The Life and Adventures of George Nidever, 1802 - 1883

By William Henry Ellison

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1937.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520345218

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LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF GEORGE NIDEVER

GEORGE NIDEVER

The Life and Adventures of

GEORGE NIDEVER

[1802-1883]

Edited by William Henry Ellison

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

1937

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON,ENGLAND

COPYRIGHT, I937, BY THE

REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

BY SAMUEL T. FARQUHAR, UNIVERSITY PRINTER

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

GEORGE NIDEVER: 1878

Recollections of His Life and Adventures as Dictated by George Nidever to E. F. Murray

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THANKS ARE DUE the officials of the Bancroft Library for permission to use the Nidever and Dittmann documents and other sources; to Miss Barbara Clark for typing the book; to the editors of the Pacific Historical Review for permission to republish, in footnotes, material used in an article therein published; to Dr. George P Hammond for permission to use the edited section of a part of the Nidever document with a historical introduction that was published in Volume Two of New Spain and the Anglo- American West; and to Mr. Samuel T. Farquhar, University Printer, and Mr. Harold A. Small, Editor of the University of California Press, for their courtesies and assistance.

WILLIAM H. ELLISON

Santa Barbara, California, January 30,1935.

INTRODUCTION

GEORGE NIDEVER, a pioneer of California from the year 1834, was born on the frontier in East Tennessee in the year 1802. He was the third child in a family of six sons and three daughters, and he outlived all the others. When he was five years old the family moved to Buncombe County, North Carolina. Nine years later a move was made to the Moreau River in Missouri. Four years after the arrival in Missouri, a party including young George Nidever set out for a frontier point on the Six Bull River north of the Arkansas, but, finding that this section had been given over to Cherokee and other Indians, they finally went to the vicinity of Fort Smith. The Nidever family settled here a little later. After George had made a trip to Austin’s Grant in Texas, where he did not choose to remain, he settled down with his family near Fort Smith and remained at home from 1822 to 1828.

After he and Alex. Sinclair had given a year to an unsuccessful attempt to build a raft of cedar logs on the Canadian Fork of the Arkansas, which they planned to sell in New Orleans, they decided to take to hunting. In May, 1830, they joined a party of hunters and trappers that was formed just above Fort Smith under the headship of a Colonel Bean. Sinclair, like Nidever, had been reared on the frontier. Both were excellent shots, and because of their skill they became the huntsmen detailed to supply the party with fresh meat and game. The party of fortyeight men went up the North Fork of the Canadian and Arkansas rivers, through the Cross Timbers, into the mountains, and finally made their way down into New Mexico to Arroyo Seco and San Fernando de Taos. On the way they had exciting encounters with numerous bands of Indians. Ten men turned back after the first serious Indian difficulty, two were killed, and at Arroyo Seco Colonel Bean and others left the party, some to return to Arkansas, some to join other companies. Only fifteen men of the original band were left.

The diminished band set out for the Platte in March, 1831, and returned to Arroyo Seco in July. In September they started again, planning to go first to the headwaters of the Arkansas. A few Mexicans and a number of French trappers accompanied them. From the headwaters of the Arkansas they went on to the Platte, where the Mexican and French trappers left them. From the Platte they made their way to the Green River valley, where they went into winter quarters.

In the spring of 1832 the band trapped a little before setting out for the rendezvous in Pierre’s Hole. The breakup of the rendezvous was followed by a battle with the Blackfeet Indians in which Sinclair, the devoted friend of Nidever, was killed. The leaderless band hunted through the winter, and in the summer of 1833 Nidever and a few others joined the section of Bonneville’s company under Captain Joseph R. Walker that made the famous trip into California across the upper Sierra Nevada.

Nidever began his hunting career in California with George C. Yount in the region of San Francisco Bay, but soon went to Santa Barbara. There he became renowned as a hunter along the coast and on the Channel Islands. Eventually he married a daughter of the country and became identified with its life. Up to the time of the American conquest, his experiences were as varied as they were exciting, whether he was hunting sea otters and grizzly bears, fighting with the northwestern Indians used by American and British sea captains around the Channel Islands, or campaigning with Fremont, whose company he joined after Fremont reached Santa Barbara in his march south in reconquest of the country.

