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INTRODUCTORY NOTE

FITZGERALD BEALE, whose
EDWARD following pages, was
life is outlined in the
a remarkable man of a type we shall never
see in America again. A grandson of the gallant
Truxtun, Beale was born in the Navy and his early
life was passed at sea. However, he fought with
the army at San Pasqual and when night fell upon
that indecisive battlefield, with Kit Carson and
an anonymous Indian, by a daring journey through
a hostile country, he brought to Commodore
Stockton in San Diego, the news of General
Kearny s desperate situation.
Beale brought the first gold East, and was truly,
in those stirring days, what his friend and fellow-
traveller Bayard Taylor called him, "a pioneer in
the path of empire." Resigning from the Navy,
Beale explored the desert trails and the mountain
passes which led overland to the Pacific, and later
he surveyed the routes and built the wagon roads
over which the mighty migration passed to people
the new world beyond the Rockies.
As Superintendent of the Indians, a thankless
office which he filled for three Beale initiated
years,
a policy of honest dealing with the nation s wards

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