Legends and Tales of the American West

by Richard Erdoes

  Frémont placed all the blame for the catastrophe on Old Bill, accusing him not only of incompetence as a guide, but of having misled the expedition so that he could later plunder its cache of abandoned stores. He also spread the rumor that Old Bill was a cannibal who had eaten the unfortunate King. It did Bill no good pointing out that “King wuz as dead as a buzzard when we left him.” The cannibal label stuck to him until his death.

  Bill’s father had been something of a mystic and, as mentioned, had correctly predicted the day and hour of his death. Old Bill had inherited this penchant for the supernatural. He believed in the transmigration of souls. He was sure of turning into a buck elk after his demise. He implored his friends, “Don’t ever shoot buck elk at the Bayou Salade arter I’ve gone under, do ’ee hyar?” He said he would die “when a b’ar’ll put his cussed paw on me shoulder.” Having somewhat regained his strength, Old Bill and a certain Dr. Kern set out in March 1849 to recover some of the cached possessions they had been forced to leave behind in the mountains. Old Bill was uneasy. Twice in a row he had dreamed that a bear had put a paw on his shoulder. The two men were never seen alive again. They had been surprised at their campfire by a band of Ute warriors. Old Bill had greeted them without suspicion. The Utes were his blood brothers. He had married into their tribe, but a search party found him and Kern “porcupined by Ute arrows.”

  In 1913 Charles Johnson wrote this epitaph:

  A party of trappers were crossing the stream near the place where the old fellow had laid down, and saw a pony nibbling the bark from a cotton-wood tree. He was gaunt, famished, and his ribs were fairly sticking through his flesh. They rode up to him and were much distressed to see the form of a man lying beneath the white mantle of newly fallen show. They brushed this away and found “Old Bill”; his grizzled head bent forward upon his breast, and his clothing stained with the wounds which had sapped his very life-blood. He had gone to the Great Beyond.

  With tears in their eyes the trappers hollowed out a grave for the lone refugee. Here they buried him, and finding his faithful steed unwilling to leave the place where he had carried his master, shot the emaciated animal. They placed both in the same grave, and over their forms erected a huge pile of stones, not only to mark the last resting-place of “Old Bill,” but also to keep the wolves and coyotes from digging up the remains.

  Thus, in a wild canyon perished the aged solitary, and in the peace and quiet of that wilderness in which he loved to wander, hovers the spirit of the lonely man of the plains. His last resting-place well suited the career of “Old Bill”: trapper, scout, and fearless adventurer among the savage men, wild beasts, and inhospitable wastes of the then unpeopled West.”

  Mountain men did not make water through their eyes, nor was Old Bill a character to shed tears over. The Victorian Age demanded even more pathos for the end of the Old Bill Williams saga:

  Old and gray, marked with the scars of a hundred hand-to-hand combats, and skirmishes innumerable, “Old Bill” at last met his fate at the hands of his most hated foes. Flying single handed and alone from the swarming Blackfeet, who had driven him from the headwaters of the Missouri, he fought like the retreating lion, ever and anon making a stand and dealing death to his foes. For six days and nights they trailed him, often by the blood that poured from his many wounds, and at last, almost within reach of a trapper’s camp, on the Yellowstone, the cowardly jackals dealt the brave, old lion his death blow.

  Still he would not give up, and swearing that his scalp should never dry in the smoke of a Blackfoot lodge, he once more fought them off and turned in flight. The savages, despairing of ever capturing this man, who defied fatigue and wounds, turned back, and Williams rode on into the night of oblivion.…

  Very touching, indeed, except that this was, of course, pure fiction. The question of whether Old Bill was the scurrilous, kindly curmudgeon of legend or the murderous horse thief and scalp hunter of history will not be answered in these pages.

  Pegleg Smith and Headless Harry

  Tom Smith entered this world on October 10, 1801, at a place called Crab Orchard and consequently grew up to be a very crabby fellow. Like so many other trappers, he was born a Kentuckian. He ran away from home at age sixteen because of the severe beatings administered to him daily by his father, mother, schoolteacher, and divers others. Why he received these floggings is not known. One can only guess. He used to say later: “I don’t keer about the old woman wallopin’ me, but the old man had no right to treat me so blame bad.”