The gold fields appealed to the adventurous spirit of Nidever, but he had no success with the claim he took up. He acted as pilot for the United States surveyors who made the first surveys in the Channel Island region. One of the most noteworthy of his exploits was the search for and rescue of the "Lone Woman of the Island of San Nicolas? She had lived alone on this island for eighteen years, when she was found and brought ashore to Nidever’s home in 1852. From 1860 until his death on March 24, 1883, Nidever lived quietly in Santa Barbara.

In 1878 Edward F. Murray1 received the story of Nidever’s adventures from the frontiersman’s own lips, recording it in a document of one hundred and sixty-five pages, which was read to Nidever and signed by him as correct. The document which follows is the complete Nidever narrative as it was written down by Murray and prepared for publication by the editor. In addition to the human interest of the story, it throws light upon the struggle of frontiersmen with natives and with nature, and gives valuable information on a pioneer activity of marked historical importance. Also, it is a valuable contribution to the history of California in the fifteen years preceding the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

In a sense, George Nidever is a symbolic figure, a type, for the qualities of initiative, courage, and unswerving integrity possessed by him were likewise possessed in good measure by other pathfinding frontiersmen who pioneered. There were hundreds of men whose lives and experiences were so similar to those of George Nidever that when one writes of him one is writing of them all. Differing in details, in broad outline their lives mark these men as being of the same "tribe/ so to speak. Were it possible to recount the story of each of these lives and to tie the stories in with the developments which these lives touched, we should have a true and full history of an important epoch in American life. But most of these heroes of the Rocky Mountains and trail-makers to the Pacific are unknown and unnamed in historical annals; so the original narrative of the life and adventures of George Nidever, a typical figure in a period of American expansion, becomes, as we shall see, both a fascinating and a historically important document. w. H. E.

TARGET-SHOOTING BY GEORGE NIDEVER

AT THE AGE OF 75 YEARS

1 Edward E Murray was an experienced assistant of Hubert Howe Bancroft, who regarded him as a faithful and competent man Before coming to Bancroft, he was engaged for a while in the work of collecting and deciphering historical materials for Judge Benjamin Hayes, who for twenty- five years was an enthusiastic collector and preserver of historical data. Hayes recommended Murray to Bancroft as an expert in the work of deciphering and copying.

When Judge Hayes declined to make an abstract of the archives at Santa Barbara because of professional demands and failing health, the task was assigned to Murray. He began in June, 1876, and continued with few interruptions until the latter part of the year 1878. The results of his work were many large manuscript volumes of mission and other archives, and a number of dictations by old residents. The Adventures of George Nidever was one of the last pieces of work done by Murray in Santa Barbara. See H. H. Bancroft, Literary Industries (San Francisco, 1890), 478-482, 510—529, for fuller description of Murray as a man and a worker.

GEORGE NIDEVER: 1878

THE SUBJECT of this sketch, although already over 76 yrs.

of age,1 is still strong and active. He is about the medium height and inclined to be stout. He stoops the least bit but it may be from habit rather than old age. His sight and hearing are still keen and his nerves remarkably steady for one so old. He lives with his youngest daughter and wife, about a mile from town, on a piece of land containing several acres. It is under cultivation and he keeps it free from squirrels by shooting them with a Colt’s revolver. If a chicken is wanted for dinner he prefers shooting its head off with his rifle to using a shot gun, which he has frequently to use, however, owing to the danger of using his rifle when there are so many and near neighbors.

Yesterday I induced him to shoot at a target; the result is shown on the opposite page. As will be seen, the second shot hit the nail.

He is quite unassuming and never brags of his feats of skill, and almost everything of this nature relating to him I first learned from others, obtaining a recital of them from him only by dint of questioning. His truthfulness and integrity are beyond question, so that great weight should be given to all he says.²

(Signed) E. F. MURRAY Santa Barbara California],

Sept. 1 1878.

