Chronicles James Pierson Beckwourth’s life from his birth into slavery in Virginia (1798), His mother was also a slave & his father was his family’s white owner, his freedom, his time as a fur trapper with the Rocky Mountain Fur Company & his life living among the Crow Nation where he rose to become a chief. He is credited with the discovery of ‘Beckwourth Pass’ through the Sierra Nevada. Beckwourth also fought in both the Seminole & Mexican wars. He was the only black mountain man to record his autobiography, dictated to Thomas D. Bonner, justice of the peace in 1856.