The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth: Mountaineer, Scout, and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians

This is the account of James P. Beckwourth, a frontiersman who spent much of his life in the mountains and plains of the American West as a trapper, guide, and scout. Told in his own voice, his story moves between hunting expeditions, dealings with traders and settlers, and years spent among the Crow people, whose nation he later led in some capacity. One episode shows how the Crow chose a new member of their council: when an old counsellor steps down and asks others to pick his successor, a medicine man is blindfolded and sent through the crowd, and the choice falls to whichever brave he first touches. The book offers a first-person window into frontier life, Native diplomacy, and the rough world of the fur trade in the nineteenth century.