“He puts in an average of about five days lapping up corn juice and telling the whoppingiest lies ever incubated on the Yellowstone and 10 days of neutralizing the effects of them by talking and living religion,” the sheriff said.

-Whithorn, D. (1889). Yankee Jim’s National Park Toll Road and the Yellowstone Trail. Place of publication not identified: D. Whithorn.

Derik’s 4th great-uncle

“Yankee Jim” – James George

Veteran: U.S. Civil War (Union) / Indian Wars

BIRTH 18 SEP 1835 • Ohio, United States
DEATH 28 MAY 1923 • Dos Palos, Merced, California, United States

Civil War Veteran (Union)
Gold Prospector
Discovered Coal Deposits at Red Ridge Montana
Indian Fighter
Lived for a time with the Crow and Bannock Indian Tribes
Meat Hunter for the Crow Agency
Scouted with Wild Bill Hickok
Associated with and knew Calamity Jane
Considered a founder of Yellowstone Park
Set up Toll Road at Yellowstone. Area Named in his honor as “Yankee Jim Canyon”
Fought 3 Rounds with live Bear
Fought railroad building through his land with pistols and rifle.
Spent time with Rudyard Kipling (author of the Jungle Book) and disputed his portrayal of Yankee Jim in his book “From Sea to Sea”
Called on by President Theodore Roosevelt
Claimed to have undelivered letter he was to give to General Custer

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Yankee Jim, whose real name was James George, was about 22 years old when the discovery of gold in Bannack attracted him to Montana in 1863. He prospected for gold in the area that became Yellowstone National Park as early as 1866 and spent time in the Yellowstone Valley north of the park as a meat hunter supplying the Crow Indian Agency.

In 1873, he took possession of a toll road through the rugged canyon that still bears his name north of the then brand new Yellowstone National Park. A group of businessmen from Bozeman and Helena had begun building the road in 1871. They were planning a system of toll roads linking all the major sights in Yellowstone Park and asked the U.S. Congress for an exclusive right to provide roads and hotels there. When a bill to grant the monopoly failed, the businessmen abandoned their project, and Yankee Jim took over the road.

People’s opinions of Yankee Jim diverged widely. A city official from Spokane called him “the most luridly picturesque liar in the Northwest,” while a minister described him as “one of the gentlest and most saintly characters he ever expected to meet outside of heaven.”

The Park County Sheriff explained Jim’s split personality this way: “It all depends upon whether old ‘Yankee’ is drinking or not. He puts in on an average of about five days lapping up corn juice and telling the whopping-est lies ever incubated on the Yellowstone, and 10 days neutralizing the effects of them by talking and living religion.”

1886: Yankee Jim Goes 3 Rounds with a Bear:

~ 1899: Yankee Jim George v.s. Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling was just 24 years old when he met Yankee Jim while traveling to England from India in 1889 and publishing letters about his travels in newspapers. The letters were collected in Kipling’s 1899 book, From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel. By then Kipling had already written several books and launched the career that would win him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. From Sea to Sea contains a section about Yankee Jim.

Kipling said he was gazing out of his railroad car window at “the ideal trout stream below” as the train passed by the Yellowstone River in the Paradise Valley when a stranger advised him “Lie off at Yankee Jim’s if you want good fishing.”

The Northern Pacific Railroad had laid tracks within a few feet of Yankee Jim’s cabin by then. Kipling said that when the train stopped “I leaped literally into the arms of Yankee Jim.”

He described Jim, who was about 50 then, as “a picturesque old man with a talent for yarns.” Kipling admitted it was presumptuous to think “I might hold my own with the old timer if I judiciously painted up a few lies gathered in the course of my wanderings.”

“Yankee Jim,” Kipling continued, “saw everyone of my tales and went 50 better on the spot. He dealt in bears and Indians — never less than 20 of each; had known the Yellowstone country for years, and bore on his body marks of Indian arrows; and his eyes had seen a squaw of the Crow Indians burned alive at the stake. He said ‘she screamed considerable.’”

1902: Meeting Lewis Ransome Freeman

Yankee Jim had several decades of adventures behind him when travel writer Lewis Ransome Freeman stopped by his cabin in 1902. Freeman, who had read Rudyard Kipling’s descriptions of the famous toll road operator, was eager to meet him.

Such stories attracted Lewis Ransome Freeman to Yankee Jim in 1902. Freeman was like Kipling had been 13 years earlier when the English author visited Yellowstone Park. Both men were 24 years old and looking for adventures to write about.

