author
Colonel William Thompson
1846–1934
A frontier newspaperman and veteran of the Indian wars, he turned a life of overland travel, mining camps, and conflict in the American West into vivid memoir. His writing offers a firsthand look at Oregon and Northern California in the mid-1800s.
1 Audiobook
Reminiscences of a Pioneer
by Colonel William Thompson
About the author
Born in 1846 and later widely known as Colonel William Thompson, he was an American Indian fighter and journalist who spent much of his life in Oregon and Northern California. He became especially associated with the Alturas Plaindealer, where he served as editor for many years.
Thompson is best remembered for Reminiscences of a Pioneer (1912), a memoir drawn from his experiences after traveling west with his family in 1852. In it, he wrote about overland migration, frontier settlement, mining life, and the Modoc and Bannock conflicts, giving readers a colorful personal view of the nineteenth-century West.
He died in 1934, leaving behind a record that is part memoir and part local history. For listeners interested in pioneer journeys and early Western journalism, his work stands out for its direct voice and eyewitness detail.