  As a grownup, he was a swiller of whiskey, the ruination of all women who had the misfortune to cross his path, a superman when it came to horse stealing, the owner of a fictitious gold mine, and a scoundrel in general. If his Pa and Ma intended to beat the badness out of him, they were spectacularly unsuccessful. He was, however, a true specimen of that “reckless breed of men”—the wild, untamed fur trappers—surpassing most of his fellows in hardihood and durability. He was, at times, the companion of such great beaver men as Milton Sublette, Old Gabe Bridger, Kit Carson, and Cerain St. Vrain, who accepted him as one of their own. Those who complained so bitterly about his rascalities belonged chiefly to only three special groups—virgins he deflowered, rancheros whose horses he stole, and Indians who fell victims to the hellish rotgut he sold them.

  After running away from his birch-wielding father, Pegleg hired on as a cook on a Mississippi flatboat. He got into numerous fights and was slashed across the face by an irate customer suffering from the aftereffects of one of Pegleg’s meals. For a while he lived with Choctaw Indians and later worked as riverfront stevedore, barkeep, and bouncer in St. Louis. For a few years he was employed by Antoine Roubidoux, a fur trader and outfitter. In 1824 he joined a party of mountain men on the Santa Fe Trail and soon was trapping beaver along the southwestern streams. He cemented relations with various Indian tribes and, for political as well as biological reasons, “married” a number of squaws, acquiring a small harem in the process. He boasted that he never shared his lodge with less than three “wives” and that he never failed to take the scalp of any man he had killed.

  Pegleg got his nickname while trapping along the North Platte in company with Sublette, St. Vrain, and other mountain men. He was ambushed and shot, the ball shattering his leg below the knee. He contemplated the damage and concluded that the leg had to come off. He asked his companions to do the job. They refused, pleading lack of experience. The main reason was that amputations usually ended in death within a few days due to gangrene and blood poisoning, and his friends were averse to being blamed for such an unsatisfactory outcome.

  “Yer chicken-livered bastards,” Pegleg growled. “I’ll do it myself, but fust get me plenty of Old Towse!”

  They had an ample supply of Taos Lightning at hand, an infernal mixture of Mexican aguardiente and raw corn whiskey guaranteed to maim and kill. He downed a few tin cups full of the fierce stuff, tied a tourniquet tightly around his splintered leg above the wound, took his time honing his bowie knife to a keen edge, had some more Old Towse, and then circumcised his leg, cutting to the bone, having enough savvy to leave a flap of skin and flesh for further use.

  “This child needs a tommyhawk,” he informed his friends watching the proceedings with great interest. The desired item was produced. Pegleg took another swill:

  “Take ahold of the flap, Cerain,” he demanded.

  “Enfant de Garce,” said St. Vrain, pulling the skin to one side, “but you’re a cool niggur for sure.” Pegleg swung the tomahawk, bringing it down with tremendous force, cutting halfway through the bone. He took a deep breath, had another swig from the proffered tin cup, chopping down with his tomahawk a second time, and—presto—the leg was off. “Wagh, ain’t she some!” was Pegleg’s sole comment.

  Sublette got out his awl case, needles and sinew thread, and under Pegleg’s direction sewed the flap like a patch over the bleeding stump. Then Sublette wrapped up the remainder in a dirty shirt: “Thar she is, pretty as a pitcher.”<
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  Using a horse travois, Pegleg’s companions managed to get him to winter quarters on the Green River. There his three Shoshone squaws took over, treating the stump with Indian herbs to whose miraculous powers, Pegleg said, he owed his survival. For some time large bone splinters worked their way out of the stump, which Sublette gingerly pulled out with a pair of bullet molds. The following spring Pegleg chopped a large chunk of wood out of an old oak tree. From it he whittled himself the peg leg which became his trademark. He also carved himself a wooden socket that he tied to the side of his horse. It fit his wooden leg so that he could ride as well as before. From then on he was called Pegleg by the whites, ‘Wee-He-To-Cha (Wooden Leg) by the Indians, and El Cojo (The Lame One) by the Mexicans.

