Songwriter Leon Payne wrote the tune in the late 1950s. He sold it to Johnny Horton and it became a hit on Horton’s 1960 album, “Johnny Horton Makes History.”
It was an ode to the mountain man Jim Bridger. He mentions Kit Carson in the song, but he could just as easily have included another legendary mountain man, Jim Baker.
Carson and Bridger frequented the Sweetwater and Wind River Country, but Baker made it his semi-permanent home.
“Jim Bridger”
Once there was a mountain man who couldn’t write his name
Yet, he deserves the front row seat in History’s Hall of Fame
He forgot more about the Indians than we will ever know
He spoke the language of the Sioux, the Black Foot and the Crow
There’s poems and there’s legends that tell of Carson’s fame
Yet, compared to Jim Bridger Kit was civilized and tame
These words are straight from Carson’s lips if you place that story by him
If there’s a man who knows this god forsaken land it’s Jim
You can never say a place was a mountain man’s permanent home, because they didn’t choose to live that way. Even in later years, Jim Baker kept a cabin on the Green River but still traveled north to see friends and family on the Shoshone areas of the Wind River Reservation. Sometimes his visits lasted a few days, sometimes several months.
He lived the life.
Jim Baker was born in Belleville, Illinois, on December 19th, 1818. He grew up in the little town, the farm country surrounding it, and the larger town of Springfield.
Baker’s parents, William and Phoebe Baker, were intent on providing him an education, but the tales of trappers, buffalo, and Native Americans were too much for the teenager’s imagination.
Baker left home at 19, heading west for St. Louis on foot. He heard about a job with the American Fur Company on a trapping expedition to the Rocky Mountains and signed on immediately.
He met the expedition leader, Jim Bridger, for the first time. Baker signed an 18-month contract with Bridger and headed into the Colorado and Wyoming Rockies.
One of the experienced trappers piqued young Baker a bit, telling him, “A Sioux, Cheyenne, or Blackfoot Injun will sure get your scalp.”
Baker might have been worried, but he didn’t show it. On May 25, 1838, he and Bridger’s company loaded onto the St. Peter, a paddle-wheeled steamboat, and headed up the Missouri River.
At 20, Baker had long, curly, blond hair and blue eyes.
At the future location of Kansas City, they left the St. Peter, loaded into keelboats, and traveled up the Kaw River another 90 miles.
They left the keelboats, loaded all their provisions, ammunition, traps, and trading goods into carts, and began traveling across the plains.
The Life of Jim Baker – Maggie Kilgore, Savery, Wyoming – June, 1917
“They were going to Grand Island on the Platte River. They had very little trouble until they came to the Laramie plains, where, Baker declared, the Indians were as thick as bees.
The party was stopped many times and were subjected to examinations. Two or three councils were held to decide their fate.
“Thanks to Bridger,” said Baker, “for our safety, because I learned then and later of his great knowledge and ability to treat with the redskins was never excelled by any scout of the plains.”
The little band of trappers then journeyed westward, into the Sweetwater Country, toward the Wind River Range.”
It was 30 years before Wyoming became a territory and over 50 to statehood when Baker first crossed the Laramie River heading west to the shining peaks of the Wind River Range.
He and Bridger met Kit Carson at the 1838 Rendezvous on the Wind River near modern-day Riverton in July and August.
That following winter, Baker hunted and trapped on the Sweetwater River on South Pass and into the Green River Valley a few dozen miles to the west.
In 1840, his contract with the American Fur Company expired, and he returned home to see his parents.
He wasn’t the same fair-haired, fair-skinned teenager that left two years before. Though he was only 21, he was a veteran mountain man. The thought of confinement on the farm or in town didn’t appeal to Baker. He left home again; this time, it was four decades before he would return.
In 1841, Baker packed his things and headed west, traveling alone until he reached the Green River Valley.
It was a dangerous time to be a trapper or hunter along the Sweetwater or Green River Valleys. The Arapaho, Sioux, and Cheyenne were in a state of war with trappers and early travelers in the days before the massive migration to the West Coast came on the Oregon Trail.
Baker found his friend Jim Bridger camped at Henry’s Fork.
Bridger’s partner, a man named Trapp, and about 20 other trappers were working on the Little Snake River, and Bridger was worried about them.
Bridger asked Baker to search for Trapp and company and warn them about the hostile tribes.
Baker and two other men traveled south a few days and found the party camped on the Snake River near the present town of Baggs in southern Carbon County.
Baker was in camp just a few hours when word arrived that a hostile band had attacked a trappers’ camp a few miles to the north.
