Wooden Foot

WOODEN FOOT is a story about the lives of people living from the late 1700's to the mid 1800's in the mountains of Wyoming from the Big Horn Mountains and into what is now Yellowstone Park. This adventure is brought on by the greed of people that wanted to keep up with the fad of Beaver Hats. It killed all of the beavers in the old country and when it was found that there were great numbers of the animals in the new world they almost succeded in eliminating them. It caused hard feeling between the Native Americans and the trappers who infringed on their hunting areas. Some of these trappers (married) Indian women and the marriage lasted as long as beaver stayed plentiful. As soon as the beaver played out the trapper moved on and took up with another Indian woman. Some of these couplings lasted a life-time and were very productive. There were times when the trapper traded in his furs at a rendezvous and after drinking too much bad whiskey and gambling and losing all of his money would gamble away his wife. This is how Jon Crew obtained his woman called Doe Eyes. The Hudson Bay Company from Canada had trappers working the interior of America many years before any American even thought of the idea. It was only the demand for beaver hides from France and England and a depression in the colonies that many people started working the central part of this new nation. It was not a mass exodus of mountain men going into this area. They came as ones and twos at the start and those first trappers came to stay. Money was not what they came for. It was the chance to be free. Totally free from society and from taxes and from people. They were content to be alone or with the red man on the red man'sterms. Many did not survive and only a very few made it work. Jon Crew was one of these men and after he lost part of his leg to a bear he became WOODEN FOOT. James Sprigler was born in Centennial Valley a few miles north of Deadwood South Dakota. He was the very last student to go to school in the one room sandstone school called Crook City School Number 1. He attended grade school and high school in Spearfish as well as college. His grand parents came to the Black Hills and settled in Deadwood Gulch near Central City. There is a photo in one of the museums that show an old woman holding a new born baby. That baby was his Uncle Ambrose and the woman, Calamity Jane. Sprigler's roots go deep in the Black Hills and he is quite proud of this fact. Sprigler met his bride while in college and will celebrate his 49th anniversary this spring. She is a wonderful lady and this book is dedicated to her. Sprigler grew up on a ranch and dairy farm where milking cows and riding horses took up most of his time. He tried to make a living in the rodeo business but found he wasn't built for riding horses bareback and he was a terrible saddle bronc rider. He entered the Marine Corps to find his calling. The Core taught him a lot about life and many other things. Sprigler feels that everyone should serve their country in some way for at least two years.