page_title: Thomas Fitzpatrick (trapper)
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Fitzpatrick (trapper)
caption_attribution_description: English: South Pass, or the Continental Divide, was the gateway to Oregon and California. The southwestern desert was not yet as fully explored as the Midwest, and so the trail along the Platte became the favored route. Discovered in 1812, the pass remained unknown to Anglo-Americans until a group of Crow Indians told Jedediah Smith and Thomas Fitzpatrick about it in 1824. After William H. Ashley started the rendezvous system in 1825, Fitzpatrick and others used South Pass as the entrance to the best beaver country in the mountains. Here Miller pictures the frenzy that possessed the men as they neared the fresh water. The Indians, watching in contempt, Miller suggested, had much the same attitude as did Captain Stewart, who would not run his horse for the water but walked casually along as if he did not feel the same thirst that possessed the men.
context_page_description: Thomas Fitzpatrick, known as "Broken Hand", was a famous Irish-American "mountain man", "friend of the Indians", trailblazer and trapper with the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. With Jedediah Smith, he led a trapper band that discovered South Pass, Wyoming; however, before that Robert Stuart led the first known white party through the South Pass.
  He shepherded the first two emigrant wagon trains to Oregon, including the Bartleson-Bidwell Party in 1841. He was the official guide to John C. Fremont on his second, and longest, expedition in 1843–44. He guided Col. Stephen W. Kearny and his Dragoons along the westward trails in 1845 to impress the Native Americans with their howitzers and swords.
  Fitzpatrick helped negotiate the Fort Laramie treaty of 1851, at the largest council ever assembled of Native Americans of the Plains. He spoke Native American languages and deeply respected them as well. Among the most colorful and highly regarded of mountain men, Fitzpatrick was also party to many of the most important events in the expansion of the West.
  In 1849, Fitzpatrick married Margaret Poisal, an Arapaho woman and the niece of Arapaho Chief Niwot.
context_section_description: Thomas Fitzpatrick (1799 – 7 February 1854), known as "Broken Hand" (reportedly because his left hand had been mangled in a firearms accident), was a famous Irish-American "mountain man", "friend of the Indians", trailblazer and trapper with the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.  With Jedediah Smith, he led a trapper band that discovered South Pass, Wyoming; however, before that Robert Stuart led the first known white party through the South Pass.
  He shepherded the first two emigrant wagon trains to Oregon, including the Bartleson-Bidwell Party in 1841. He was the official guide to John C. Fremont on his second, and longest, expedition in 1843–44.  He guided Col. Stephen W. Kearny and his Dragoons along the westward trails in 1845 to impress the Native Americans with their howitzers and swords.
  Fitzpatrick helped negotiate the Fort Laramie treaty of 1851, at the largest council ever assembled of Native Americans of the Plains. He spoke Native American languages and deeply respected them as well. Among the most colorful and highly regarded of mountain men, Fitzpatrick was also party to many of the most important events in the expansion of the West.
  In 1849, Fitzpatrick married Margaret Poisal, an Arapaho woman and the niece of Arapaho Chief Niwot. Poisal served as an important translator for the Arapaho peoples and often worked alongside Fitzpatrick at important meetings. After his death, Poisal served as the official interpreter for the Arapaho during the Little Arkansas Treaty Council in 1865.
  In the winter of 1853–54, Fitzpatrick went to Washington, D.C., to see after treaties that needed to be approved, but while there contracted pneumonia and died on February 7, 1854. He was buried in the Congressional Cemetery there.
  In the 1966 episode "Hugh Glass Meets the Bear" of the syndicated television series, Death Valley Days, the actor Morgan Woodward was cast as Fitzpatrick. John Alderson played Hugh Glass, who after being mauled by a bear and abandoned by Fitzpatrick crawled two hundred miles to civilization. Victor French was cast as Louis Baptiste, with Tris Coffin as Major Andrew Henry.
  Fitzpatrick appears to have been confused or conflated with John S. Fitzgerald, who, according to the Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography, was actually the one who left Glass behind.
  In 2004, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
caption: South Pass, or the Continental Divide
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