Thomas Fitzpatrick

Thomas Fitzpatrick (1799 – February 7, 1854) was an Irish fur trader in America Indian agent, and mountain man. They were a moderately wealthy Catholic family with three boys and four girls. Fitzpatrick received a good education and he left home before the age of 17. He became a sailor and left a ship at New Orleans. From there, he traveled up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Missouri by the winter of 1822–1823. He re-discovered South Pass, Wyoming in 1824; John Jacob Astor's fur trading expedition of 1811–1812 (led by Robert Stuart) were the first known white party through the South Pass.

Father to an Arapaho boy Friday, Arapaho Chief (ca. 1822–1881) leader, interpreter and negotiator In 1831, he found an Arapaho boy who had been separated from his band that had camped with the Atsina (Gros Ventre) along the Cimmaron River in present-day southeastern Colorado. A fight had broken out that led to the Arapaho chief being stabbed, and the Atsina chief was killed in retaliation. Fitzpatrick brought Friday along on his trapping journeys in the western frontier. In 1838, Fitzpatrick and Friday met up with a band of Arapaho people. When a woman recognized Friday as her son, Friday returned to his life with the Arapaho. He shepherded the first two emigrant wagon trains to Oregon, including the Whitman-Spalding Party (1836)

Indian Agent In 1846, he became an Indian Agent of the Upper Platte and Arkansas River Valleys (a sizeable portion of present-day Colorado), He negotiated with Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Lakota Sioux of the Central Plains. after her father's death.

Death and legacy In the winter of 1853–54, Fitzpatrick went to Washington, D.C., to finalize the Treaty of Fort Atkinson, He was buried in the Congressional Cemetery there.

In 1976, the Fitzpatrick Wilderness area inside the Shoshone National Forest in the Wind River Range of Wyoming, containing 44 active glaciers and Gannett Peak, Wyoming's highest point, at 13,804 ft. was named after him.

In 2004, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

Popular culture In the 1966 episode "Hugh Glass Meets the Bear" of the syndicated television series, Death Valley Days, the actor Morgan Woodward was cast as Fitzpatrick. John Alderson played Hugh Glass, who after being mauled by a bear and abandoned by Fitzpatrick crawled two hundred miles to civilization. Victor French was cast as Louis Baptiste, with Tris Coffin as Major Andrew Henry.

Fitzpatrick appears to have been confused or conflated with John S. Fitzgerald, who, according to the Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography, was actually the one who left Glass behind.