Peg Leg Smith
Information comes from Treasured Tidbits of Time Volume I by Jens Patrick Wilde and is a condensed version
Thomas L Smith was born 10 Oct 1801 at Crab Orchard, Garrard County, Kentucky. His father, Christopher Ethan Earle Smith was a soldier and a grist mill worker. Christopher, a fighter by nature, was born in Ireland. Shortly after coming to the United States, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served with General Arthur St. Clair. Smith came to Kentucky and met and married Nancy Long Brown 23 Dec 1793. Nancy was twice divorced before she met Smith and had four small children, owning a 33 acre farm on Dick's River between Crab Orchard and Lancaster. The marriage was a stormy one from the beginning. Christopher managed to spend most of his time away from home in military campaigns, returning just often enough to keep his wife pregnant.
Tom, the fourth born, proved to be his father's favorite. In spite of this, when the elder Smith was drunk, the boy received brutal beatings as readily as the other children. In order to make funds for his drunkenness, Christopher developed an illegal liquor transaction with the nearby Indians. As his favorite, Tom was exposed to this business at the age of 10 making trips with his father to the villages where he learned to love the simple Indian life. Coupling this with the hatred he had developed for school and the distaste of his father's brutality, Tom with his brother Earle, ran away from home a few days before his 16th birthday, heading westward, first to Nashville to his sister's son. It didnt take long to get forwarded to an Uncle on the Cumberland building flatboats. Tom dislike the work and the bossing from his uncle and brother, so he disappeared to be on his own.
He spent his first winter alone at Natchez, Mississippi earning his keep at a roadside tavern where he became excited by the stories about the opening of the western country. While there he was involved in a fight where he knifed a drunken river man and left to the Osage Indians. Within two years he had established himself a lodge of importance with a lucrative, but illegal liquor business, a pregnant Osage companion and still the desire to move further west. He had a knack for mastering language and was soon able to communicate in Osage, Cherokee, Choctaw and Chickasaw. One day, he left everything behind and joined an upriver expedition with a French trapper and got his taste of real western trapping.
While working with Antoine Robidoux, he learned that his parents had divorced. Tom moved on to the Illinois country, trading and mastering the languages of the Saux, Fox and Pottawatomie tribes. Things went well until his 21st birthday when he contracted malaria. His Indian friends moved him to Boone's Lick Missouri where his older sister nursed him back to health.
Once well, he joined Robidoux in St Joseph and they wintered in 1822-23 in Nebraska. After a successful trapping season, Smith was sent to St Louis for supplies. While there he went on his usual drunk and ended in jail. By coincidence a prisoner's lunch was served to him in a greasy newspaper in which an advertisement had been placed calling for joiners to the William Ashley Andrew Henry plan to explore the upper Yellowstone. He knew the recruiter, James Clyman and he bailed him out of jail. He jointed the Ashley forces on Mar 11, 1823 as an interpreter and trapper.
Within two months the expedition was fighting the famed Arikara Battle on May 30th near present day, Pierre, South Dakota. The bravery shown by Smith in the engagement established him as a leader among trappers. By Sep 1824 Thomas and others of the Ashley trappers had gone beyond the great bend of the Mississippi and had turned southward toward the lands of the Utes and the Shoshones.
Smith formed a friendly alliance with the Ute tribe that became a major part of his life. For years Thomas lived a cycle of trapping, drinking his wages away in various towns, then heading back into the country to trap some more. In 1827 Thomas lost his leg, an event which made him famous as "Peg Leg". A trapping expedition headed by Sylvester Pratte neared the North Park Colorado, being constantly attacked by the Crow Tribe. Pratte and another trapper were killed in an ambush. Smith attempted to retrieve their bodies, stood out long enough to be hit in the ankle by a rifle ball fired at close range. For an hour, Smith lay on the battlefield and was finally carried by his companions for a mile to a safer area. They gave him a shot of whiskey but no effort was made to dress the wound.
Half in delirium, half in anger Smith leveled his rifle at the cook, Joseph Bejux and ordered him to sterilize a butcher knife which he began his own amputation cursing his companions for their cowardice. As morning came Smith's leg was wrapped in a soiled shirt, bound with leather thongs and poulticed in twists of tobacco. The expedition broke camp and drug Smith on a horse litter for 150 miles across Colorado. On day they met with the Ute Indians with whom Smith had spent the winter of 1824. He was turned over to them who made their summer camp. Gangrene and infection had set in and blood poisoning was headed to his heart.
The Utes tended him and he recovered giving him the name Peg Leg. He carved his own wooden leg, and learned to use it as a club and a battle weapon. Two years after the amputation he was again trapping in the Virgin and Santa Clara Rivers, with William Wolfskill and a Ute named Walkara, later to be come Chief Walker. Walkara and Smith became solid and life long friends. Smith taught him England. Brigham Young admitted he was very much surprised that the tall handsome Chief could speak and understand English. Smith married Walkara's sister Mountain Fawn and was adopted into the Ute Tribe.
Smith and Wolfskill made a trip to California where they bought horses cheap and brought them back at a huge profit at Jim Bridger's Fort. In California the same problems followed Smith, his love for liquor and his desire for the Spanish maidens. In a drunken stupor, he beat up the Mayor of Los Angeles and was jailed for three months. When released he stole 400 horses from the first Rancho he found and two days later they were in Texas
"Peg-Leg" Smith not only was he among the first white men in the Bear Lake area, he was also the first to become a permanent settler. The became the first rancher-farmer, store owner and merchant. Long before the Mormons reached the valley, he had already practiced polygamy having five children born to him in one summer. It is known that he and his wives were at the trappers rendezvous at the south end of Bear Lake in 1827.
Stealing became a way of life for Smith and he became known to Kit Carson during this time. By 1840 Smith was broke and restless so planned another raid into California. Using Walkara and his tribe over 2800 horses were eventually trailed into southern Utah. Another raid planned for November 1841 to be Smith's last but they were ambushed and lost men and animals. Smith lost his standing in the tribe and could no longer be trusted. This alone caused Smith to move to Bear Lake in the spring of 1842. With him he toke 1500 horses, his three wives and a small group of friends.
He settled on the Bear River near Dingle where the majority of Oregon and California traffic would pass by his trading post. He bought a young Bannock woman who gave him a son and served as a liaison with the Bannock, Snake and Shoshone tribes.
Smith was in the valley when the first party of Mormons explored the area in 1847, led by Solomon Hale. Peg Leg met his first Mormons in mid-June 1847 near South pass. He was going eastward with furs, horses and other products of his camp. Smith greeted the Mormon vanguard led by Erastus Snow and offered advice and encouragement to them. After visiting one night, he continued on his way leaving behind his trusted assistant Barney Ward to draw the immigrants a map and outline the best route for them to follow. Ward suggested they settle in nearby Cache Valley and never mentioned the Bear River Valley.
A few days later the Mormon column met Jim Bridger, June 28, 1847. He did not speak well of Peg Leg Smith nor did he greet the Mormons with any enthusiasm. The Saints learned early that to deal with Smith was better than Bridger. Brigham Young soon learned all there was to know about Peg Leg and his Bear Lake holdings. Between 1847 and 1857, he corresponded many time with the trapper. Isaac Brown, an early Mormon trapper and explorer acted as courier between Young and Smith.
Smith left Bear Lake in 1857 sending his Crow wife back to her people and taking his son Jimmie with him. He left his son with the Ute tribe and went on to California. During his last years he drank up any money he had and died in poverty Oct 15, 1866 in a San Francisco county hospital and was buried as a pauper in the Laurel Hills cemetery.