  The painful incident left Pegleg with a great fondness for Old Towse. He not only consumed great quantities of it, but set up a still and manufactured his own potent brand, a great deal of which he sold or traded to other trappers, Utes, Shoshones, and Comanches. Thus he became a whiskey peddler. He then branched out into another commercial venture—the kidnapping of Indian children and selling them, mostly to Mexicans, as future slaves. This did not lower his reputation among fellow trappers, who had little use for their red competitors. A mere kidnapper, they said, was a damn sight better than a bounty hunter, who made his living killing and scalping Indian men, women, and children, bringing in the scalps, at five or ten dollars apiece, as proof of ridding the country of unwanted folks standing in the way of civilization. Bounty hunters were detested, not on account of killing Indians, but because they were apt, whenever they ran out of Indian scalps, to replenish their supplies by lifting the topknots of dark-haired white Americans.

  Nor did it bother his friends that Pegleg became the greatest horse thief in the West, and not just stealing a horse here and there. He set himself up as the chief of an ungodly crew, who strayed into California on tremendous horse-stealing raids, driving caballadas of up to three thousand head back to New Mexico, selling them at a huge profit to traders and trappers, usually at Bent’s Fort. Once, heading east with a stolen herd of horses, Pegleg and his band of rustlers were chased by a posse of aggrieved rancheros. During a dark moonless night, Pegleg and his rascally crew crept into the camp of their pursuers and stole their horses too, forcing the most unhappy caballeros to walk two hundred miles back to their homes. This, likewise, failed to lower him in the eyes of most beaver men because the victims were “greasers.”

  What did, however, turn the whole trapping community against Pegleg was his “absquatulating” with a huge load of pelts, entrusted to him for delivery in Santa Fe by Ewing Young, leader of a company of mountain men. Instead of doing what he was supposed to do, Pegleg, in cahoots with another bandido, named Maurice Le Duc, lit out for California to sell them there, keeping whatever money they got for themselves.

  At this point Pegleg becomes a fairy-tale character, the discoverer of a mysterious mountain made of black gold. In order to reach California, Pegleg and Le Duc had to cross the forbidding “American Sahara”—waterless, treeless, and trailless, a country of scorpions, tarantulas, Gila monsters, and sidewinders, where every plant bristled with thorns or spikes and where a furnacelike heat turned men into parched, shriveled-up ghosts. Surprised by one of the fierce sandstorms so frequent in the area, Pegleg and Le Duc lost their way and became completely disoriented. Some of their pack mules broke down or got lost, one together with their water supply. As the wind abated and visibility increased, Pegleg could make out, a few miles ahead, three hills which to him looked like “maiden breasts”—the famous “Golden Hills of Pegleg Smith.” He climbed the highest of them to get his bearings. He saw in the distance a range of forested mountains where he and his companion were sure to find water. As he sat down to take a short rest, he felt a stab of pain as his hindquarters came into contact with a sharp, pointed stone. It turned out to be a blackish nugget, heavy for its size, sprinkled with yellow spots. Looking about him, he saw that the whole hill was strewn with these nuggets as with hailstones after a storm. Out of curiosity he gathered up a bagful of these strange rocks. Together with Le Duc he then cached some of their pelts since, due to the death of some of their pack animals, they were no longer capable of carrying everything.

  The two bedraggled scalawags finally reached El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles and there sold their furs to a sea captain in the China trade. Pegleg later claimed that his strange black nuggets were made of pure gold and that he sold them for fifteen hundred dollars. Pegleg went on a monumental tear, drinking the little town dry and getting into numerous saloon brawls. On several occasions he took his wooden leg off, using it like a club to beat his opponents senseless. While his ability to hop around nimbly on one leg while cracking skulls was greatly admired, he was encouraged to leave Los Angeles before becoming the central figure at a necktie party. He took the advice and returned to New Mexico, where he organized a few more horse-stealing raids and opened a trading post. He traveled to San Francisco to cash in on the Gold Rush of ’49.

