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James P. Beckwourth: A Black Pioneer Of The American West
By Roger House
#Word in Black
J
ames Pierson Beckwourth is a pioneer of the American West and erased mainly from history lessons. He was an American original, at times a slave, miner, fur trapper, leader of the Crow Indians, Army scout, and guide to the California gold mines in the 1800s. He opened a vital trading post and hotel in the Sierra Nevada mountains that became Beckwourth, Ca.
Historians have enshrined White “mountain men” like Kit Carson, Thomas Fitzpatrick, and William Sublette in American folklore, but not so with Beckwourth. Because of racism, writers disparaged his feats and ridiculed his name.
His controversial exploits were investigated by historian Elinor Wilson in 1976 in “Jim Beckwourth: Mountain Man and War Chief of the Crows.”
His accomplishments were preserved in a memoir, as well as physical landmarks, on websites, and in documentary treatments. “Central” is his colorful autobiography, but unlike the frontiersman Davy Crockett, students don’t learn about the “Black King of the Wild Frontier.”
The Beckwourth story could be a vehicle for an action movie or television treatment. In fact, his name is used teasingly for a character in the 2021 Netflix Western, “The Harder They Fall.” And there is a documentary, “Jim Beckwourth: War Chief of the Crow,” in the 2022 Apple TV series, “Into the Wild Frontier.”
Born into slavery in about 1798 in Fredericks County, Va., Beckwourth was a product of rape and the legal property of a tobacco plantation owner. The violence shaped his racial identity in conflicting and accommodating ways. The opportunities of the Louisiana Purchase fueled his pioneer outlook. About 1805, his master took him to work at a St. Louis fur trading post; he was later hired out for a lead-mining expedition to Illinois on the Mississippi River.
With money earned from the mines, he returned to St. Louis to buy his freedom. His story from that point sheds light on the incorporation of the wild frontier into Western capitalism. His work as a trapper in the dangerous but lucrative fur trade is a window into the diverse people, places, and cultures of the old West and the systems of colonization and slavery that made America an economic power.
For instance, he was hired by the Rocky Mountain Fur Company to supply animal pelts for fashionable wear. At the same time, as he trekked about the frontier, his freedom was subject to challenge under the fugitive slave laws of 1793 and 1850. Like other free Black people, he lived at risk of kidnapping and enslavement; his former master testified to his legal emancipation in courts several times.
Beckwourth was a rare Black witness to the Seminole Nation and runaway slaves in Florida. He participated in the second of three wars from 1835 to 1842. During the conflicts, he was a messenger delivering instructions between army forts. He observed the deadly Battle of Okeechobee on Christmas Day 1837, involving about 800 troops under the command of Col. Zachary Taylor.
Beckwourth also provided insights into the opening of California during the gold rush. In 1850, he located a passage through the Sierra Nevada mountains known as Beckwourth Pass.
This fascinating pioneer lived to see the end of slavery; he died around 1866, shortly after the Civil War. However, he never enjoyed citizenship rights, even though he was an authentic product of the American experience.
