NEW LIGHT SHED ON MR. PEGLEG SMITH

San Francisco: John Howell--Books, ND., ND. First edition. First Edition. Limited to 200 copies. Stiff Pictorial Wrappers. 10pp. Designed and printed by Lawton and Alfred Kennedy. An interesting perspective on old Pegleg Smith, well-known character of the fur trade era. Pegleg Smith began his career as a mountain man when he left Missouri in 1820 with Antoine Robidoux on a two-year trapping and trading expedition among the Sioux and Osage Indians. In 1824, he went to New Mexico as a trapper and in the fall of 1826 he joined Ewing Young’s expedition into Arizona. He spent a good part of his life trapping the rivers of the Southwest. Smith arrived in California in early 1829 and began a career in steeling and selling horses. As a prospector, in 1829 he traveled to the Chocolate Mountains (and possibly the Santa Rosa Mountains, or the Borrego Badlands) where, after several years of prospecting, he was forced, by local tribes, to escape the area. Claiming he had discovered a large amount of gold-bearing quartz, Smith sold maps and claims to other prospectors of a mine known as the Lost Pegleg Mine until his death in a San Francisco hospital in 1866. This booklet acknowledges the accomplishments of Pegleg Smith as a mountain man and trapper. As New.