SCALP HUNTER
They buried “Old Man Kirker” in 1852 in northern California, not far from the low mountain pass that still bears his name. After the burial his Shawnee and Delaware Indian companions, who had lived and hunted with Kirker at Oak Springs for the past two years, rode east back to their distant homeland. “He died poor,” noted his old trapper companion James Hobbs, “as his habits were such that he could never keep what he acquired.” He also left behind two families—one in New York City and another in New Mexico Territory—as well as a dark legacy of violence and blood.
James Kirker was born in Kilcross, Ireland, just east of Belfast, on Dec. 2, 1793. To spare his Scotch-Irish son from British military service, Gilbert Kirker in 1810 sent the 16-year-old to New York City, where James became a grocer like his father. When the War of 1812 broke out, James willingly warred against Britain, enlisting on the American privateer sloop Black Joke. That secured the young man immediate U.S. citizenship and almost a hangman’s noose when the British captured his ship in 1813. Fortunately, Kirker was included in a prisoner exchange soon thereafter.
Kirker returned to New York, married wealthy widow Catharine Dunigan and set himself up as a shopkeeper. In 1817, seemingly at the behest of westering relatives, he left Catharine and his young stepson behind, eventually opened a store in St. Louis and never returned to his family. Bad luck and a depressed mercantile business in 1822 led him to sign on with Major Andrew Henry and William Ashley’s Rocky Mountain Fur Co. expedition bound for the upper Missouri River. Numbered among the intrepid band were Jedediah Smith, Jim Clyman, Mike Fink, William Sublette, Tom Fitzpatrick, Jim Bridger and Hugh Glass. That fall Major Henry’s party of fur traders established Fort Henry at the mouth of the Yellowstone. When Ashley ventured upriver with additional trappers the following June, the party fell afoul of Arikara warriors (near present-day Pierre, S.D.). Kirker was part of a relief force sent downriver from Fort Henry, and he later joined a punitive expedition under Lt. Col. Henry Leavenworth.
In late May 1824 Kirker joined a Santa
