The early accounts of Jimmy Camp have long intrigued historians of the Pikes Peak region. It was obvious to all, even to those who only knew of the account of Rufus Sage, that the story of Daugherty's death had spread throughout the west by the mid-1840's. Sage had probably heard the story at Fort Lancaster, Parkman at Fort Laramie, Steele at the old Pueblo. Nevertheless, the question remained: who was this Daugherty?
Irving Howbert, himself a pioneer of 1860 and author of several works on the Pikes Peak region, thought he had found the Daugherty mentioned by Sage listed among the members of the Long Scientific Expedition of 1820. In an article for the Colorado Springs Evening and Sunday Telegraphof 26 March 1922 he wrote: "that Daugherty's given name was James and that he was a member of Long's expedition...."(1) Howbert never seems to have realized the mistake he made in this assumption. As Dorothy Price Shaw pointed out, the name given in the report of the Long Expedition was not "James Daugherty." Instead, it was twice listed as "H. Daugherty."
Colorado College professor Francis W. Cragin linked together the two names of "Jimmy" and "Daugherty" in a more roundabout manner. In the years around the turn of the century, Cragin traveled hundreds of miles and interviewed countless old mountain men and gold seekers in an effort to discover the true identity of the namesake of Jimmy Camp.
At length, Cragin caught up with Jake Beard, an old pioneer who had formerly lived in Trinidad, but was then residing in El Paso, Texas. On being asked how Jimmy Camp got its name, Jake Beard replied without hesitation: "It was named for Jimmy Daugherty."(1) Beard went on to say that he himself had camped at the springs many times in company with various old mountaineers of the early period, including Kit Carson and George Simpson (Jake Beard's father-in-law). From them he had often heard the story of Jimmy Daugherty.
With the two names now linked to form one person (Jimmy Daugherty), it only remaind for Cragin to search the annals of the west for further information on this individual. Professor Cragin found a Sergeant James Daugherty stationed at Taos during the Mexican War. Daugherty belonged to Company B from Platte County Missouri. The company had been mustered in at Fort Leavenworth on 27 June 1846 and mustered out again on 18 August 1847. In 1849 there was a Daugherty who was serving as one of the sutlers at Fort Laramie. Finally, a Jim Daugherty was listed as an old mountaineer guide "thoroughly posted on this country" in the Powder River Expedition of 1865.(2)
In his notes, left on his death to the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, Cragin concluded his study of Jimmy Camp with the following observations: first, that the Daugherty of the Sage account had the first name "Jimmy;" second, that the report of Daugherty's death by the Mexican in Taos was a mere fiction; third, that even though Kit Carson and other mountain men had spread word of his death, Jimmy Daugherty had - for reasons known only to himself - gone into temporary hiding. He later reappeared in the guise of a soldier in Taos, a storekeepr at Fort Laramie, and a guide on the Powder River.(3)
The story of Jimmy Camp was not completely finalized by these discoveries of Professor Cragin. A far different account of Jimmy was published in the Denver Inter-Ocean of 7 January 1882. Cragin himself seems never to have found this account, although he did hear secondhand reports of it in some of his interviews. The story as published was writtn by L.W. Cutler, a newspaperman who had first come to Denver in 1859. The story read in part:
"This camp had a habitation and a name as early as 1833 or 1834 - nearly half a century ago - when the Hudson Bay Company established here...a trading post to sell trinkets and buy furs of the Indians and trappers. Once a year would a train of wagons come up the Arkansas valley, and then up the Fontaine qui Bouille, until they arrived at this beautiful spot where the water was pure and wood was in abundance, and where the hills to the north and the west sheltered them from the terrible hail storms that sometimes swept over the plains, and then camp for a trade. These wagons were in charge of a little dwarf Irishman named Jimmy Boyer. From him came the name "Jimmy's Camp." He built himself a snug log house in the shape of a fort, and on leaving it would remove all doors and windows, which he carried in his wagon to be used when he returned again. His mode of advertising his arrival from the East was to build a large signal-fire upon the most prominent point of ground, when the Indians would come from far and near to smoke with him the pipe of peace and make their yearly trade. When he had purchased all of their furs and buffalo robes, he would load his wagons and again wend his way to civilization.
