one company in the United States--John Jacob Astor’s great American Fur
Company. As already stated, besides Bent’s Fort the Bent partners had
a post on the South Platte at the mouth of St. Vrain’s Fork, and one
on the Canadian River, called the Fort Adobe, for trade with tribes of
Indians hostile to the Cheyennes--trade which Colonel Bent, of course,
wished to hold.
St. Vrain’s Fork runs into the South Platte from the north and west, a
few miles south or southwest of Greeley, Colo.
The site of the fort, known later and now as Adobe Walls, was the
scene of two hard battles between white men and Indians. The first of
these took place in 1864, and was fought between the Kiowas, Apaches,
and Comanches, with a few Cheyennes and Arapahoes, who were present
chiefly as onlookers, and a detachment of troops under the command
of Kit Carson, who then bore a commission in the United States army.
Carson had with him a number of Ute scouts. The fight was a severe
one, and Carson, after burning one of the Kiowa villages, was obliged
to retreat. In that battle the Indians fought bravely, and one of them
possessed a cavalry bugle and knew the various calls. Carson and his
officers generally acknowledged that they were beaten by the Indians,
and Carson finally withdrew, the Indians saving most of their property,
though they lost a number of men. Among the Kiowas killed was a young
man who wore a coat of mail.
At this fight a spring-wagon was found in the possession of the
Indians, and its presence in the Kiowa camp has often been wondered
at. At that time wagons were never used by plains Indians, whose
only vehicle was the travois, which consisted of two long poles tied
together over the horses’ withers, and dragging on the ground behind.
Across these poles, behind the horses’ hocks, was lashed a platform, on
which a considerable burden might be transported.
The late Robert M. Peck, of Los Angeles, Cal., who was a soldier,
serving under Major Sedgwick, then in command of troops along the
Arkansas, not long before his death told the story of an ambulance
presented to one of the Kiowa chiefs by the quartermaster of the troops
under Major Sedgwick, which may have been this one. Mr. Peck said:
“That was before the Kiowa war broke out in 1859. To´hau sen was always
friendly to the whites, and tried to keep the Kiowas peaceable. A small
party of them, his immediate following, kept out of that war. These
were mostly the old warriors, but the younger men, who constituted
a majority of the tribe, went on the warpath after Lieut. George D.
Bayard, of our regiment killed one of the Kiowa chiefs, called Pawnee,
near Peacock’s ranch, on Walnut Creek.
“That summer (1859) we had been camping along the Arkansas River,
moving camp occasionally up or down the river, trying to keep Satank
and his turbulent followers from beginning another outbreak. Old To´hau
sen used frequently to come to our camp. Lieut. McIntyre wanted to
get rid of this old ambulance, which he had long had on his hands and
which in some of its parts was nearly worn out. After inducing Major
Sedgwick to have it condemned as unfit for service, Lieut. McIntyre had
his blacksmith fix it up a little and presented it to the old chief.
McIntyre fitted a couple of sets of old harness to a pair of To´hau
sen’s ponies and had some of the soldiers break the animals to work in
the ambulance. But when To´hau sen tried to drive the team, he could
not learn to handle the lines. He took the reins off the harness and
had a couple of Indian boys ride the horses, and they generally went at
a gallop. The old chief seemed very proud of the ambulance.”
The second battle of the Adobe Walls took place in June, 1874,
when the Kiowas, Comanches, and Cheyennes made an attack on some
buffalo-hunters, who had built themselves houses in the shelter of the
Adobe Walls. The attack on the buffalo-hunters was made in the endeavor
to drive these hide-hunters out of the buffalo country, in order to
save the buffalo for themselves. The hunters finally drove off the
Indians with much loss, but soon afterward abandoned their camp.
St. Vrain’s Fort and the Adobe Fort were abandoned between 1840 and
1850, when the fur business began to decline. By this time the beaver
had begun to get scarce, having been pretty thoroughly trapped out of
many of the mountain streams, and besides that the silk hat had been
invented, and was rapidly taking the place of the old beaver hat, and
the demand for beaver skins was greatly reduced. Now, the mountains
were full of idle trappers, and a colony of these settled some miles
above Bent’s Fort, on the site of the present city of Pueblo, Col.,
where they did a little farming and a great deal of smuggling of liquor
from Mexico to the plains country. The stagnation in the beaver trade,
of course, affected the business of William Bent, who, since the death
of his brother Charles, had not lessened his activities in trading. At
this time his chief business was in buffalo robes and in horses. The
establishment at the fort was now reduced, and in the early fifties
Bent tried to sell it to the government for a military post, but
failing to receive what he considered a fair price for his property, in
1852 he laid large charges of gunpowder in the buildings and blew the
old fort into the air.
