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March is Black History Month, so in this column we will tell the story of Jim Beckwourth, (Sometimes spelled Beckworth) who was a black mountain man who undoubtedly trapped and hunted in this area in the early part of our state’s history.
Born into slavery, Beckworth was the son of a white slave owner and a negro woman. Unlike many mixed-race children born into slavery, Beckworth’s father acknowledged him as his son. When his father moved from Virginia to Missouri, he took James and his family along.
When James was 19, his father apprenticed him to a blacksmith so he could learn a trade, and then later gave him is freedom. The young Beckworth decided to use his freedom by joining Ashley’s 1824 fur brigade, where he worked as a wrangler. He was a trapper and was later adopted into the Crow tribe.
There are two stories to explain how Beckworth came to be adopted by the Crow.
One story told was that at the 1825 rendezvous, as a joke, one of Beckworth’s fellow trappers, Caleb Greenwood, told the attending Crow Indians a story about Beckworth actually being a Crow, who had been stolen as a baby and then sold to a white man.
Another story was told that he was captured by the Crow, and one woman claimed he was her long-lost son. Whichever story is to be believed, he became an adopted member of the Crow tribe and later became a high-ranking member.
This from the Basin Republican, August 26, 1910 (Part of a longer story) – In 1830 Jim Bridger completed a trapping and hunting tour of Wyoming. That year he hunted and trapped in the Big Horn Basin. Bridger was to the Rocky Mountain country what Daniel Boone was to Kentucky.
He knew the mountains like a book. There was no phase of Indian character he did not know. There was no pass, no trail, nor stream he was not perfectly familiar with. He was a brave and intrepid guide, scout and Indian fighter.
In the early thirties of the last century Captain Bonneville spent upwards of three years in Wyoming. In 1932 his party in company with that of Robert Campbell’s followed the Big Horn River across the Basin with two large shipments of furs for St. Louis.
In the Campbell party was Nathaniel Wyeth who was on his way to Boston. He was a New Englander and was one of the later pioneers in the fur trade business. But he came into the field too late and his ideals failed of successful consummation.
1834 found Captain Stuart, an English army officer who signed under Wellington, and a party among whom was Dr. Harrison, a son of Tippecanoe Harrison, later president of the United Statue, in Wyoming on an expedition of adventure.
While in the Big Horn Basin they were captured by a band of Crow Indians. One Jim Beckworth, a half-breed, who had come into Wyoming with General Ashley, and later joined the Crows (and) had become a chief among them, was with the Indians and saved the lives of the white men and had their property restored to them.
Beckworth was born in Virginia. His mother was a slave woman, and his father was a white man, claimed by Beckworth to have been a major in the war of the revolution.
Beckworth became the most powerful chief among the Crows. He was accounted the bravest of the brave, an unerring shot and a desperate fighter.
He had, however, an unsavory reputation. The Crow Indians idolized him and long after he had left the tribe, they persuaded him to make them a visit, which occasion was noted for a universal celebration among the Crows. At the last feast, preparatory to his starting to Denver, his home, they poisoned him.
They gave as their reason for this that he was always “good medicine”‘ to them and that ill luck attended them in his absence. If they could not have him alive, they would have him dead, so that his bones might be kept with them. His death occurred about the year 1867.
This from the Wyoming Press Evanston, January28, 1899 – Indians As Runners. Instances of Their Remarkable Powers of Endurance. General Cook is quoted by Edward S. Ellis as having seen an Apache lope for 1,600 feet up the side of a mountain without showing the first signs of fatigue, there being no perceptible sign of increase of respiration.
Captain H. L. Scott, of the Seventh Cavalry, has related some astonishing feats per formed by the Chiracahua Apaches forming Troop L of his regiment. He tells how nine of these Indians, after a hard day’s work, by way of recreation pursued a coyote for two hours, captured the nimble brute and brought it in to camp; how on another occasion, the scouts gave chase to a deer, ran it down some nine miles from camp and fetched it in alive.
Hence I see no good reason for doubting the word of an old-timer I met in the Rocky Mountains who told me that, in the days before the Atlantic and Pacific railroad was built, the Pima Indiana of Arizona would recover settlers’ stray horses, along the overland trail, by walking them down in the course of two or three days. After this one may begin to believe that “Lying Jim” Beckwourth, whose remarkable adventures early in this century are preserved in book form, was a much-maligned man and that he spoke no more than the truth when he said he had known instances of Indian runners accomplishing upward of 110 miles in one day.
This is from The Riverton Review March 1, 1922
(Although the word, Mulatto, has been largely replaced by the phase, mixed-blood or mixed-race, this is the way the old newspapers worded it.)
Jim Beckworth, Mulatto Who Who Became Crow Chief – Jim Beckwourth, without doubt, was the most-married man in history. Just how many wives he had is unknown. In his autobiography Jim mentions at least seven spouses, but his reputation for truth was not the best. Beckwourth was the son of a Maryland Irishman and a negro woman, and he was born In 1708.
When be left St. Louis with General Ashley’s fur-trading expedition in 1823 he had a sweetheart named Eliza, to whom he pledged eternal devotion.
Among the Blackfeet Indians he won his first wife, marrying her because It would help his trade among her tribesmen. Soon afterwards he married her sister, too. Later he left the Blackfeet, to trade with the Crows, and be acquired several more wives.
(This was not unusual for the trappers to marry into the tribes, thus creating a peace between him and the Native American’s, at least of that tribe, and lead to increased trade.)
Jim was a man of great strength and a remarkable runner. One day he was attacked by a war party who pursued him for 3 miles before he finally outran them. At another time when a force of 2,500 Arikaras and Sioux attacked the Crows, Beckworth led the Absarokee (Crows) so bravely that 208 of the enemy were killed. Beckwourth had three horses shot under him in this fight and killed 14 of the Sioux.
He was adopted by the Crows, and because of his deeds in war, he rose to the position of first counselor, the highest honor in the tribe.
At the outbreak of the Mexican war be enlisted as a scout and dispatch bearer for Gen. Phil Kearney. He also carried dispatches to California, and he was there In 1848, when gold was discovered. He mined for a while until the discovery of gold In Colorado in 1859 lured him to that state. He settled in Denver and married again—this time a negro girl.
The Crow’s heard of his return from California and sent messengers to him, begging him to return to them. Misfortune had come to the tribe, and they needed his “strong medicine.”
Beckwourth paid no heed to their pleadings until 1866, when he finally visited them. But he refused to live with them permanently. When he announced his intention of returning to Colorado, they prepared a great farewell feast In his honor. Beckwourth ate their food and dropped dead.
The Crows had given him poison. The Crows believed his “medicine” would pass into his spirit, and that wherever his bones rested his spirit would remain. They resolved to have both, and took that means of getting them!
The Sheridan Enterprise, February 26, 1916
Beckworth was an interesting part of the early frontier in Wyoming, and had freedom such as most men born into slavery never knew. He was a trapper, guide, Crow chief, and fought in several of the U.S. wars. He wrote his autobiography, Jim Beckwourth, Black Mountian Man, which can still be purchased today. There is a pass in California, Beckwouth Pass, named for him.
Photos taken at Museum of the Mountain Man, Pinedale, Wyoming. Vannoy photos
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Last modified: March 2, 2026