Beckwourth’s party stopped downstream at Fort Union and tried to negotiate a deal there that would have allowed him to make that his base of operations. He was not successful, he told his biographer, due to the trapping business being “unusually dull” at that moment. Therefore, he proceeded to St. Louis intending to marry, but that engagement fell through, leaving him at loose ends.
The Seminole Indian war was on; a sorry episode in American history. A General Gaines came to St. Louis seeking men who would fight the Seminoles. Gaines raised sixty-four mountain men as a fighting force, of which Beckwourth was made the captain. When his days with the army in Florida came to an end, Beckwourth returned to the West to trade with the Cheyenne. Tiring of that, he roamed much of the West, fighti
