Those of you who’ve read more than one of my Old New Mexico books may have noticed that I have a special fondness for William Sherley Williams, better known as “Old Bill”.

My initial introduction to Old Bill was through Old Bill Williams, Mountain Man by Alpheus H. Favour. Although written in the 1930s and somewhat infected with the era’s attitudes towards America’s First Peoples, this book still manages to provide a glimpse into Old Bill’s more progressive attitudes.

The red-headed gawky Williams left his Missouri home in his teens to live with the Osage Indians. There he married, found work with the Baptist missionaries to the Osage, then broke with his employers when he decided that Osage spirituality was more meaningful and insightful than the missionaries’.

A skilled linguist, he developed the first Osage-English dictionary and is said to have spoken at least five different languages. After his wife’s death, Williams moved west, guiding the Santa Fe Trail Survey, trapping, hunting buffalo, and scouting. Querulous and opinionated, Old Bill preferred trapping alone in places he refused to divulge to anyone else. He would eventually die as the result of John C. Fremont’s ill-fated fourth expedition through the southern Rockies in the middle of winter.

There are various summaries of Williams’ life. I have yet to find anything as detailed and extensive as Favour’s Old Bill Williams, Mountain Man. I recommend it.