Evening Star Newspaper, February 9, 1930, Page 92

THE SUNDAY. STAR, WASHINGTON, ;D. C ., FEBRUARY 9, 1930. = — istorians Find Life Story of Forgotten Pioneer BY W. J. GHENT. EVENTY-SIX years ago, on February 7. there passed away, in the National Capital, the most celebrated ‘“‘moun- tain man” of his time. Thomas Fitzpatrick was his name, though the Indians knew him as “Broken Hand” and some- times as ‘“White Hair.” Trapper, explorer, Indian fighter, head of the Rocky Mountain Fur Co., guide to the emigrants, to Fremont, to Kearny and to Abert and Governemnt agent for the wild tribes of the plains, his career coveréd the whole period from the effective discovery of South Pass to the opening of Kansas and Nebraska for settlement. Yet by some unexplainable caprice of history he was gradually forgotten. He had no bi- ographer to set down bhis exploits, and while others, such as Carson and Bridger, achieved lasting renown, Fitzpatrick in time became merely a name. Though the Indians whom he servéd venerated his memory and still foster a tradition of his friendship and truthfulness, they kept no records and could thus add noth- ing to the printed page. When, in later times, students and historical writers were attracted to his personality and career by the frag- mentary references in the early annals, they could find nothing additional by which to round out his story. “His comings and goings,” wrote Hiram M. Chittenden, the scholarly his- torian of the fur trade, in 1902, “are lost be- hind the scenes, and all that is known of him is from transient glimpses while he is passing across the stage before us.” As late as three yvears ago no one could say, from any current print, where and when Fitzpatrick was born or where. when and how he died. Researches by the present writer, in collaboration with Prof. LeRoy R. Hafen of Denver have brought to light the main facts in his personal history. },IE was in at the beginning of the active trapper period, and the 30 years of his life in the wilderness and on the frontier were checkered with many perilous adventures. The two battles with the Arikaras in the Summer of 1828 gave him his first discipline as an Indian fighter, and he learned quickly a science that was often to be employed in the days that foHowed. - He was second in command of the party of Ashley’s men that in the Fall of that year set out from the middle Missouri to pene- trate the savage wilderness we now know as Wyoniing, Utah and Idaho. Though a small party—only 16 in number—it was a historic one, for it made the effective discovery of South Pass, that famous gateway of the Rockies through which, beginning 17 years later, was to flow the gre,t tide of migration toward the Pacific. Here, in the heart of the wilderness, he and his companions, later joined by other trappers from the Missouri, searched for beaver and with their ready rifies kept the savages at bay. No hour was wholly free from danger. Ban- nocks, Utes, Arapahos, sometimes Crows and Shoshones, disputed their path, and bands of the implacable Blackfeet .and Gros Ventres from the north swept through the region in- tent upon pillage and massacre. In the many conflicts with these Ishmaelites Fitzpatrick was from the first a leader. The bursting of a rifle as it was discharged crippled his left hand, and as “Broken Hand” he became known to red man and white man alike throughout the ‘West. It is a seeming miracle that he never was wounded in battle. It is something even closer to the miraculous that he once escaped from a close cordon of Blackfeet, the most dreaded savages of the wilderness. The Summer ren- dezvous of the trappers in 1832 was held in the beautiful Pierre’s Hole (now called Teton Basin), Idaho. Fitzpatrick, then head of the Rocky Mountain Fur Co., eager to learn the whereabouts of his supply train coming from St. Louis, set out on horseback from Pierre’s Hole toward the great bend of the North Platte, in the present Wyoming. At a point on the Sweetwater River, 300 miles away, he found the train, and at once started on the re- turn to inform the clamorous trappers at the rendezvous. With two swift horses, so that from time to time he could change mounts, he hurried on, up the Sweetwater and across South Pass. Descending its western slope he ran suddenly into a band of ‘Blackfeet. To be captured, he knew, meant frightful torture and a iingering death. Loosing one of his horses, he spurred his mount forward in the attempt to scale a nearby ridge strewn with great bowlders. The Blackfeet pursued him afoot, and PFitzpatrick, seeing that his horse was breaking under the strain, leaped to the ground and ran farther up among the rocks. As he ran, the opening of a little cavern caught his eye. Hastily he crawled in, and with a few boughs and leaves closed the en- trance. In a few moments he heard the shouts and the scurrying footsteps of his pursuers. After what seemed an age silence came; night had fallen, and his pursuers had given up the chase. Later he crept out and sought to make his way to the north, only to find that he had almost entered the Blackfeet camp. Stealthily he crept back and then returned to his cavern. With the coming of daylight hé heard his pursuers again among the rocks in search of bhim. All day he lay hidden, and at night again ventured forth. This time he succeeded in-avoiding the camp, and fixing his route by the stars set out for Pierre’s Hole. Weak from lack of food, he traveled slowly on. Though there was some game about, he dared not fire his rifle. With his hunting knife, however, he dug up some edible roots; he found some ber- ries also, and at one place he came upon what the wolves had left of a buffalo carcass, upon which he made a feast. But he found na more food; in crossing a stream he lost