"Poor Jimmy! He came once too often. On this occasion he had scarcely built his fire ere a party of six gurillas from Old Mexico pounced upon him and murdered him, and then carried away all his valuable goods. The Indians, coming into camp soon after and finding him murdered, pursued his murderers, and, on overtaking them, avenged his death by hanging the Mexicans by their toes to the limbs of trees. These are matters of history, as related to the writer by old Jim Beckwourth - the once celebrated mulatto scout and war-chief of the Blackfoot Indians. Beckwourth was in command of the warriors who did the execution. Several years later, Colonel Fremont visited the camp and found the wrecks of the wagons still remaining and the old log cabin yet intact. Beckwourth accompanied him to the place and showed him where Jimmy was buried. Over his grave was set a stone slab, lying flat on the ground, on which the Indians carved in their crude way some figurs representing one man with his throat cut, while six others were suspended by their toes to a limb."(4)
The source of this story on Jimmy Camp seems to have been mountain man James P. Beckwourth, a friend and associate of Jim Bridger and Kit Carson. Beckwourth came west with the fur brigade of William H. Ashley in the early 1820's. He spent many years with the Crow Indians, even becoming a sub-chief in their tribal organization. In the late 1830's Beckwourth was engaged as trader for the firm of Vasquez and Sublette at their adobe fort on the South Platte. Later, when the fort was sold, he driftd to Santa Fe. He claimed to have assisted in the building of the old Pueblo on the Arkansas River in 1842. Two years after, he emigrated to California and there helped in the writing of his autobiography. He returned to the present Denver area during the gold rush of 1859. For a time he ran the store of A. Pike Vasquez, then operated a farm a couple of miles south of Denver City. It was during his stay in Denver City that a freindship developed with William N. Byers, editor of the Rocky Mountain News, and probably also with newspaperman L.W. Cutler. Access to the printed word presented the certainty of a large audience, and old Jim Beckwourth never was known to pass up the opportunity for telling a good story. His fame as a mountain man and Crow Indian Chief was exceeded only by his growing reputation for telling tall tales. Added to this was a seemingly inborn tendency to place himslf at the center of every story he told. Cetainly, Beckwourth knew Jimmy Camp well. He had camped there many times himself. He was also well versed in the Jimmy obituary, which had spread among the mountain men in the early 1840's. But the story Beckwourth passed along to Cutler most probably improved somewhat on the original facts. It was interesting, certainly. It was colorful. Above all, it was the stuff of which legends were made. Alice Polk Hill repeated the Cutler-Beckwourth legend of Jimmy in her Tales of Colorado Pioneers, first published in 1884. Frank Hall did likewise in History of the State of Colorado, but with minor variations: Jimmy Boyer became Jimmy Hayes and the six murdering Mexicans multiplied to eleven. (1) - F.W. Cragin's notes of an interview with Jacob Beard at El Paso, Texas, 30 Ocober 1904. Cragin Collection, Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum. (2) - F.W. Cragin quotes from H.E. Palmer's "General Conner's Powder River Expedition of 1865," in Transactions and Reports of the Nebraska Historical Society, Vol.II, p.205. (3) - L.W. Cutler, "Frontier Sketches," Inter-Ocean, 7 January 1882. (4) - Fremont did pass through Jimmy Camp on his way to the old Pueblo on the morning of 12 July 1843, but he made no mention of the camp. See The Expeditions of John Charles Fremont. ed. Donald Jackson and Mary Le Spence (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1970), Vol.I, p443.
In light of Beckwourth's reputation, it is doubtful that the story he told newspaperman L.W. Cutler contained more than a thread of truth. In neither Fremont's journals nor in Beckwourth's autobiography is there any mention made of Jimmy Camp, much less of the log cabin or grave belonging to one Jimmy Boyer.(5)
©1999 2000 Richard Gehling
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