Life and Adventures of James P Beckwourth As Told to Thomas D. Bonner

Rating:
Summary: A challenge to anyone's biases
Review: Beckwourth was a fascinating character; born to a black mother and a white father in 1798, he was apprenticed to be a blacksmith but ran away, and eventually made his way to Colorado and other areas of the western mountain and plains states. He became a chief of the Crow tribe, as well as a scout for the U.S. Army. While this account of his life is widely considered to stretch the truth somewhat, historians agree that he did live a remarkable life.

It's an interesting read -- obviously Bonner didn't record Beckwourth's own words, but couched it in florid 19th century prose, which actually gives it a sort of peculiar charm. It's also not particularly artful -- events occur that I kept imagining foreshadowed something or other, and then turned out just to be incidents with no narrative significance at all, making the book seem more realistic in the end.

I was often reminded of Thomas Berger's Little Big Man; the eponymous hero of that novel is adopted into the Sioux and eventually serves as a scout for Custer. The language and attitudes of Berger's characters seem so reminiscent of Beckwourth's story that it seems certain he must have read it. Apparently plains Indians really did talk about people getting "rubbed out," an expression frequent in both books that I previously had associated with gangsters.

A real peculiarity of Beckwourth's autobiography is the fact that it never makes any mention of his race. Although the edition I read is part of the series "American Negro, His History and Literature," the book itself leaves the impression that Beckwourth was white -- he even refers to another adopted native as a "mulatto." Beckwourth displays a casual attitude toward killing, particularly killing of Native Americans, in this book. He appears to be, if not racist, certainly "culturist," as he frequently denigrates Native Americans, both his enemies and his friends, only to idealize them and their way of life in the next breath. How much of this is Beckwourth and how much his "editor," we can't tell. The end of the book is jarring; he marries Pine Leaf, the warrior woman whom he has wanted throughout his time with the Crow, and then almost immediately abandons her and goes back to "civilization" with hardly a second thought.

All in all, this book is filled with raw, rough-edged adventure, and provides some genuine insights into the American West. While its cultural biases are difficult to empathize with today, they serve as a reminder of just how different our attitudes have become in 150 years or so. Worth reading.