On The Trail Of Pegleg Smith

Guest post by Steve Baldwin

(Editor’s note: Steve Baldwin stopped by the campfire with intel on one of the most colorful of the Mountain Men — Thomas Long “Pegleg” Smith. Steve has been hard on Pegleg’s trail, and he believes he has turned up evidence that some of that trail has been overgrown with folklore. He’s at work on a book that intends to set the record straight. And there’s some really interesting stuff here. Of coursse I asked him if he’s put together a post. I want to thank Steve for reaching out and challenging some of the elements of the Frontier Partisans Podcast on Pegleg’s epic horse-stealing raid into California in the Once Upon A Tine in Los Angeles series. This is how we draw a bead on the truth — as best we can).

I first became aware of Pegleg Smith in 2000 in the course of producing a television show called “America’s Legend Detectives” which was to be a reality show focusing on famous lost mine stories of the Old West. The show has yet to be picked up by any television platform but in the meantime, I became fascinated with this almost mythical person. It dawned on me that only one full length book on his life was ever published, and that was 80 years ago. Unlike Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, and other famous pioneers/mountain men of his era, there is very little published about him by people who actually knew him.

So I decided to write a book about him and I began a four year search for information about his life. I came to the realization that much of the legends that have filtered down to us over the years may not be accurate. Indeed, the story about his lost gold mine has been a staple of the pulp magazines and lost treasure magazines dating back to the 1930s, but the accuracy of these publications is questionable. Complicating all of this is that Pegleg avoided the press and only gave two newspaper interviews in his lifetime that I’ve been able to find.

After four years of searching through museum back rooms, libraries, private collections and various archives, I have been able to locate a few thousand manuscripts, diaries, Mexican government memos, LDS documents, etc. concerning Pegleg, with some of the material authored by people who actually knew him, such as Brigham Young. As such, I’ve come to a few conclusions which I will delve into more deeply when I complete my book:

• Pegleg was successful fur trapper, who trapped with many of the greats of that era and helped to blaze some of the early trails of the West.

• Pegleg was intelligent. Despite stories he had no formal education, I found letters written by him that were quite literate. He exchanged letters with Brigham Young, for example, in the course of assisting the Mormons when they first settled in Utah. I also found letters by him in the Hudson Bay Company archives. Moreover, I discovered he spoke eight different Indian languages and was called upon several times by the government to assist with peace negotiations with various tribes.

• Pegleg was a successful trader. He set up a trading post on the Oregon trail in an area which is now Idaho. He assisted hundreds of overland emigrants by fixing broken down wagons, selling them new horses or providing food and water to them. He would even let them sleep in his cabin. After reading hundreds of diaries by overland emigrants, the most common story I have found is meeting the famous Pegleg Smith and how much he helped them. He assisted so many emigrants that in the 1860s a bill was introduced in Congress to give him a pension.

• Pegleg was the most successful horse thief of the West. At first glance, that does not sound like a great attribute but his efforts were focused on only the large Mexican ranchos during the time period when the USA was trying to acquire the Southwest. I have evidence that the U.S. government not only knew of Pegleg’s horse raids but may have encouraged these raids, since they were trying to pressure Mexico to leave the Southwest. Indeed, Pegleg’s raids upon Mexican ranchos appear to be part of an organized series of provocations by the U.S. that eventually led to the Mexican-American War, a war that our government knew we would win. And yes, Pegleg did rely on Ute Indian chief Walkara and his band of Utes to carry out these raids. Thousands of horses were stolen over several years and this helped to destabilize the California economy which the ranchos were a big part of. Mexican government documents show they were fearful of him.

• Pegleg was not a child slaver. I have located, I believe, everything ever written about Pegleg’s association with Walkara and have not found a shred of evidence that he assisted Walkara on his child stealing raids. Most of this activity appears to have occurred before Walkara met Pegleg.

• Pegleg opened what may be the first whiskey distillery in the West. This would be in 1824 in Taos, N.M.

• Pegleg did not find the gold mine that his name is synonymous with. Pegleg’s real name is Thomas Long Smith and he died in 1866. There are no stories of him finding and losing a gold mine appearing during his lifetime. One of his fellow trappers, George Yount, was asked about this and he said that people must be confused. Apparently, while Yount and Pegleg were trapping near what is now Lake Mead, Yount found a gold nugget but neither of them thought much of it. However, the earliest stories about Pegleg finding blackened gold nuggets atop a butte in the Colorado desert date to the 1870s, but no earlier. Lastly, in the only interviews with reporters he gave before his death, he went into great detail about his entire life but never mentions finding gold on a butte in the Colorado desert.

• There is a second Pegleg Smith. I have found some evidence that a one legged man who was also called Pegleg Smith did find blackened gold in the desert. His name was James Smith and he was Civil War veteran. He was based at Fort Yuma for a spell and sometime between 1860-1870, this Smith crossed the desert and stumbled
upon some blackened rocks that were later determined to be gold. Ever since then, the two Pegleg Smiths have been confused and their stories conflated.

That there are two Pegleg Smiths should not be surprising since Smith was a very common name and everyone missing a leg in those days was nicknamed “Pegleg.”

I’m still researching both Pegleg Smiths as I have more leads to follow. Just in the last few days, I have located the names of his Indian wives (all five of them!), and the names of some of his children. I just discovered that his son, Jim Smith, ran a trading post in Plumas County. As for the second Pegleg, he is proving much more difficult to investigate but I am currently plowing
through old military records from Ft. Yuma to see if I find evidence he was stationed there.

If anyone has any info on Pegleg that you think I may not have, please let me know!