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Meandering casually through Texas history here, more on Black Beaver, from wiki...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Beaver

During 1849, 1852 and 1854, Black Beaver guided Randolph B. Marcy's exploration expeditions throughout Texas.[3]

In his 1859 guide book The Prairie Traveler, Marcy wrote that Black Beaver


�had visited nearly every point of interest within the limits of our unsettled territory. He had set his traps and spread his blanket upon the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia; and his wanderings had led him south to the Colorado and Gila, and thence to the shores of the Pacific in Southern California. His life had been that of a veritable cosmopolite, filled with scenes of intense and startling interest, bold and reckless adventure.

He was with me two seasons in the capacity of guide, and I always found him perfectly reliable, brave, and competent. His reputation as a resolute, determined, and fearless warrior did not admit of question, yet I have never seen a man who wore his laurels with less vanity. The truth is my friend Beaver was one of those few heroes who never sounded his own trumpet; yet no one that knows him ever presumed to question his courage....

By 1860 Black Beaver was the wealthiest and most well-known Lenape in America. He had settled in present-day Caddo County, Oklahoma and lived at Anadarko, where the Lenape had been removed. In May 1861, with the outbreak of the American Civil War, General William H. Emory, stationed at Fort Arbuckle, learned that 6,000 Confederate troops were advancing toward him from Texas and Arkansas. He gathered the soldiers from forts Washita, Cobb and Arbuckle near Minco, but to escape to Kansas across the open prairie he needed a guide.[2]

Other Indian guides turned him down for fear of reprisal by the Confederates. Emory guaranteed Black Beaver the government would reimburse him for any losses, so he agreed to help.

He scouted the approaching Confederate troops and provided information for Emory to capture their advance guard, who became the first prisoners captured during the Civil War. Black Beaver guided over 800 Union soldiers, their prisoners, and 200 teamsters managing 80 wagons and 600 horses and mules in a mile-long train across 500 miles of open prairie to safety at Fort Leavenworth in eastern Kansas....

After the [Civil] war, Black Beaver and his friend Jesse Chisholm returned and converted part of the Native American path used by the Union Army into what became the Chisholm Trail. They collected and herded thousands of stray Texas longhorn cattle by the Trail to railheads in Kansas, from where the cattle were shipped East, where beef sold for ten times the price in the West. Black Beaver resettled at Anadarko, where he built the first brick home in the area.

Western trapper through the heyday of the fur trade, seven times to the Pacific, likely familiar with the whole west from Oregon to Northern Mexico. Active in the War Between the States, an interpreter at the Sioux Fort Laramie treaty of '67, and later a prominent and successful cattleman instrumental in establishing the Chisholm Trail.

Surely a guy who oughtta be better known than he is.

And towards the end of his life, a conversion to Christianity and an active Minister. Sounds like a home run to me

Birdwatcher