but did not sell his or Crow furs to his former partners of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Instead, he sold to ]'s competing ]. Beckwourth participated in raids by the Crow on neighboring nations and the occasional white party. Sometimes such raids escalated to warfare, most often against bands of their traditional Blackfoot enemy.

In 1837, when the American Fur Company did not renew his contract, Beckwourth returned to St. Louis. He volunteered with the United States Army to fight in the ] in ]. In his book, he claims to have been a soldier and courier. According to historical records, he was a civilian wagon master in the baggage division.<ref>Elinor Wilson: ''Jim Beckwourth – Black Mountain Man, War Chief of the Crows''. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman and London, 1972, {{ISBN|0-8061-1555-6}}, p. 86/87</ref>

From 1838 to 1840, Beckwourth was an Indian trader to the Cheyenne, on the ], working out of ], Colorado, near ]. In 1840, he moved to ]. Later that same year, Beckwourth became an independent trader. Together with other partners, he built a ] in Colorado. It was the center of development of the community of ].

In 1844, Beckwourth traded on the ] between the Arkansas River and California, then controlled by ]. When the ] began in 1846, Beckwourth returned to the United States. He brought along nearly 1,800 stolen Mexican horses as spoils of war. In the war, he served as a ] with the ] and helped suppress the ]. His former employer, ], then interim governor of ], was slain in that revolt.

===Business===
By 1848 and the start of the ], Beckwourth went to California. He first opened a store at ]. He soon sold and went to ], then a boomtown close to the mines, to live as a professional card player.

In 1850, Beckwourth was credited with discovering what came to be called ], a low-elevation pass through the Sierra Nevada mountain chain. In 1851, he improved what became the Beckwourth Trail, originally a Native American path through the mountains. It began near ] and the ] east of the mountains, climbed to the pass named for him, and went along a ridge, between two forks of ], before passing down through the gold fields of northern California, and on to ]. The trail spared the settlers and gold seekers about {{convert|150|mi}} and several steep grades and dangerous passes, such as ].

By his account, the business communities of the gold towns in California were supposed to fund the making of the trail. However, when Beckwourth tried to collect his payment in 1851 after leading a party through, Marysville had suffered from two huge fires and town leaders were unable to pay. (In 1996, in recognition of his contribution to the city's development and of the outstanding debt to him, the City of Marysville officially renamed the town's largest park as Beckwourth Riverfront Park.)

Beckwourth began ranching in the Sierra. His ranch, trading post and hotel, in today's ], were the starting of the settlement of ]. In the winter of 1854/55, the itinerant judge Thomas D. Bonner stayed in the hotel, and on winter nights Beckwourth told him his life story. Bonner wrote it down, edited the material the following year, and offered the book to ] in New York. ''The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth'' was published in 1856.<ref name=BeckwourthAutobiography /> According to the contract, Beckwourth was entitled to one half of the proceeds, but he never received any income from Bonner. The book provides historical information on how U.S. government officials used alcohol; how occupations affect those who work in the field; the historical relationship among diseases, wildlife, and the environment; as well as reports dealing with massacres and war.<ref>{{cite book|author=Bernard DeVoto|author-link=Bernard DeVoto|title=The Year of Decision: 1846|url=https://archive.org/details/yearofdecision18000231mbp|location=Boston|publisher= Little, Brown|date=1943|page= }}</ref>

===Government and Army service===
In 1859, Beckwourth returned to Missouri briefly but settled later that year in ], ]. He was a storekeeper working again for ] and was appointed as a local ]. In 1864, Beckwourth was hired as a scout by Colonel ], commander of the ]. He was to serve in a campaign against the Cheyenne and ], leading a frontier ] volunteer militia formed to annihilate indigenous inhabitants in the territory for the American settlers. The Colorado Territory campaign resulted in the ], in which the hostile militia killed an estimated 70-163 friendly Cheyenne men, women and children, who had camped in an area suggested by the previous commander of ] as a safe place and were flying an American flag to show their peaceful intentions. Outraged by his association with the massacre, the Cheyenne banned Beckwourth from trading with them.

Well into his 60s by then, Beckwourth returned to trapping. In 1866, during ], the U.S. Army employed him as a scout at ] and ].