In the winter of 1852–53 he had two trading houses of logs among the
Cheyennes at the Big Timbers, and in the autumn of 1853 began to build
his new fort of stone on the north side of the Arkansas River, about
thirty-eight miles below old Fort William, and finished it the same
year. This was the winter camp of the Cheyennes. At that time the Big
Timbers extended up the river beyond the fort, and within three miles
of the mouth of Purgatoire River, but by 1865 practically all the
timber had been cut down, leaving the fort in the midst of a treeless
prairie.
In 1858 gold was discovered in the country northwest of the new fort.
There was a rush of gold-seekers to the country the following year,
and for some reason William Bent decided to lease his post to the War
Department. This he did. A garrison was sent there. It was at first
intended to call the new fort Fort Fauntleroy, after the colonel of
the old Second Dragoons, but finally the place was rechristened Fort
Wise, in honor of the Governor of Virginia. The following summer,
1860, the troops built a stockade half a mile above Bent’s old stone
buildings. When the Civil War began in 1861 and Governor Wise joined
the Confederates, the post was again renamed; this time Fort Lyon, in
honor of General Lyon, who had been killed not long before at Wilson’s
Creek, Mo. In 1866 the river threatened to carry away the post, and it
was moved twenty miles up the river.
Meanwhile William Bent had built a new stockade on the north side
of the river, in the valley of Purgatoire Creek, and lived there,
continuing to trade with the Indians. Kit Carson lived on the same side
of the river, and not far from the Bent stockade. Carson died at Fort
Lyon, May 23, 1868, and his friend William Bent, at his home, May 19,
1869. Ceran St. Vrain died October 29, 1870. The last year of his life
was spent at Taos, N. M., but he died at the home of his son Felix, in
Mora, N. M.
In 1839 Mr. Farnham visited Bent’s Fort, and met two of the Bent
brothers, whose names he does not give. They were clad like trappers,
in splendid deerskin hunting-shirts and leggings, with long fringes on
the outer seams of the arms and legs, the shirts decorated with designs
worked in colored porcupine quills, and on their feet moccasins covered
with quill work and beading.
This great establishment, standing alone in the midst of a wilderness,
much impressed the traveller, who not long before had left a region
where men, if not crowded together, were at least seen frequently, for
he had recently come from Peoria, Ill. He spoke of it as a solitary
abode of men seeking wealth in the face of hardship and danger, and
declared that it reared “its towers over the uncultivated wastes of
nature like an old baronial castle that has withstood the wars and
desolations of centuries.” To him the Indian women, walking swiftly
about the courtyard and on the roofs of the houses, clad in long
deerskin dresses and bright moccasins, were full of interest; while
the naked children, with perfect forms and the red of the Saxon
blood showing through the darker hue of the mother race, excited his
enthusiasm. He wondered at the novel manners and customs that he saw,
at the grave bourgeois and their clerks and traders, who, in time of
leisure, sat cross-legged under a shade, smoking the long-stemmed
Indian stone pipe, which they deliberately passed from hand to hand,
until it was smoked out; at the simple food--dried buffalo meat and
bread made from the unbolted wheaten meal from Taos, repasts which
lacked sweets and condiments.
Here, as it seemed to him, were gathered people from the ends of the
earth: old trappers whose faces were lined and leathery from long
exposure to the snows of winter and the burning heats of summer;
Indians, some of whom were clad in civilized clothing, but retained
the reserve and silence of their race; Mexican servants, hardly more
civilized than the Indians; and all these seated on the ground,
gathered around a great dish of dried meat, which constituted their
only food. The prairie men who talked narrated their adventures in the
North, the West, the South, and among the mountains, while others, less
given to conversation, nodded or grunted in assent or comment. The talk
was of where the buffalo had been, or would be; of the danger from
hostile tribes; of past fights, when men had been wounded and killed;
and of attacks by Indians on hunters or traders who were passing
through the country.
He describes the opening of the gates on the winter’s morning, the
cautious sliding in and out of the Indians, whose tents stood around
the fort, till the court was full of people with long, hanging black
locks and dark, flashing watchful eyes; the traders and clerks busy at
their work; the patrols walking the battlements with loaded muskets;
the guards in the bastion, standing with burning matches by the
carronades; and when the sun set, the Indians retiring again to their
camp outside, to talk over their newly purchased blankets and beads,
and to sing and drink and dance; and finally the night sentinel on the
fort that treads his weary watch away. “This,” he says, “presents a
tolerable view of this post in the season of business.”