The band made off with 40 of the trappers’ horses after a brief but action-filled battle.
Baker and five men took off after the stolen horses but after two days gave up the search.
Bridger, Baker, and the men from the northern camp all gathered together along Savery Creek. They stayed for a couple of weeks, trapping and hunting the abundant buffalo grazing nearby.
On August 20, they broke camp and followed the Snake River up to Battle Creek.
The trappers found an ideal location on Battle Creek where it makes a right angle before flowing into the Snake River. It sits at the base of Squaw Mountain. The mountain and the streams provided protection from attack on all four sides.
The Life of Jim Baker – Maggie Kilgore, Savery, Wyoming – June, 1917
“A majority of this party were employees of the fur companies. The party was composed of many nationalities, but there seems to have been a greater number of French than any other. The fort was now ready for use, and as the shadows of night settled over the valley, the horses were put in the corral, and the little band of adventurers sank to earth, no doubt to sweet slumbers.
Early the next morning the whole camp was astir, all hopeful in the prospect of success, for they were now in a hunter’s and trapper’s paradise, as good as earth could afford. All chose for the day his own employment.
Baker and a companion had gone to the opposite side of the river and killed some buffalo near what is now known as Cantlin Creek. While in the act of skinning their game, attention was attracted to clouds of dust coming through the Sweetwater Pass.
“This didn’t look good to us,” said Jim, “and we were not long in making up our minds that it was Indians.”
Baker and his partner were caught on open ground by the approaching party. It was a race to see who could get to the safety of the encampment at the base of Squaw Mountain.
Other trappers saw the cloud of dust raised by the approaching war party and corralled the horses, started loading rifles, and prepared the cottonwood enclosure for attack.
There were 32 trappers inside the hastily built fort and an estimated 700 Sioux, Arapaho, and Cheyenne moving in.
It was an impressive sight, right out of a western movie with galloping Native warriors charging on horseback, letting out loud war-whoops and flurries of arrows at the embedded trappers.
Though vastly outnumbered, the trappers had the protection of fallen trees, the barrier of the two streams, and a slope too steep to ride up or down behind them.
The battle lasted into the 100-degree-plus heat of the August afternoon. Both sides took a break from the battle in the hot sun.
The streams provided protection but at a cost. The banks were heavily lined with willows and cottonwoods, giving excellent cover for warriors to move silently closer to the trappers.
During the lull, the trappers took inventory and discovered they were low on ammunition.
“Make every bullet count,” Bridger told them.
As evening approached, the attack began again. This time the Natives concentrated on the horse corral, sending showers of arrows down on the frightened horses.
Baker and eight men attacked the warriors on their flank. The plan backfired. The trappers were driven back to the fort. As night fell, the Natives were crossing the south side of the Snake River.
With darkness, the attack halted.
It was a sleepless night inside the compound. Four trappers had been killed, another dozen wounded, and many of the horses were dead.
Expecting the worst with the rising sun, the trappers were surprised as the attackers took a few long-range shots, then everything was quiet.
Baker and a few other men moved outside the compound and discovered the attacking warriors had ridden away.
Two days of fighting at Battle Mountain was over on August 22.
With little remaining ammunition, the trappers buried the four dead, gathered the best horses, and left for Fort Bridger, a three-day ride.
The Life of Jim Baker – Maggie Kilgore, Savery, Wyoming – June, 1917
“In looking over the Valley of the Snake, though to the hunter and lover of the wild life it can be little more than a skeleton of its primitive self, one cannot find in his heart to condemn the wild tribes for their battle with each other and later with the whites for its undisputed possession, nor does he find fault with Jim Baker for making it his home after having seen most of the wonderful spots of the great West as it was over half a century ago.”
Baker continued to trap and hunt along both sides of the Wind River Range. He moved freely between the Sweetwater Valley and the Green River Valley but eventually found a home on the Wind River with his third wife.
Few mountain men spent as much of their lives in central Wyoming or influenced its early history more than Jim Baker.
By the 1850s, Baker’s life was changing. The wandering trapper was becoming a husband, father, scout, and eventually one of the best-known frontiersmen in Wyoming.
All three of Jim Baker’s wives were Native American. His first wife, Marina, passed away in 1853.
His second wife, Mary, often regarded as Jim’s “real” wife, went by Belle. Mary Belle “Meeteetse” Baker was born in 1839. She was 21 years younger than Jim. Belle was a relative of Chief Washakie of the Eastern Shoshones. Their daughter Isabelle married Napoleon Bonaparte Kinnear, who founded one of the first non-native ranches on the north side of the Wind River.
