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One of the notable figures of the West, tho' of the sort rarely acknowldged in popular history. Aint too often you get a face and a name like this on these guys.

I had read years ago of Delawares reaching the Pacific ahead of our more famous fur trappers, if so, it musta been guys like Black Beaver. Delawares were frequently hired on as scouts in Texas.

The painting was painted in 1850, worth noting that by the time RIP Ford hisself came back to Austin from a surveying and exploring trip to El Paso (guided by Delawares) in '49 ('50??), he was reduced to wearing clout and stockings, about like this guy, having worn out his regular clothes on the trip.



http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/B/BL001.html
Black Beaver (Suck-tum-mah-kway), a Delaware Indian scout, interpreter, and chief, was born in 1806 at the present location of Belleville, Illinois. A onetime employee of the American Fur Company, he reportedly reached the Pacific Ocean on seven occasions and spoke English, French, Spanish, and eight Indian languages. He accompanied the Dodge-Leavenworth Expedition of 1834 and served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War as a captain of Indian volunteers.

In 1849 Black Beaver led Capt. Randolph B. Marcy and California-bound emigrants westward from near Edwards's Post in Indian Territory to Santa Fe via the California Road. Black Beaver subsequently occupied Camp Arbuckle, where he became chief of a Delaware settlement called Beaversville. First Lt. Amiel Weeks Whipple visited him there in 1853, but Black Beaver refused to guide Whipple's railroad survey across the Southwest.

Prior to the Civil War Black Beaver settled in the Leased District, where he built a home and farmed in present Caddo County. Once the war began, he escorted Col. William H. Emory's Federal troops from Fort Cobb to Kansas in April 1861. Confederates destroyed Black Beaver's property in retaliation.

Black Beaver witnessed the Medicine Lodge treaty negotiations in 1867 and attended intertribal councils throughout the 1870s. He had three, perhaps four, wives and four daughters. Black Beaver became a Baptist minister after converting to Christianity in 1876. He died May 8, 1880, and was buried near Anadarko.


Birdwatcher