The booklet is more or less a reprint of choice parts from Ruxton’s Life in the Far West, except it contains a very interesting addition describing the Swedish trapper Hjalmar Adlercreutz. It appears as the original unknown author based Adlercreutz story on an interview with none other than Christoffer Houston ”Kit” Carson. The interview took place in St. Louis while Carson was preparing to guide one of Fremont’s famous expeditions (1845?).

Here is a translation of Kletkes story on Adlercreutz. This quote contains a third version of Cross Eagle’s death. The details don’t differ much from the earlier mentioned sources, with the exception of one detail. Instead of being called Cross Eagle (Ruxton) or he here goes by his true name; Hjalmar Adlercreutz. Bear in mind that 19th century Swedish is hard even for a Swede to understand:

[p. 13] I mentioned above an old Swede, that was playing cards with a Virginian at the earlier mentioned rendezvous. It was a man past fifty years of age, which had already spent more than thirty years in in the Rocky Mountains and among the Indians. Tall, strong and muscular with an almost mummified, by sun and mountain winds, yellowish furrowed face. Still he showed clear evidence of his Scandinavian descent by his fine blue eyes and his rich blonde hair, which hung down over his shoulders without age giving it a tint of silver. None of his comrades knew the story of his early life. He went by the name “the Old Swede”, although he didn’t like it. Kit Carson, that is famous across North America, as the bravest and most persistent mountaineer (mountain inhabitant, but in this case a guide in the western, still unknown parts of the United States), told me (writes the author of this sketch) many things about this old Swedish man during my visit to Saint Louis, where I met him several times while he waited for Colonel Fremont, to accompany him [p.14] on a journey, that almost killed it’s participants. He had already, serving as guide, followed Fremont on all of his scientific excursions and surveys in the Rocky Mountains, along the Great Salt Lake, and through California and Oregon. During this expedition Fremont, Kit Carson and ten of their company safely crossed the Rocky Mountains, the remainder of the party (around thirty men) died in 1847 during a blizzard, and a hundred mules and the same amount of horses along with them. George Ruxton, an English writer and friend, that also spent a part of his life in the western states and published the beginning of an interesting work covering the wild life in these parts, also mentioned this Scandinavian, who’s memory surely will live on among the beaver hunters, and who’s hunting adventures will be told from kin to kin, when these hardy men during a cold fall or spring evening, camp in the dark desolate mountain passes and smoke their pipes around the flaming log fire. Kit Carson wrote his name down, but couldn’t pronounce it. His name was Hjalmar Adlercreutz. To only one of his trusted friends did he tell, that he descended from an old noble Swedish family. For what reason he became a beaver hunter, why he came to America and what he previously had done no one managed him to tell. You never saw him laugh, not even at the most ridiculous scene. He never used alcohol, with the exception of one yearly event – the rendezvous – [p.15] where we as mentioned above, meet him - and even then he used the beverage with moderation. However he was addicted, like all of the beaver hunters, to gambling. He had in person told Kit Carson, that he during his last twenty years in the mountains had earned more than 15 000 dollars on beaver hides. Every year he had decided to return to Saint Louis, and there end his days. For this reason he had sold his hides for shiny coins, but fourteen days stay at rendezvous always “wiped him clean”, so that he after a number of years didn’t even have enough credit to obtain the necessary equipment as the hunting season closed in. Many stories tell of his courage, his persistence, and his presence of mind, and his death is, as Ruxton Tells it, just as characteristic. Adlercreutz, was on an excursion accompanied by other trappers, when they one morning was attacked in camp by numerous Indians, that true to their habits ambushed the hunters and now conducted a huge blood bath among them. Adlercreutz was badly wounded, but still had his rifle, powder horn and bullet pouch, Close to where they had camped stood a hollow tree. At wind speed he hurried to the tree and crawled in to the hollow. From there he defended himself from the savages for most of the day with major persistence and cold-bloodedness. He killed five Indians and wounded several others. When the redskins couldn’t drive the brave beaver hunter from his [p.16] fortification, they used the favorable wind and set fire to the tall dry grass that surrounded the tree. Soon the dry trunk ignited, and Adlercreutz was forced to leave his hideout. He grasped the barrel of his rifle, and ran and swung his rifle stock into the crowd of Indians and finally fell, pierced by innumerable arrows, but not until he brought two more of his enemy to the ground by the force of his hand. Later some of his companions found his dead body. His head was scalped, but the same seriousness, which his face always expressed during life, proved unchanged even in death. They buried him at this place, where he fell, and in a dark gloomy mountain pass, where a white man might never set his foot again, the uneducated hunters after their custom raised a simple wooden cross that by now for sure has rotted away since long.
Although the numbers of beaver hunters are declining at the same pace as the Indians, “the Old Swede” is not forgotten among them. Civilization spreads with giant leaps even in the remote wilderness of the west, and within a few years’ we will probably be able to read the story of the last beaver hunters. (Kletke/Berg p. 13-16)

The noble Adlercreutz family