Thomas Fitzpatrick (1799 – February 7, 1854) was an Irish fur trader in America[1] Indian agent, and mountain man.

[4] Andrew Henry and William Henry Ashley announced that they were searching for fur trappers for their company, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company[6] by placing an ad in the Missouri Republican in 1822: To Enterprising young men: the subscriber wishes to engage one hundred men, to ascend the river Missouri to its source, there to be employed for one, two, or three years.

[4] Fitzpatrick went to work for the fur traders, joining the likes of Jim Bridger, Jedediah Smith, Louis Vasquez, Étienne Provost, and William Lewis Sublette.

Fitzpatrick led two horse trains with goods and supplies over South Pass to trade for furs in the Green River area and he managed placement of bands of trappers.

He later led a group of allied Native Americans and trappers against the Gros Ventre in the Battle of Pierre's Hole.

[7][8] In 1831, he found an Arapaho boy who had been separated from his band that had camped with the Atsina (Gros Ventre) along the Cimmaron River in present-day southeastern Colorado.

[14] In 1846, he became an Indian Agent of the Upper Platte and Arkansas River Valleys (a sizeable portion of present-day Colorado),[3][13][15] and was well-respected by Native Americans and white settlers.

[7] Fitzpatrick was a negotiator for the Fort Laramie treaty of 1851, at the largest council ever assembled of Native Americans of the Plains.

[16][18] In the winter of 1853–54, Fitzpatrick went to Washington, D.C., to finalize the Treaty of Fort Atkinson,[7] but while there contracted pneumonia and died on February 7, 1854.

[20] In the 1966 episode "Hugh Glass Meets the Bear" of the syndicated television series, Death Valley Days, the actor Morgan Woodward was cast as Fitzpatrick.

John Alderson played Hugh Glass, who after being mauled by a bear and abandoned by Fitzpatrick crawled two hundred miles to civilization.

[21][22] Fitzpatrick appears to have been confused or conflated with John S. Fitzgerald, who, according to the Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography, was actually the one who left Glass behind.