Thomas Fitzpatrick (trapper)

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.

South Pass, or the Continental Divide

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.[1][2]

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.[3] 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.[4]

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.[5]

In 2004, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.[6]