Baker’s final wife was Yanetze Eliza “Beans” Baker.
After divorcing Belle, Baker married Beans in 1859.
Marina had two sons, William and Joseph, and a daughter, Jeanieve “Jane”. Jane was born in 1851 and died of smallpox in 1857. She was buried in Denver.
Baker and his second wife, Mary, had daughters Mary, Isabelle, Madeline, Nancy, Kate, Liza, and Elsie, and sons Thomas, Buck, and Jim.
Beans had one daughter, Elizabeth Jane “Jennie” Baker.
All three wives traveled with Jim along the Wind, Green, and Sweetwater Rivers, but Belle eventually moved back to the Wind River Reservation, where she remained until she died in 1899.
Jim had children by other women; he just didn’t bother to marry all of them.
Annals of Wyoming – Volume 6
RECOLLECTIONS OF TAYLOR PENNOCK
As Dictated to Mr. I. R. Conniss, Saratoga, Wyoming, April 1927
“One day, Jim Baker told us a story about his buffalo hunting. The game hunt he told me about was here in this country. He was with a big party of Indians camped over near Brown’s Hill on the Savary. They stayed there for over three weeks and never had to leave the camp over three hundred yards to kill buffalo. There was a string of buffalo passing all the time and it took the buffalo herds three weeks to pass, coming from the North Park country where they had their summer range and going to the Red Desert for the winter.
This must have been about 1858.
All the time Baker was talking his hands were going, to demonstrate like an Indian would. He told me of another time he was with an Indian camp on Cherry Creek where Denver now is, when they were attacked by soldiers and prospectors. He said Cherry Creek was so high they had to swim it to get away. He had a papoose then and took the papoose on his horse and swam across with it and said the squaw drowned. I told him he should have saved the squaw. “Oh well,” he said, “there’s lots of squaws.”
Baker eventually had 14 children.
Trapping as a commercial venture ended in the 1840s, but Baker kept a trap line until 1855. His knowledge of the people, animals, and land in present-day Wyoming and northern Colorado was invaluable.
He was hired as a U.S. Army scout many times and worked as both a tracker and a guide, as well as an interpreter. Baker spoke several native languages and was fluent in sign language as well.
He worked for the Army in the Mormon-Utah War, at the Meeker Massacre, and in the Battle of the Rosebud in Montana Territory.
On July 3, 1859, he took a claim on Clear Creek near present-day Denver. It became known as Baker’s Crossing.
He was a rancher, ran a wagon coal mine, and built a toll bridge across the Cache La Poudre River before returning to Wyoming.
Like many aging mountain men, Jim Baker was a storyteller as well.
Annals of Wyoming – Volume 6
RECOLLECTIONS OF TAYLOR PENNOCK
As Dictated to Mr. I. R. Conniss, Saratoga, Wyoming, April 1927.
“When he was trapping over near the Freezeout Mountains in the year 1874, he was up in the mountains with a party shooting bears. He and his partner wounded one. The bear came down the hill right toward them. His partner, who had on buckskin pants, tried to climb a dry quaking asp tree (which is very slippery). He kept sliding down but finally got up to the limbs. Here, he got his arm over a knot in the tree and hung. Baker said he ran to a green pine and climbed up it. The bear came and laid down by the tree and died. His partner called to him, “Can’t you shoot him?” “No,” said Baker, “he’s lying there watching me.” “Kill him if you can, ’cause I can’t hang on here much longer,” shouted the partner. “Well,” said Baker, “I thought I’d let him hang on there long enough so finally said, ‘You might as well come down because he’s dead.’ Say, he slipped his arm off that knot and came down like he was shot and gave me a good cussing for not telling him before that the bear was dead.”
Baker had a sense of humor as well.
He settled on the Snake River, where he built a stout, log house by a cold spring. It had a clear view for a mile or more in all directions.
Even in his later years, Jim Baker kept an eye out for trouble.
Baker died on May 15, 1898. He was buried on the ridge of a low hill to the north of his house.
For over sixty years he played a major role in the settlement of Wyoming.
He is gone, but his resting place is a vista to both the past and the future of the land he loved. One reminder of Jim Baker’s legacy is the tiny hamlet of Kinnear, 18 miles west of Riverton, named after his son-in-law, Napoleon Bonaparte Kinnear.
The speed limit changes from 70 miles per hour to 35 at Kinnear, but it is still much faster than the ox carts that brought Jim Baker west to Wyoming almost two centuries ago.