Soon after the construction of the fort a brass cannon had been
purchased in St. Louis and brought out for the purpose of impressing
the Indians. It was used there for many years, but in 1846, when
General Kearny passed by, some enthusiastic employee charged it with
too great a load of powder, and in saluting the General it burst. Some
time after that an iron cannon was brought from Santa Fé, and during
the day always stood outside the big gate of the fort, and was often
fired in honor of some great Indian chief when he came into the post
with his camp. The old brass cannon lay about the post for some time,
and is mentioned by Garrard.
The passage of General Kearny’s little army on its march into Mexico
made a gala day at Bent’s Fort. The army had encamped nine miles below
the post to complete its organization, for it had come straggling
across the plains from Missouri in small detachments. On the morning
of August 2 the fort was filled to overflowing with people: soldiers
and officers, white trappers, Indian trappers, Mexicans, Cheyennes,
Arapahoes, Kiowas, and Indian women, the wives of trappers from the far
away Columbia and St. Lawrence. Every one was busy talking--a babel of
tongues and jargons. The employees, with their wives and children, had
gathered on the flat roofs to witness the wonderful spectacle, while in
a securely hidden nook Charles Bent was rejoicing the souls of a few
of his army friends with the icy contents of “a pitcher covered with
the dew of promise.”
A cloud of dust moving up the valley “at the rate of a horse walking
fast” at length announced the approach of the troops. At the head of
the column rode General Kearny, behind him a company of the old First
United States Dragoons, behind the dragoons a regiment of Missouri
volunteer cavalry and two batteries of volunteer artillery, and of
infantry but two companies. It was an army of 1,700 men, and yet to the
Indians assembled at the fort it must have seemed indeed an army, for
perhaps few of them had ever dreamed that there were half as many men
in the whole “white tribe.” The column drew near the fort, swinging to
the left, forded the river to the Mexican bank, turned again up the
valley, and went on its way, a part to the city of Mexico, a part to
California, and a part only to Santa Fé, whence but a few months later
they would march to avenge the murder of Charles Bent, now doling out
mint-juleps to the loitering officers in the little room upstairs in
the fort.
[Illustration: GENERAL S. W. KEARNY
From an original daguerreotype]
IV
KIT CARSON, HUNTER
There were two or three employees at the fort whose labors never
ceased. These were the hunters who were obliged constantly to provide
meat for the employees. Though the number of these varied, there
might be from sixty to a hundred men employed at the fort, and many of
these had families, so that the population was considerable.
For a number of years the principal hunter for the fort was Kit Carson,
who was often assisted by a Mexican or two, though in times when work
was slack many of the traders, trappers, employees, and teamsters
devoted themselves to hunting. Often game could be killed within sight
of the post, but at other times it was necessary for the hunter to take
with him a wagon or pack-animals, for he might be obliged to go several
days’ journey before securing the necessary food. It was the duty of
Carson and his assistants to provide meat for the whole post. It was
here that in 1843 Carson was married to a Mexican girl.
Though, as already suggested, difficulties sometimes occurred with
the Indians, these troubles were very rare; yet the vigilance of the
garrison, drilled into them from earliest times by William Bent, never
relaxed.
The animals belonging to the fort were a constant temptation to the
Indians. The fort stood on the open plain by the riverside, and there
was an abundance of good grass close at hand, so that the herd could
be grazed within sight of the walls. Even so, however, the Indians
occasionally swept off the stock, as in 1839, when a party of Comanches
hid in the bushes on the river-bank, ran off every hoof of stock
belonging to the post, and killed the Mexican herder.
[Illustration: KIT CARSON
From the painting in the Capitol at Denver, Colorado]
Farnham while there heard this account of the event:
“About the middle of June, 1839, a band of sixty of them [Comanches]
under cover of night crossed the river and concealed themselves among
the bushes that grow thickly on the bank near the place where the
animals of the establishment feed during the day. No sentinel being
on duty at the time, their presence was unobserved: and when morning
came the Mexican horse guard mounted his horse, and with the noise and
shouting usual with that class of servants when so employed, rushed
his charge out of the fort; and riding rapidly from side to side of
the rear of the band, urged them on and soon had them nibbling the
short dry grass in a little vale within grape shot distance of the guns
of the bastion. It is customary for a guard of animals about these
trading-posts to take his station beyond his charge; and if they stray
from each other, or attempt to stroll too far, he drives them together,
and thus keeps them in the best possible situation to be driven hastily
to the corral, should the Indians, or other evil persons, swoop down
upon them. And as there is constant danger of this, his horse is held
by a long rope, and grazes around him, that he may be mounted quickly
at the first alarm for a retreat within the walls. The faithful guard
at Bent’s, on the morning of the disaster I am relating, had dismounted
after driving out his animals, and sat upon the ground, watching
with the greatest fidelity for every call of duty; when these 50 or
60 Indians sprang from their hiding places, ran upon the animals,
yelling horribly, and attempted to drive them across the river. The
guard, however, nothing daunted, mounted quickly, and drove his horse
at full speed among them. The mules and horses hearing his voice amidst
the frightening yells of the savages, immediately started at a lively
pace for the fort; but the Indians were on all sides, and bewildered
them. The guard still pressed them onward, and called for help; and
on they rushed, despite the efforts of the Indians to the contrary.