==Death==
{{unreferenced section|date=September 2016}}
While guiding a military column to a Crow band in Montana, Beckwourth complained of severe headaches and suffered nosebleeds, most probably the result of a severe case of ]. He returned to the Crow village, where he died in 1867 of natural causes. ], a personal friend and the founder of the '']'', claimed the Crow had poisoned Beckwourth. He said the tribe felt they could no longer trust him because of his involvement in the Sand Creek massacre. Byers had no supporting evidence, and his claim was speculation. Beckwourth's body was placed on an elevated platform in the traditional funerary custom of the Crow Tribe at the Crow Indian Settlement Burial Ground, ], ].

==In popular culture==
*], ''Follow the Free Wind'', New York: Doubleday, 1963 (novel based on Beckwourth's life)
*], ''Bloody Hand'', New York: St Martin's Press, 1996, {{ISBN|0-312-95839-0}}. (novel about Beckwourth's life with the Crow)
*In the 2021 film '']'' directed by ], his role was played by actor ].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10696784/ |title = The Harder They Fall (2021) - IMDb|website = ]}}</ref>

==Legacy==
* ], named in honor of Beckwourth, is located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in ]. This pass and route was used by the ] to cross the Sierra along their ] route. The pass is located east of ]. ] crosses the Sierra at this pass at an elevation of 1,591&nbsp;m (5,221&nbsp;ft); it is one of the lowest crossings of the Sierra Nevada in California.
* In 1994, the U.S. Postal Service issued a 29-cent commemorative postage stamp honoring Beckwourth as part of the set ''Legends of the West''.<ref> U.S. Stamp Gallery.</ref>
* In 1996, the city of Marysville, California renamed its largest park as Beckwourth Riverfront Park to commemorate his contributions to development of the city. For a few years, the "Beckwourth Frontier Days" were celebrated annually in October and were the only ] festival in northern California.
* What is now West 5th Ave. in Denver, Colorado, was named Beckwourth Street (sometimes Beckwith) after James Beckwourth.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Goodstein |first1=Phil |title=Denver Streets: Names, Numbers, Locations, Logic |date=1994 |publisher=New Social Publications |location=Denver |isbn=9780962216930 |page=36}}</ref>
* In 2011 a memorial commemorating Beckwourth's role in the founding of Pueblo, Colorado, was erected in that city.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bonham |first1=Nick |title=Memorial pays tribute to Pueblo founder |date=22 May 2011 |url=https://www.chieftain.com/article/20110522/NEWS/305229950 |website=The Pueblo Chieftain |publisher=Gannet Publications |access-date=25 March 2021}}</ref>

==See also==
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
* {{cite book
|editor-last=Bonner
|editor-first=Thomas D.
|first=James P.
|last=Beckwourth
|authorlink=James Beckwourth
|title=The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, Mountaineer, Scout, and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians. With Illustrations. Written from His Own Dictation
|date=1856
|publisher=]
|location=New York
|isbn=9780665279447
|url=https://archive.org/details/cihm_27944/page/n5/mode/2up=}}
* {{cite journal
|pages=455–472
|title=Story of James P. Beckworth
|journal=]
|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015056089801&view=1up&seq=469
|volume=13
|number=76
|date=September 1856
}}
* {{cite journal
|title=The Last Years of James P. Beckwourth
|journal=]
|date=August 1928
|first=LeRoy R.
|last=Hafen
|authorlink=LeRoy R. Hafen
|volume=5
|number=4
|url=https://www.historycolorado.org/sites/default/files/media/document/2018/ColoradoMagazine_v5n4_August1928.pdf
|pages=134–139}}
* {{cite encyclopedia
|last=Oswald
|first=Delmot R.
|contribution=James P. Beckwourth
|title=Trappers of the Far West
|editor-link=Leroy R. Hafen
|editor-first=Leroy R.
|editor-last=Hafen
|orig-date=1972
|location=]
|publisher=]
|year=1983
|isbn=0-8032-7218-9}}
* John W. Ravage, ''Black Pioneers: Images of the Black Experience on the North American Frontier'', Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1997, 2002
* Sifakis, Carl, ''The Encyclopedia of American Crime'', Facts of File Inc., 1982
* {{cite book
|first=Elinor
|last=Wilson
|title=Jim Beckwourth – Black Mountain Man, War Chief of the Crows
|location=]
|publisher=]
|year=1972
|url=https://archive.org/details/jimbeckwourthbla0000wils/page/n9/mode/2up
|isbn=0-8061-1555-6}}

==External links==
{{Commons category|James Beckwourth}}
*

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beckwourth, James}}
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Revision as of 17:00, 21 March 2022

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James Beckwourth: Difference between revisions Add topic