1 Nidever was not 76 until December 20, 1878.

[Xi]

2 Stephen Bowers wrote in the Ventura Observer, December 20, 1892, that "he [Nidever] was much respected in Santa Barbara, where he lived more than fifty years. We never heard his integrity called in question by anyone?

Recollections of His Life

and Adventures

as Dictated by George Nidever

to E. F. Murray

Recollections of

George Nidever

MY NAME is George Nidever. I was born in 1802, Dec.

20, in Sulivan Co., East Tenn. My father, also named George, was a native of Pennsylvania].; I do not remember the town. His father died while he was quite young. My father removed to Tennfessee]. when about 20 yrs. of age. Here he was married to Christina Punkhouser, a native of Virginia, but whose family had removed to Tenn, some years before. My father’s business was farming, which he carried on while he lived. Before and after his marriage he took part, as a volunteer, in the early Indian wars with the Cherokees, Shawnees, and other hostile tribes. Besides myself, there were 8 other children; three daughters and five (5) sons. I was third; my two brothers John and Jacob being older than I. Of these none but myself now remain. My oldest brother John¹¹ died here in Santa Barbara about five yrs. ago. Jacob died in Arkansas, do not recollect the year, but think it was about 1848. Mark, who followed [me], was killed in Nov. of 183o,² at the beginning of my first hunting expedition. Isabella, who came next to Mark, married a man by the name of Harril and died while I was in Arkansas. Henry, the next in age, married a Miss Sinclair, a native of Illinois; (Mark married into the same family). He (Henry) died in Texas I think about 1850, leaving a large family. Next came Nancy, she [was] married, after I left home, to a man by the name of Barker; she died in Arkansas, I think, about 1850. Next in order came Daniel, who left home with a party that went down the Mississippi somewhere about 1837 or 8, and was never heard from. Christina, my youngest sister, was drowned in Arkansas.

My family removed, when I was 5 yrs. old, from Sulivan Co., Tenn., to Buncombe Co., N. C. Here we settled down and worked a farm for about 9 years (when I was nearly 14 yrs. of age), when we went to Crawford Co., Mo., and settled on a farm situated on a river called the Moro.³ Here we followed farming for several years. When I was about 18 (in 1820 or thereabouts), a party of 7 families started through the wilderness for Arkansas, and my brother Jacob and I accompanied them, with a few cattle we took to sell, for the purpose of seeing Arkansas and with the intention of going back for our family if we found the country good.

Among our party there were about twenty men, including my brother and myself, all frontiersmen and a sufficient number to insure protection from the Indian tribes we might encounter. We had no adventure of note during our journey of over two months although we saw many parties of Indians and passed through the country of the Osage Indians? They stole a few of our horses but did not offer to trouble us in any other way.

About half way on our journey our bread gave out and we were obliged to live on meat the rest of the way. The whole country through which we passed was filled with game, so that we never wanted for fresh meat. We had left Mo. in the fall, about the month of Oct., and in December we reached Ark.

Our point of destination was the Six Bull river,⁸ north of the Arkansas, a locality formerly visited by some members of our party, and where they had decided to make their homes. Two or three months later, however, they were obliged to move south of the Arkansas, owing to this section having been ceded by the Govt, to the Cherokees⁸ and other Indians. They finally settled near or in the vicinity of Fort Smith.⁷ Among these families there were two or three by the name of Mathers, one Blevin, and one Harril, the same family into which my sister afterwards married.

My brother Jacob sold his stock, consisting of hogs and cattle, to the Choctaw⁸ and Cherokee Indians, at a good bargain, and settled down on a farm just below Fort Smith. The next year all of our family came from Mo. and settled a few miles from my brother Jacob’s place.

Soon after our party left the Six Bull river for the neighborhood of Fort Smith, I left them for Texas in company with a young man by the name of Daniel Shipman, one of our party from Mo., who, like myself, fond of travel and adventure, and with a desire to see that state, had determined to make a trip