William Thomas Hamilton (frontiersman)

William Thomas Hamilton (December 6, 1822 – May 24, 1908), also known as Wildcat Bill, was an American frontiersman and author of Scottish and English heritage.

In his autobiography, My Sixty Years on the Plains, published in 1905, William wrote that he was the youngest child with older brothers, but does not name his parents or siblings.

After traveling around the United States, his family settled in St. Louis, Missouri where he was raised and attended school for five years.

[1] The son of financially comfortable parents, he grew up on a farm and learned to shoot a weapon and ride a horse.

Few men had the adventurous career that was Hamilton's, although because of a modesty that rarely permitted him to talk of himself, comparatively few persons knew his record on the plains.

[1] At the age of 19, in March 1842, Hamilton left Missouri for the Rocky Mountains to improve his health[6] with Old Bill Williams, whom he worked with and became a companion.

During that time period, he also worked as a trader at Fort Benton,[1][7] around Flathead Lake, and in 1858 he established a trading post along Rattlesnake Creek, being the first cabin built near what would become Missoula.

"[2] He later assisted the Smithsonian Institution in translating hundreds of Native American signs and pictographs painted on the cliffs along Lake Flathead near present-day Lakeside, Montana.