Joseph James and Joseph James, Jr.

Joseph James is the name of two Kansa-Osage-French interpreters on the Kansas and Indian Territory frontier in the 19th century. Both were usually called “Joe Jim” or “Jojim.”

Joe Jim, Sr. was probably born in the 1790s at the Osage town in Vernon County, Missouri. He is believed to have been the son of a French trader and an Osage woman. By about 1815, Joe Jim was living among the Kaw tribe along the Kansas River in what would become the state of Kansas. Joe Jim married Wyhesee (b. ca. 1802), a daughter of Kaw chieftain White Plume, and thereafter became an important member of the tribe. Joe Jim is believed to have been a signatory to an 1825 treaty ceding Kaw land to the United States government under the name of Ky-he-ga-shin-ga (Little Chief).

Fluent in English, French, Kaw (Kanza) and Osage (nearly identical with Kaw) Joe Jim became an interpreter for the U.S. government about 1829. In 1830 he served as a guide for a surveying expedition to western Kansas by missionary Isaac McCoy. McCoy, critical of most of his associates, was laudatory about Joe Jim. The last record of Joe Jim is 1837 at which time he was still employed by the U.S. government as an interpreter. Joseph James is listed in the 1843 census of the Kaw, but it is unclear whether this refers to Joe Jim, Sr. or Joe Jim, Jr.

Joe Jim, Jr. was probably born about 1820 and his place of birth was given as “Big Bottom,” apparently a place along the Kansas River. (Joe Jim, Jr’s. birth date on his tombstone is given as 1814 but that date is inconsistent with other statements concerning his age.) He was apparently illiterate. In 1846 and 1847, during the Mexican-American War he and Peter Revard, a mixed blood Osage, drove a herd of cattle from Kansas to New Mexico to feed American soldiers. He worked as a teamster during a military campaign against the Navajos. While returning to Kansas in a wagon train, he survived a Comanche attack that resulted in the death of two American soldiers.

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