Which Way to the Wild West? Read Free

beaver hats). There was big money in the beaver pelt business. The only hard part: someone had to go get the pelts.
    James Beckwourth decided to give it a try. After being freed from slavery as a boy, Beckwourth had moved with his family to St. Louis. When he was twenty-four he heard that companies were looking for
daring young men to head west into the unmapped mountains to trap beaver. Beckwourth rushed to sign up.
    James Beckwourth

    â€œBeing possessed with a strong desire to see the celebrated Rocky Mountains, and the great western wilderness so much talked about, I engaged in General Ashley’s Rocky Mountain Fur Company.”

    Beckwourth was one of a few hundred adventurers who became known as “mountain men.” Exploring the mountains and trapping beaver in icy streams, mountain men were often freezing, starving, and lonely. And they were always on the lookout for mountain lions and grizzly bears. Mountain man Jedediah Smith was searching for a route through the Rockies when he was attacked by a grizzly. The bear smacked Smith around like a doll, smashing several of his ribs. Then it took Smith’s head in its teeth and shook him back and forth.

    Fellow mountain man James Clyman found Smith lying in the bloody dirt. Smith somehow managed to say, “If you have a needle and thread, get it out and sew up my wounds around my head.”
    Clyman crouched down to have a look. The scalp had been ripped from Smith’s skull. One ear was hanging on by a twisted strip of skin.
    â€œI told him I could do nothing for his ear,” Clyman said.
    â€œOh, you must try to stitch it up some way or other,” pleaded Smith.
    Clyman took out the tools he used to mend his socks and went to work. “I put in my needle and stitched it through and through and over and over,” he said, “nice as I could.”
    Incredibly, Smith’s ear stayed on. And he was back on his horse in less than two weeks.
    Step 9: Learn from the Locals
    F ights with Native Americans were another danger, since some tribes did not welcome the sight of outsiders trapping animals in their territory. But more often, mountain men traded with Native Americans, learning from them how to hunt, travel, and survive in the snowy mountains. Mountain men began dressing like Indians, and they considered it a great compliment to be mistaken for one of them.
    James Beckwourth did more than dress like an Indian—he moved in with them. Invited to join a group of Crow Indians, Beckwourth learned the Crow language, got married, and even fought in the Crow’s battles against rival tribes.
    When Beckwourth’s mountain men friends didn’t see him for a
few years, they figured he must have died somewhere in the wilderness. This led to a strange scene at Fort Clark, a trading post in what is now North Dakota.
    Beckwourth and some Crow friends showed up with a stack of beaver pelts to trade. Of course, they were dressed as Crows and speaking the Crow language. One of the Crow men stepped up to the counter and asked the American clerks for “be-has-i-pe-hish-a.”
    The puzzled clerks just stood there.
    â€œ Be-has-i-pe-hish-a, ” said the Crow.
    More confused silence.
    Then Beckwourth stepped up and said, “Gentlemen, that Indian wants scarlet cloth.”
    â€œIf a bombshell had exploded in the fort they could not have been more astonished,” Beckwourth remembered. This dialogue followed:

    Clerk: Ah, you speak English! Where did you learn it?
    Beckwourth: With the white man.
    Clerk: How long were you with the whites?
    Beckwourth: More than twenty years.
    Clerk: Where did you live with them?
    Beckwourth: In St. Louis.
    Clerk: If you have lived twenty years in St. Louis, I’ll swear you are no Crow.
    Beckwourth: No, I am not.
    Clerk: Then what may be your name?
    Beckwourth: My name in English is James Beckwourth.

    Clerk: Good heavens! Why, I have heard your name mentioned a thousand times. You were