Freeman noticed “a kind of anxiety” in Jim when he approached the gray bearded old man. “I have known of you for years through Kipling’s account of you,” Freeman said. “I want you to tell me some of the Indian stories you told him.”

“I knew you’d ask that as soon as I saw you,” Yankee Jim said. “Every one asks it sooner or later.”

Then Jim threw himself back in his chair and looked Freeman in the face. “Young man, do I look like a man who would let a woman — white or Indian — be burned at the stake before me. Why my old Colt would have shot someone all of itself at such an outrage. He [Kipling] said I said, ‘She hollered considerable.’ What did you think of me when you read that? What have other people thought who read it?”

Yankee Jim continued his rant and asked why Kipling “couldn’t have called me by some other name if he was going to lie so?”

Yankee Jim told Freeman that half the people who stopped at his cabin had read about him in Kipling’s book and wanted to hear the story of the woman burned at the stake.

Freeman said Jim pulled a grimy copy of From Sea to Sea from a shelf above his fireplace and began reading a section about a young woman who was staying at his cabin when Kipling visited there: “She was California raised, the wife of a man who owned a stock farm ‘up the river a little ways,’ and, with her husband, a tenant of Yankee Jim’s shanty… She was beautiful by any standard of beauty, and… the trout she cooked were fit for a king’s supper.”

Jim said Kipling may have heard there were six-pound trout in the canyon — because there were — and “the woman he told about was beautiful enough, God knows, but simple-minded, never.”

The “gentle folk” Kipling described, Jim said, were “song and dance artists” who didn’t even pretend to be married. “That little Englishman knew all the time they weren’t ‘simple country folks.”

Jim said he figured that when Kipling “came around to write the book he thought that ‘simple country folk’ would show off in fine contrast living with the desperate old man who stood by while the squaw was burned, and so he lied about us all.”

Kipling thought Yankee Jim was a whopping liar too, but he said the old man told the truth about fishing in the Yellowstone. “He said it was alive with trout,” Kipling said; “Ye Gods, that was fishing.”

Yankee Jim lived in his cabin for 20 years after Freeman’s visit. As he aged his health deteriorated and he finally became a ward of Park County. In 1922, his brother took him to California where he died two years later.

Adapted from: “A Tale: Rudyard Kipling Goes Fishing With Yankee Jim — 1889″

Yankee Jim vs the Northern Pacific Railroad

“Jim had conducted his toll gate for several years,” said the judge, “and had gathered in many shekels when one day came the construction crew of the Northern Pacific railway laying track over the ground that yielded Jim a comfortable revenue.

“The old frontiersman was frantic with anger. He rushed to his cabin, donned his buckskin shirt, fringed leggings, broad hat, and flaming neckerchief, strapped on two six-shooters, shouldered his rifle and made a descent on the track layers. Pretty soon the air was full of singing bullets, lurid and original profanity, and flying gravel where Jim’s shots were knocking up the ground about the feet of the steel crew.

“The construction gang was paid to lay track, not to fight a wild-eyed, long-haired maniac and they beat it to cover. The road officials hot footed to Helena and engaged Col. W. F. Sanders to procure an injunction against Jim. With equal speed ‘Yankee’ beat it to Virginia City and engaged counsel to proceed against the railway for trespass.”

Source: The Dillon Examiner, August 13, 1941, Page 2, Image 2

Yankee Jim “Has Message for General Custer”

President Roosevelt calls on Yankee Jim:

“On his last Journey through Montana while in the White House, Mr. Roosevelt sent word that he would like to have “Yankee Jim” go to the railroad that they might chat for a moment of old times. The message was taken to Mr. George. This was the answer he sent: “If Theodore Roosevelt or any one else wishes to see James George, they may come to my ranch. I will be glad to see him there.”

Omaha daily bee., September 18, 1910, Page 8

Yellowstone Tour of Scenic Beauty: The Ogden standard. [volume] (Ogden City, Utah), 19 Aug. 1916. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85058396/1916-08-19/ed-1/seq-7/>

Yellowstone Park Scenes: Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]), 08 Aug. 1899. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn99021999/1899-08-08/ed-1/seq-7/>

A Thousand Mile Excursion from St. Paul to Yellowstone: The Sunday Gazetteer. (Denison, Tex.), Vol. 10, No. 16, Ed. 1 Sunday, August 16, 1891, newspaper, August 16, 1891; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth313821/m1/1/?q=%22yankee%20jim%22: accessed January 13, 2020), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Grayson County Frontier Village.

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