Jim Beckwourth was one of the fabulous heroes of our early West. He was trapper and trader, dispatch rider and buffalo hunter, and he guided wagon trains on every emigrant trail. He won his greatest fame as chief of the savage Crows, though he himself was the son of a white father and Negro mother.

From childhood Jim was recklessly brave. At the age of nine, he became a hero on the Missouri frontier when he found his playmates massacred in the woods and rode to warn the settlement of an Indian attack. At eighteen he left home to seek his fortune in the lead mines of the north where he became the camp's professional hunter. Later he journeyed on a perilous mission to buy horses from the Pawnees; joined a trapping expedition to mountain ranges which no white man had ever crossed; battled vicious Indians and risked torture to save a friend. But despite the wild freedom of his life he was discontented. Unlike most mountain men he wanted prestige and power.

The power he wanted came through a practical joke. Led to believe that Jim was a long-lost member of their tribe, the Crow Indians kidnapped him and carried him to their village. There he was honored as the chief's son and he lived among them, leading their raids against rival tribes. His skill as a fighter was so great, that he was made chief.

But after twelve years, Jim became restless and rejoined his mountain companions as a trader and scout. He blazed a trail over the Sierras which became known as Beckwourth pass and founded the town of Pueblo, Colorado.

Few characters in American history have led such adventure-packed lives as Jim Beckwourth, yet he seems to have been overlooked by historians and biographers.  Olive Burt, in her exciting biography, brings him back into proper focus against the vigorous and turbulent pioneering period of his time.

~From the dust jacket