William W. McGaa (17 April 1824,
Wigtown – 15 December 1867,
Denver) was a
mountain man
A mountain man is an explorer who lives in the wilderness. Mountain men were most common in the North American Rocky Mountains from about 1810 through to the 1880s (with a peak population in the early 1840s). They were instrumental in opening up ...
and one of the early figures in the history of the
Colorado settlement of St. Charles (now called
Denver). Born in
Scotland, he immigrated to the
United States and was living with the
Arapaho under the name Jack Jones by the time of the
Colorado Gold Rush.
[Goodstein, p. 5.]
McGaa claimed an upper-class ancestry. He declared he was the son of the
Lord Mayor of London[Noel]
Chapter 1 (The Arapaho Camp)
. and had a family estate in
Scotland, Glenarm.
[Goodstein, p. 6.]
William Larimer worked with McGaa, who camped on the bank of
Cherry Creek, to steal the land for the town of St. Charles from the local
Native Americans, the official owners of the land as recognized in 1851 by the
Fort Laramie Treaty. This was possible because McGaa 'claimed' various native wives as property and therefore represented that he had the authority to make the land transfer.
As a reward to the Native Americans, McGaa supposedly
named several
Denver streets in their honor. Wazee and
Wewatta Streets are named for his wives. Champa is also acknowledged as one of McGaa's Indian names, although its exact etymology is uncertain;
one source claims it is the
Sioux
The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin (; Dakota language, Dakota: Help:IPA, /otʃʰeːtʰi ʃakoːwĩ/) are groups of Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribes and First Nations in Canada, First Nations peoples in North America. The ...
word for "cherry."
McGaa also named Glenarm Street after his alleged family castle
and after himself, McGaa Street.
McGaa's contemporaries did not think highly of him.
Jerome Smiley wrote, "McGaa had promised more than he could perform, was a troublesome customer to manage, and a hard man to browbeat."
In his book ''Sketches from America'', John White wrote he met McGaa one day "in a state approaching sobriety," and, during the ensuing interview McGaa kept throwing "longing looks toward the bar."
Eventually, the city street named in his honor was renamed lest McGaa Street damage the town's reputation.
It was renamed after McGaa's death to Holladay Street, after stagecoach entrepreneur
Ben Holladay
Benjamin Holladay (October 14, 1819 – July 8, 1887) was an American transportation businessman responsible for creating the Overland Stage to California during the height of the 1849 California Gold Rush. Ben Holladay created a stagecoach ...
. It was later renamed to what is now known today as Market Street.
[Denver Public Library, para. McGaa.]
His son, William Denver McGaa, with wife Jennie Adams is noted as being the first child, both white and Native American, born in Denver, on March 8, 1859.
[Ricker, p. 248.]
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:McGaa, William
1824 births
1867 deaths
History of Denver
Mountain men
People from Denver
People from Wigtown
Scottish emigrants to the United States