Old Bill Williams, Mountain Man
by Alpheus Favour

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Book Reviews of Old Bill Williams, Mountain Man

Book Review: One of the best of the fur trade books.
Summary: 5 Stars

Williams was born in North Carolina in 1787, moved to the Missouri frontier, and began trapping while in his teens. He served in the War of 1812, was in Indian trader, an itinerant preacher, scout, explorer, and mountain man. Williams, as Favour points out, was the most noteworthy of the hundreds of mountain men in the Missouri River Country. Equally important is the revealing portrait of the mountain men and their lives. In Bill Williams, the author found those unique traits possessed by this singular group of men who led a young nation through uncharted lands to a rendezvous with the Pacific.

Bill Williams' image was unlike that of the typical hero. He was a study in contrasts. Williams was tall and redheaded, dirty and disheveled, had a knowledge of Greek, Latin, and comparative religion, and ate primitive frontier food including raw calf legs. Physical strength, ability to endure thirst, scanty rations, and fatigue counted for little unless a mountain man also had determination, courage, and fortitude. Williams and a few others possessed all of these traits yet the majority of mountain men, including Williams, died of disease, hunger, Indians, or exposure.

Williams emulated Indians in dress, deportment, speech, and conduct. If being taken for an Indian was the highest compliment a trapper could receive, it wasn't such for Old Bill Williams. Whether it was lifting a scalp, hunting buffalo, or stalking an enemy, Williams did it better than any Indian and was pround of his sobriquet - Master Trapper. Williams stood out from his contemporaries regardless of the method of comparison: bringing in the most fur, outfighting and outdrinking anyone, or simply living past his 61st birthday.

Williams' six decades of life spanned the fur trade era and through his eyes the author presents that adventurous time with clarity and understanding. Williams traversed the West, battled the Ute, Apache, and Blackfeet, wandered the great mountains and parks of Arizona and Colorado, and blazed new trails. His horse stealing excursions were a legitimate enterprise by fur trappers' standards. He excelled in this field and stole hundreds of horses from California to Mexico, including horses owned by unfriendly Indians.

As a guide to Fremont's fourth expedition, which sought a railroad route through the Southern Rockies. Williams' place in history is circumscribed. After this expedition, Fremont castigated Williams, blaming him for the failure to cross the Rockies in midwinter. Williams had warned Fremont that a crossing in winter was dangerous yet went with him anyway. Eleven men froze to death. Favour tends to whitewash Williams in this incident but any blame is needless as nature wouldn't permit a crossing by anyone that winter.

After that disaster, Williams continued to guide parties across the frontier. In March 1849, Williams and Benjamin Kern were murdered by Utes evidently seeking revenge for a previous attack on their village by a contingent of the U. S. Army. When the Utes discovered they had killed Old Bill, they gave him a chief's burial.

Old Bill's death was denied by many Indians. For years they told tales of a majestic mountain Elk, with a slash of red across its crown, serenely grazing in Colorado's South Park, stopping from time to time to gaze intently toward the Southwest - toward its namesake Arizona's Bill Williams Peak which stands alone on the skyline along the western boundary of a frontier long past.

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