his rifie; and staggering on till his strength failed, he lay down to die. Just then two friendly Indians who had been sent out in search of him came up. Giving him food, and support- ing him in his efforts to walk, they slowly brought him to the rendezvous. His com- panions could not reccgnize him. His' body was a mere skeleton; his eyes were sunken, “Emigrant Train in the Rocky Mountains.” Neglected by Biographers, the Stirring Career of the Most Celebrated “Mountain Man”’ of His Time, Whose Life Epitomizes the Conquest of the Wilderness, and Who Died in Washington, Where His Body Now Laies in an Unmarked Grave, Is Revealed for the First Time. his face was drawn and emaciated, and his hair had turned perfectly white. Thenceforth he was “White Hair” as well as Broken Hand. He must have had an iron constitution, for in two or three, weeks he had recovered. Then came (July 18) that picturesque battle of Pierre’s Hole, the most famous fight in the early annals of the West, with Fitzpatrick in command of the trappers. Their assailants were Blackfeet, the same band from whom FPitzpatrick had escaped. The Blackfeet, badly worsted, fled during a lull in the attack, and among the spoils of victory Fitzpatrick, to his great joy, found the two horses that had been taken from him. Warrior of the Blackfeet tribe. FI’I‘ZPATRICK was an Irish lad, born In County Cavan in 1799. He came of a Catholic family of some standing, and he re- ceived the fundamentals of a sound education. Before he was 17 he left home and came to the United States. Bold and adventurous, he sought the Middle West, and before long was in the Indian trade, probably along the upper 4 Mississippl. But it was the Far West that at- tracted him, and in the Winter of 1822-23 he was in the frontier capital of St. Louis. His opportunity came when Gen. William Henry Ashley organized his second company to ascend the Missouri to the Yellowstone. On March 10, 1823, the comuany of about one hundred men, Fitzpatrick among them, started Reproduced from an old prins. - Drawing made in 1866 by F. F. Palmer. north. But it was an ili-fated expedition, sinee near the present boundary line between Nerth and South Dakota it was treacherously ate tacked by the Arikara Indians and lost 13 men . killed and 11 wounded, a loss that compelled . it to retreat down stream. Reinforcements came along, and about two months later an- other battle was fought. This time the Arikaras fled, but as they remained hostile, and as in a sense they controlled the passage of the Missouri, the expedition was again compelled to retreat. It was toward the end of September that the trapping party already referred to set out for the West, and it was in March, 1824, that it crossed South Pass and reached the Green River. The next 16 years constitutes the active period of the beaver trappers, and most, if not all, of this time Fitzpatrick was in the moun- tains. By the beginning of the 40's the fur trade had collapsed, and the surviving trape pers had gradually left the mountains. Fitze patrick became a guide. In 1841 he led Father De Smet's missionary party (which was ac- companied as far as Fort Hall, Idaho, by the first emigrant wagon train for the Pacific) all the way to the Flathead country in North- western Montana. Reaching Fort Laramie on his return in the following year, he guided the Oregon party of White and Hastings, the second of the emigrant trains, as far as Fort Hall. In the following two years he was the guide of Fremont's second expedition, which performed the incredible feat of crossing the snowbound Sierras in Midwinter. He guided Kearny's column to South Pass and Abert's surveying party through the perilous region along the Canadian border in 1845, and in the following year piloted Kearney's Army of the West to Santa Fe and on to Socorro, whence heé was sent back East with the dispatches brought from the Pacific by Kit Carson. He returned to the settlements to find hime self appointed Indian agent for a newly estabe lished agency, to deal with the Cheyennes, the Arapahos and the plains Sioux, over a region extending from Fort Laramie to the Arkansas and from the bend of the Missouri to the mountains. In 1851 he brought about the great Indian council held near Fort Laramie, negotiating treaties with all the tribes in ate tendance, and two years later he induced the predatory Comanches, Kiowas and plains Apaches to sign a treaty pledging themselves to desist from raids along the Santa Fe Trail, Called to Washington for a conference, he came east by way of New York City. According to his grandniece, Mrs. M. G. McCarthy, of 3521 S street northwest, a newspaper announcement of his arrival at a New York hotel! was noticed by Mrs. Mary Fitzpatrick Leonard, her grand- mother. An infant when Thomas Fitzpatrick left Ireland, she had grown up in the belief that somewhere in the wilds of North America she had a brother. After her marriage she had emigrated, with her husband and children, to the United States. On seeing the name she at once surmised that the man was her brother. Her daughter called at the hotel, only to find that he had left the city. But she left a note for him, which was forwarded. He ree turned, and brother and sister had a happy reunion. Learning that she was living in rather straitened circumstances, he gave hor $1,000 5 to start her sons in business. HE arrived in the Capital on January 4, 1854, and registered at the nationally known Brown's Hotel, on Pennsylvania avenue. Business with the Indian Bureau doubtless took up most of his time during the next two ° or three weeks, and a journey to New York and back may have followed. Late in the - month or early in February he took a severe ' cold, which resulted in pneumonia. His fll- Continued on Eightéenth Fage