Black Beaver, Harbinger of the Chisholm Trail

by Paul L Bennett

But for the loyal courage of a 55-year-old Delaware Indian guide, there might never have been a Chisholm Trail. And carrying “maybe’s” just a step further, Oklahoma could have been permanently lost to the union in 1861.

Deep in Confederate territory and surrounded on all sides, Col. William H. Emory abandoned Fort Washita with his 400 Union troops on April 16, 1861. Marching toward Fort Cobb, he captured an advance guard of Texas Confederates, but this was a small consolation for a commander whose near impossible problem still lay ahead and unsolved. Arriving at Fort Cobb, Emery found other troops and civilian refugees that swelled his cavalcade to more than 600. The established routes through the “nations” That led northward to Union territory were straddled by Indian allies of the south.

Here entered Black Beaver (Se-Ket-Tu-Ma-Quah), already known as America’s most reliable Indian guide and western explorer. Seven times he had seen the Pacific. For a decade he had been a trusted employee of the American Fur company in the Pacific Northwest. But by 1853 his days of association with Audubon, Dodge, Marcy and Fremont were behind him. The California Trail over which he had guided Marcy and his first expedition in 1849 now carried thousands of migrants yearly, many of them passed near Black Beavers’s prosperous farm at Fort Arbuckle.

Ten years earlier Black Beaver had taken the white man’s road and prospered in its path, his land and livestock had reached a value of $25,000 by the time Col. Emery summoned him to guide his troops north to safety.

Abandoning all this to the Confederacy, Black Beaver led the command into the Cherokee outlet, near where the Chisholm Trail would cross the southern border of Kansas. The south confiscated all his property and the compensation he finally received from the federal government was less than 25% of his actual loss.
“Of all the Indians of whom the federal government had lavished it’s bounty” wrote Col. Emory “Black Beaver was the only one who would consent to guide the column”. When the forces at last reached Leavenworth, many other officers testified to the patriotism of Black Beaver and to the great value of his services.

Historians differ on the exact route followed by Black Beaver in the Emory retreat on the journey north from Fort Cobb. But, likely, they crossed into the Cherokee strip north of present Hennessey and passed near the sites of Bison, Waskonis, Enid, Medford, Caldwell and Wellington. Others believed they turned east somewhere near the location of Enid and entered Kansas where South Heron now stands. But regardless of route, the command arrived at Fort Leavenworth without the loss of a man, horse or wagon, according to George Reiny in his ‘The Cherokee Strip’.

Did black beaver and Chisholm meet? Probably they did on many occasions. They were born in the same year 1806 and their careers were parallel in time, geography and endeavor. Chisholm too was famous as a guide and interpreter. Of Black Beaver it is said he knew French, Spanish, English and more than a dozen Indian dialects and languages. In fact the late E.B. Johnson of Norman knew Black Beaver well and was told by the Chief that he was with Chisholm when he died at Left Half Springs, March 14,1868. This could well be true. For Black Beaver spent the war years on the Walnut River in Kansas near Chisholm’s trading post and made many journeys to Kansas following the war.

Superintendent James Wortham then sent for Black Beaver to come to Lawrence Kansas in June 1867 and employed him as interpreter for the Indians relocated on the Leased Lands west of the Chickasaw Nation. Black Beaver settled with approximately 40 other members of his Delaware band in the area were Anadarko now stands. He was prominent in the Medicine Lodge Peace Council. Again at the International Indian Conference in Okmulgee on August 1870 he spoke out boldly against activities of the plains tribes who were then raiding into Texas.

Two years later he accompanied Captain Henry E. Alvord’s delegation of plains Indians to Washington and New York. At the Capitol he had a private audience with President Grant and in New York the Gand Central Hotel was thronged with people wishing to meet the guide of John James Audubon in his western tour 40 years earlier.

At Anadarko, Black Beaver again achieved something of the prosperity he left behind at Fort Arbuckle before the war. A visitor there in 1874 records that he found the Delaware with a 200-acre farm in a high state of cultivation. Two of his four daughters married white men who shared with the Chief in his elaborate farming endeavors.

At seventy, Black Beaver was baptized into the Baptist Church and soon became one of the ordained ministers. But his church participation was not a placid one. He and others of the Indian congregations insisted that only native ministers should be sent to the tribes. In the end, after bitter controversy, they gained their desire.

Death came unexpectedly to Black Beaver at his home near the Anadarko Agency on May 8, 1880. His grave protected by the United States government lies a short distance southwest of his farm, most of which is now in the limits of the city.

On May 14, 1954, Black Beaver’s statue was selected as the first for placement in the American Indian Hall of Fame at Anadarko.