The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth

By James Beckwourth and T.D. Bonner

Book Overview

Throughout his long and lusty life, James P. Beckwourth epitomized much of the best and the worst of a fabulous breed, the mountain men of the early West. Trapper, hunter, guide, horse thief, Indian fighter, and Indian chief, he also took part in the Seminole and Mexican wars and the California gold rush before he dictated his memoirs to an itinerant newspaperman, Thomas D. Bonner. Beckwourth was the only black mountain man to record his story; his autobiography, first published in 1856, is a classic of its kind, the western adventure story par excellence. But because it mixes fact and fiction it has long been regarded with suspicion. This edition reproduces the original 1856 printing, and adds notes and an epilogue by Professor Delmont R. Oswald to assist the reader in sifting Beckwourth's life from the legend Beckwourth preferred to create.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080326061X
• ISBN13: 9780803260610
• Release Date: September 1981
• Publisher: Bison Books
• Length: 649 Pages
• Weight: 1.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

The life and times of a legendary figure in the early West

For over 100 years after this book was first published (1856), much of it was considered factually unreliable, just the boasting and embellishing of a colorful frontier character. But subsequent research into the Fur Trade period of the trans-Mississippi West beginning in the early 1960s has shown much of what Beckwourth reported to be true and basically accurate, with what Huck Finn said about Twain, a few "stretches" here and there. What makes this edition especially worthwhile and useful are the annotations by Delmont R. Oswald, which help separate fact from fiction. James P. Beckwourth was born in Virginia sometime around 1800 (a very close friend of his gave his birthdate as April 26, 1798, but it can't be proven); his mother was a mulatto slave. His father manumitted him when nearing adulthood, and with his freedom he traveled freely between New Orleans and St. Louis, where his family now lived. In 1824, he accompanied William Ashley to the Green River rendezvous and began trapping in the mountains. In 1828 he joined a Crow Indian tribe and lived with them for a half-dozen years, taking Crow wives and sharing in their raids and culture. (His claim that he became their chief might be one of his exaggerations.) He fought in the Seminole War in Florida in 1837 under Zachary Taylor, and then became a trader in Santa Fe and at Bent's Fort. He went to California in 1840 where he procured (stole?) horses and brought them back to Bent's Fort. He then lived for awhile in what is today Pueblo, CO, with a Spanish woman, with whom he fathered a child. He was back in California again in time for the Bear Flag revolt and became a guide for American soldiers during the conflict. In 1848 he was in the just-forming gold mining camps in California and helped lay out a road through a pass that was named after him (Beckwourth Pass). From atop this pass he ran a hotel/trading post for a few years. It was here that former newspaperman Thomas D. Bonner received Beckwourth's reminiscences, which later became this book. Jim lived another 10 years after the book was published, running freight to the Pikes Peak gold region, perhaps attending the Sand Creek massacre as a guide (this is in dispute), and dying sometime around 1866 (also in dispute). The book is a major addition to the library of first-hand accounts of life during the pre-Civil War West. Beckwourth relates intimate knowledge of the fur trade, Indian life, western exploration, the conquest of California, and life in the early gold fields. Oswald is excellent at correcting some of his claims and warning the reader when to be wary ("There is no corroboration for this story" is a typical footnote.) But Oswald also shows where Beckwourth was on the mark (for example, much of what he says about the Crows). It's a wonderful book, full of life and adventure - a great source for what life was like on the Plains and in the Rockies during this most exciting time of western expansion. A must-read for anyone

A challenge to anyone's biases

Beckwourth was a fascinating character; born to a black mother and a white father in 1798, he was apprenticed to be a blacksmith but ran away, and eventually made his way to Colorado and other areas of the western mountain and plains states. He became a chief of the Crow tribe, as well as a scout for the U.S. Army. While this account of his life is widely considered to stretch the truth somewhat, historians agree that he did live a remarkable life. It's an interesting read -- obviously Bonner didn't record Beckwourth's own words, but couched it in florid 19th century prose, which actually gives it a sort of peculiar charm. It's also not particularly artful -- events occur that I kept imagining foreshadowed something or other, and then turned out just to be incidents with no narrative significance at all, making the book seem more realistic in the end. I was often reminded of Thomas Berger's Little Big Man; the eponymous hero of that novel is adopted into the Sioux and eventually serves as a scout for Custer. The language and attitudes of Berger's characters seem so reminiscent of Beckwourth's story that it seems certain he must have read it. Apparently plains Indians really did talk about people getting "rubbed out," an expression frequent in both books that I previously had associated with gangsters. A real peculiarity of Beckwourth's autobiography is the fact that it never makes any mention of his race. Although the edition I read is part of the series "American Negro, His History and Literature," the book itself leaves the impression that Beckwourth was white -- he even refers to another adopted native as a "mulatto." Beckwourth displays a casual attitude toward killing, particularly killing of Native Americans, in this book. He appears to be, if not racist, certainly "culturist," as he frequently denigrates Native Americans, both his enemies and his friends, only to idealize them and their way of life in the next breath. How much of this is Beckwourth and how much his "editor," we can't tell. The end of the book is jarring; he marries Pine Leaf, the warrior woman whom he has wanted throughout his time with the Crow, and then almost immediately abandons her and goes back to "civilization" with hardly a second thought. All in all, this book is filled with raw, rough-edged adventure, and provides some genuine insights into the American West. While its cultural biases are difficult to empathize with today, they serve as a reminder of just how different our attitudes have become in 150 years or so. Worth reading.