BECKWOURTH, JIM

born April 26, 1798, Virginia, U.S. died 1867?, Denver [Colorado, U.S.] byname of James Pierson Beckwith American mountain man who lived for an extended period among the Indians. He was the son of a white man, Sir Jennings Beckwith, and a mulatto slave woman and legally was born a slave. His father took him to Louisiana Territory in 1810 and eventually to St. Louis and there apparently manumitted him, for he was thereafter regarded as a "free Negro." His features were said to have resembled those of an American Indian. In 1823 Beckwourth signed on as a groom with a fur-trading expedition. The following year, he was hired to handle the horses on an expedition to the Rocky Mountains. While in the West, he married a series of Indian women and eventually settled down for about six years to live among the Crow Indians. According to his own testimony, Beckwourth greatly impressed the Indians with his strength and skill. Other evidence supports this claim, although Beckwourth was universally considered to exaggerate wildly. He returned to white settlements in 1833, apparently abandoning his Indian wives. He established a route through the Sierras for Easterners en route to California after gold was discovered there in 1848. There he encountered a wandering journalist, Thomas D. Bonner, who recorded many of the frontiersman's yarns and recollections in an 1856 book that made his subject famous for a time: The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, Mountaineer, Scout, Pioneer and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians. After participating briefly in the Mexican War, he returned to Missouri but soon joined the flood of settlers bound for Colorado in 1859. He served, probably as a guide and interpreter for U.S. troops, in the Cheyenne War of 1864, then settled near Denver. His death during a visit to the Crow is variously described as occurring on a hunting trip or by poison at the hands of a former wife.