  From about 1850 on, however, the decayed, prematurely aged rapscallion went downhill fast. He squandered whatever money he had left on oceans of tanglefoot. He haunted the saloons of San Francisco, a fumbling soak, cadging drinks. He found, however, one last source of income by becoming the originator of the innumerable “Lost Mine” yarns which have kept thousands of gold hunters and amateur prospectors busy to this day. He always carried one lump of gold-bearing quartz in his frayed pockets, using it to lure greenhorns into investing in his phantom mine. He even sold maps, showing the location of his fabled treasure, for five dollars apiece, to the credulous pilgrims. True believers helped him to organize an expedition to recover the golden milk of the three maidens’ breasts, but the adventure was stillborn when, on the second day, their horses were run off by a band of bandidos hired, but of course, by Pegleg himself. Eventually, the pilgrims lost faith in his phantom gold and the old horse thief finally died of delirium tremens and a rotting liver in a San Francisco hospital. The dying former mountain man bequeathed his last treasure map and wooden leg to his doctor, who kept these objects for a while as conversation pieces. This, however, was not the end of the tale.

  Soon after Pegleg’s demise a new Pegleg appeared, not as a ghost, but in the flesh. This miraculously resurrected Pegleg Redivivus also had a wooden limb and his pockets full of black nuggets sprinkled with yellow. He held court in the watering spots of Yuma, regaling the shorthorns with tales of the three lost golden hills. This kept him in pocket money and enough free liquor to float a battleship. Pegleg Redivivus disappeared without a trace as miraculously as he had come.

  In 1871 an army deserter tottered into the town of San Bernardino clutching a rawhide bag full of black nuggets sprinkled with yellow. Dehydrated and emaciated, he landed in the hospital, where he told all who would listen that he had stumbled upon a dead man, lying faceup in the desert, by his side the selfsame bag of yellow-sprinkled nuggets. The corpse, whose eyes had been picked out by birds, had a wooden leg. Therefore, it had to be Pegleg Smith! The soldier promised his doctor to lead him to the corpse as soon as he was well. He added that the dead man’s tracks seemed to come from three distant hills—surely the fabled, gold-rich “Maidens’ Breasts.” Unfortunately, the soldier did not get well, but died. His tale and bag of nuggets, however, set off a new stampede to find Pegleg’s treasure.

  Some seventy years later an individual appeared, two-legged, but claiming to be Pegleg’s grandson and only heir. He carried in his pockets a quantity of blackish lumps sprinkled with yellow. He also had a map showing where his grandfather’s treasure could be found. Likewise, he cadged drinks and made money promoting search parties to recover the Pegleg gold. Then Pegleg Number Three also vanished into nothingness, but some hardy souls are still looking for the three golden hills.

  The Saga of Pegleg Smith gave rise to the Saga of Headless Harry, the hardy mountain man who outdid his peg-legged predecessor by a considerable margin.
Headless Harry had been Pegleg’s friend and companion. Setting his traps in an out-of-the-way stream, he was surprised by a war party of Comanches. He fought them off with rifle, pistol, knife, tooth, and nail, until he was surrounded by dozens of their lifeless bodies, but was finally overcome by numbers. The cussed redskins scalped him so thoroughly that his whole face, deprived of the crown that had held it in place, slipped down around his neck, leaving him with a naked skull, but with his eyes still in their sockets. He staggered back to his lodge, hoping that his Crow squaws could sew his face back into its proper place, but they took one look at him and fled, shrieking with terror. Harry then critically examined his reflection in the nearby stream, coming to the conclusion that he could not “shine” in his present condition and that what he needed was a brand-new head. He first carved himself a new noggin out of wood and then proceeded to cut his own head off with his butcher knife. Cutting your own head off is very hard to accomplish and it takes a real rugged and determined fellow to do it. But Harry was up to it. And so he chopped and cut, and sawed and twisted until the job was done. After burying his old head he put on his new one and was mighty pleased with it. He then teamed up again with his old friends trapping beaver. His companions insisted that Headless Harry with his wooden noodle was much smarter than when he had a brain, which had been second-rate. To amuse his numerous half-breed children, Harry sometimes took his wooden head off, using it as a ball to play with. Headless Harry died when, caught in a prairie fire, his wooden pate went up in flames until nothing but a little heap of charcoal remained.

  Mind the Time We Took Pawnee Topknots?

  “Mind the time we ‘took’ Pawnee ‘topknots’ away to the Platte, Hatch?”