Greenbrier County, West Virginia         Biography of William CRAIG

This biography was submitted by Elizabeth Burns,
E-mail address:  <burns@asu.edu>

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From: the Lewiston Morning Tribute, March 3, 1918, Recollections of Wm.
Craig by Thomas J. Beall.

To the Tribune: will you please grant the space in your columns that I
may inform your readers as to my early recollections of William Craig,
the fur trapper of the Rocky Mountains and after whom Craig Mountain was
named.  I first met Craig in the latter part of September 1857.  He was
at The Dallas, Oregon, for the purpose of purchasing his winter supplies
accompanied by several Nez Perce Indians, among them Chief Lawyer and
Reuben.  I joined Craig's party on his return trip to the Walla Walla.

Craig was the sub Indian agent for the Nez Perces and the agency was at
Walla Walla. It was in the fore part of the month of May 1867 that Craig
and a man by the name of Mike Mayer and myself took a trip to the
headwaters of Potlatch Creek for the purpose of hunting and
prospecting.  We departed from his home at what is now called Jacques
Spur on the Camas Prairie Railway and we intercepted the Clearwater
River at Big Eddy.  It was on this trip that I learned a great deal of
Craig's life.

He was born in the Old Dominion as he loved to call his native state,
(western Virginia) in Green Brier County about the year 1799 or 1800.
At the age of eighteen he became involved in an altercation or quarrel
with one much older than he was and was forced to kill him in self
defense.  Being quite young and somewhat alarmed at his act he made his
getaway and he found himself in time in the city of St. Louis.  This
city at that time was the emporium for the fur traders and trappers of
the northwest.  Craig soon joined a party of French Canadians who were
on the eve of starting up the MIssouri River on a trading expedition and
their mode of transportation was with bateaus which made it a long
tedious journey.  When near Ft. Benton they encourtered a party of
trappers, their destination being the Rocky Mountains. Craig severed his
connections iwth the Canadians, joined the trappers and in time became a
full-fledged trapper and frontiersman.

In the fall of the year 1829, William Craig, Joe Meek and Robert Newell
accompanied a party of Nez Perces from the rendezvous to their country
to engaged in trapping on the waters of the Clearwater and Salmon.  I
never knew how long they remained in their new field of operations,
probably not more than two seasons.  It was here among the Nez Perces
that they got their Indian wives and accompanied by them they returned
to their old haunts east of the Rocky Mountains.

In 1862 I visited Craig who was then living on Mission Creek, a half a
mile from its junction.  In 1868 Craig received a paralytic stroke from
which he never entirely recovered.  I was contemplaing on going to Moose
Creek and I paid him a visit before doing so and we sat up nearly the
whole night talking of the pleasant hours spent together and when I bid
him goodbye he said "Thomas, I'll never see you again on this earth."  I
received a letter from Sam Phinney, his son-in-law informing me of his
death which was in the latter part of September 1868.  The Nex Perces
always called him William, did not know him as Craig.  He is buried at
what is now known as Jacques Spur; also his wife, two sons and two
daughters.  He has one daughter living; her age is about seventy-five
and she lives at Theon, Umatilla County Oregon.


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