Imagining the African American West

1. Beckwourth's Pass

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [First Page] [1], (1) Lines: 0 to 1 ——— 0.0pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [1], (1) C H A P T E R O N E Beckwourth’s Pass In 1528, Esteban, a slave owned by a Spanish explorer, became the first person of African heritage to enter what would later become known as the American West. Over the course of the next three hundred years, other people of African heritage would come to the region, arriving by various routes, and some would play historically significant roles. Pío Pico, a politician of Mexican and African ancestry, twice served as governor of California during the period of Mexican rule. He wrote his memoirs in 1877. 1 William Leidesdorff, a merchant seaman of Danish and African ancestry, settled in California in the mid-1840s. He became a Mexican citizen and later worked for the United States government, serving under President James K. Polk, who was unaware of his African heritage.2 Americans of African ancestry also played prominent roles in the region in the early and mid-nineteenth century. In 1856, James P. Beckwourth published his autobiography, in which he recounted his experiences as a mountain man, trapper, and scout and as an honorary member of a Native American tribe. The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth—as told to Thomas D. Bonner, a white man—was the first work in American literature to relay the story of an African American on the western frontier. Beckwourth was born in Virginia, sometime around the turn of the century, to a slave owned by Sir Jennings Beckwith, a descendant of minor Irish aristocrats (the name was altered to Beckwourth in the autobiography). In 1810, Beckwith and his family, including “twenty-two negroes,” moved to St. Louis, Missouri.3 One biographer believes that Beckwith may have manumitted his son during this period, noting that Beckwourth’s subsequent jobs—as a blacksmith’s apprentice , lead miner, and itinerant worker—”indicate that he was regarded as a 2 • beckwourth’s pass 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [2], (2) Lines: ——— 0.0pt ——— Normal PgEnds: [2], (2) free black man, because he was able to move as he pleased.”4 Between 1824 and 1828, Beckwourth worked for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, first as a blacksmith, servant, and groom, then as a trapper. From approximately 1828 until 1834 he lived with a tribe of Crow Indians, during which time he was employed by the American Fur Company. Between 1837 and 1866, when he died, he held a variety of jobs and traveled extensively. He was recruited to fight in Florida against the Seminole Indians; became a trader on the Santa Fe Trail; served as a guide in California before the Mexican-American War; ran a saloon; discovered a route through the Sierra Mountains that was later named Beckwourth Pass; moved to Colorado, where he was tried and acquitted on charges of killing a man; and finally returned to the Montana Territory to live with the Crow. Not all of this information appears in the autobiography. The book was published ten years before the end of his life and focused primarily on the time Beckwourth spent in the Rocky Mountains, working for the fur trade and living with Native Americans. In addition, The Life and Adventures conveys the impression that Beckwourth was white. The book fails to mention that his mother was a slave or that he was the son of a slave. No one knows who made the decision to disguise Beckwourth’s racial identity—Beckwourth, Bonner, or the two men working in collaboration on the autobiography— or why that decision was made. However, the majority of readers at the time would have been white, and those readers would have been acquainted mostly with white trappers and scouts, both real and fictitious (such as Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Natty Bumppo), in the mid-nineteenth century. The collaborators may have decided to portray Beckwourth as white in order to create a readily identifiable character and to appeal to conventional expectations and...