Page:The life and adventures of James P. Beckwourth, mountaineer, scout, pioneer, and chief of the Crow nation of Indians (IA lifeadventuresof00beckrich).pdf/10

6 men who have travelled most can, very often, only tell us where are the best restaurants and hotels.

James Beckwourth was a man who had really had a very wild and varied life on the frontier, all of which might have remained unknown had he not chanced upon Mr. T. D. Bonner, who, as this work indicates, wrote English in a straightforward manner, and knew how to elicit narratives from his subject in a straightforward style. Beckwourth had lived among Indians in the old "buffalo days"—which means, without exaggeration, that he had perhaps "held his life in his hand," on an average about once a day—had really been recognized by the United States Government as a man who was capable of influencing and restraining the formidable tribe of Crow Indians, for which very badly performed duty he was for a long time paid a high salary, and finally he had, beyond all question, undergone hundreds of adventures as wild and characteristic as any described in this book. I would here protest that so far as I am concerned, the revising and editing this work is by no means a piece of literary hack-work, since it was my intention to write on this man thirty years ago. Through personal channels I had often heard of him. Mrs. General Ashley, so celebrated for her grace and refinement—of whom Beckwourth speaks so admiringly—was an intimate friend of my mother, and I have often conversed about Beckwourth himself with Mr. Chouteau. But it was to Mr. Robert P. Hunt, of Saint Louis, who had known Beckwourth well in his wildest life in the Plains, that I was chiefly indebted for my knowledge and interest in this strange semi-outlaw, and of him I will speak anon.

I am also very much indebted, and hereby return my most cordial thanks, to Horace Klephart, Esq., Librarian of the Mercantile Library of Saint Louis, Missouri, for kindly taking the pains to look up for me the two following paragraphs which supply the principal data of Beckwourth's life not given in Mr. Bonner's book, or which are subsequent to it as to time.