LEVIN ASH

Levin Ash was born a freeman in the U.S. while slavery was still practiced in the Southern states. On a journey in Africa, he traveled inland from Liberia and was shot with an arrow after diving in a river to escape an attack. He continued his journey after pulling the arrow from his shoulder, but was found, arrested, stripped naked, and had a large stick fastened to his leg by an iron strap for ten days. Having been seized as a slave, he was taken to a large town to be sold for a gun. Because his captors could not trade him away, they returned him to the town where they had detained him and returned his clothes after depriving him of such cover for 15 days.

JAMES P. BECKWOURTH

James P. Beckwourth (1798 or 1800-1866) was born in Frederick County, Virginia to an African American slave mother and English father, Sir Jennings Beckwith. Although his father raised him as his own son, according to the law, Jim Beckwourth was still legally considered a slave, causing his father to have to appear in court on three occasions to emancipate him. Bitten by wanderlust, he participated in trapping expeditions where he learned his frontiersman skills. His tendency to spin a good yarn in the book he eventually wrote made him a sort of Forest Gump who participated in every major event of the West in the first half of the 19th century. Captured by the Crow Indians, he rose to the level of a war chief, though he claims to have been the chief of the Crow Nation. After leaving the Crow, he took part in the 1837 Battle of Okeechobee under Colonel Zachary Taylor. Heading to Colorado, Beckwourth helped trade with the Cheyenne until he moved to New Mexico to set himself up as a merchant. After a stint in California in 1844, he returned to New Mexico to participate in the Mexican-American War, after which he was again in California for the gold rush. In 1866 he returned to his beloved Crow territory and died near the Bighorn River. Beckwourth was the only African American who played a major role in the early exploration and settlement of the American West to record his life story.

References
Beckwourth, James P. The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth. Ed. T. D. Bonner. New York: Arno Press, 1969.

Suggested Link
www.beckwourth.org

JEAN BAPTISTE POINTE DUSABLE

Dusable (1745?-1818) was a frontier trader, fur trapper, farmer, businessman and often called the father of Chicago. Born free in St. Marc, Saint Dominque (Haiti), the son of a French mariner and an African-born slave mother, he was taken to France for his education and served aboard his father's ships. He spoke several languages and loved art. DuSable was almost enslaved by the Spanish in New Orleans, Louisiana, but French Jesuits protected him until he could relocate upriver to Peoria, Illinois. He relocated to the Great Lakes area. There, in 1779, he built the first permanent home on the north bank of the Chicago River. His trading post consisted of a mill, bake house, dairy, smokehouse, workshop, poultry house, horse stable, barn and several other smaller buildings. In 1800, he sold his business and left the area, dying almost penniless in Missouri.

Suggested Links
www.toptags.com/aama/bio/men/dusable.htm