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537 pp. Frontispiece and 12 wood-engraved plates included in the pagination. (12mo) 19.5x12 cm (7¾x4¾"), original blindstamped cloth, spine lettered in gilt. First Edition.

Jim Beckwourth (c.1800-1866 or 1867) was an American mountain man, fur trader, and explorer. A mulatto born into slavery in Virginia, he was freed by his father (and master) and apprenticed to a blacksmith; later he moved to the American West, where as a fur trapper, he lived with the Crow Nation for years. 

Wagner-Camp notes that "After many years in the Rockies as a mountain man, Beckwourth journeyed west from New Mexico to California, arriving in 1844. Two years later, he came back to New Mexico with a drove of stolen horses. He returned to California, discovered the pass through the Sierra Nevada that still bears his name, and operated a hotel and trading post in Beckwourth Valley. Sometime after 1858 he returned to his old life in the Rockies. He testified in the Sand Creek investigation in 1865 and died in the following year." Cowan p.41; Field 149; Graff 347; Howes B601; Sabin 4265; Streeter 2101; Wagner-Camp 272:1.