The battlements were covered with men. They shouted encouragement to
the brave guard--‘Onward, onward,’ and the injunction was obeyed. He
spurred his horse to his greatest speed from side to side and whipped
the hindermost of the band with his leading rope. He had saved every
animal: he was within 20 yards of the open gate: he fell: three arrows
from the bows of the Comanches had cloven his heart, and, relieved
of him, the lords of the quiver gathered their prey, and drove them
to the borders of Texas, without injury to life or limb. I saw this
faithful guard’s grave. He had been buried a few days. The wolves had
been digging into it. Thus 40 or 50 mules and horses and their best
servant’s life were lost to the Messrs. Bents in a single day.”
Long before this, in 1831, when the fort was still unfinished, Carson
with twelve white employees went down the river to the Big Timbers to
cut logs for use in the construction work. He had all the horses and
mules belonging to the post with him, and while he and his men were
at work, a party of sixty Crows crept up close to them, and coming out
of the brush and timber drove off the herd. Carson and his men, all
on foot, followed the Crows across the open prairie. With them were
two mounted Cheyenne warriors, who had been visiting the camp when
the Crows made their attack, but who luckily had both their ponies by
them, and thus saved them. The Crows had not gone many miles before
they halted, and camped in a thicket on the margin of a little stream,
thinking that a party of twelve men would not dare to follow them on
foot; therefore, when they beheld Carson and his men coming on their
trail they were greatly astonished. They left the stolen animals
behind them, and came boldly out on the open prairie to annihilate
the venturesome white men, but all of Carson’s party had excellent
rifles and one or two pistols apiece. Carson used to tell how surprised
those Crows were when they charged down upon his men and were met by
a stunning volley. They turned and made for the thicket, the whites
following them at a run. Into the thicket went the Crows and in after
them tumbled Carson and his men. Some spirited bushwhacking ensued,
then out at the far edge of the thicket came the Crows, with Carson
and his men still after them. Meantime, when the Crows had come out to
charge the whites, the two mounted Cheyennes had quietly slipped round
in the rear and run off all the captured horses, so now Carson’s men
mounted and rode exultingly back to their camp, while the discomfited
Crows plodded on homeward, nursing their wounds.
In the years before the great peace was made between the Kiowas and
Comanches, and the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, the home country of the
Southern Cheyennes lay chiefly between the Arkansas and the South
Platte Rivers. In August many of them used to go east as far as the
valley of the Republican, for the purpose of gathering winter supplies
of choke-cherries and plums. In the autumn the Suhtai and the Hill
people--Hĭs´sĭ-o-mē´ta-nē--went up west into the foothills of the
mountains to kill mule-deer, which were plenty there, and at that
season fat. All the different bands of Cheyennes used to make annual
trips to the mountains for the purpose of securing lodge-poles. A cedar
which grew there was also much employed in the manufacture of bows.
At this time the range of the Kiowas was from the Cimarron south to the
Red River of Texas, on the ridge of the Staked Plains. They kept south
in order to avoid, so far as possible, the raiding parties of Cheyennes
and Arapahoes, who were constantly trying to take horses from them. In
those days--and still earlier--the Kiowas used to make frequent trips
north to visit their old friends and neighbors, the Crows, but when
they did this they kept away to the westward, close to the mountains,
in order to avoid the camps of the Cheyennes. Nevertheless, such
travelling parties were occasionally met by the Cheyennes or Arapahoes,
and fights occurred. It was in such a fight that an old woman, now
(1912) known as White Cow Woman, or the Kiowa Woman, was captured. She
was a white child, taken from the whites by the Kiowas when two or
three years of age, and a year or two later captured from the Kiowas
as stated by the Cheyennes. She is now supposed to be seventy-six or
seventy-seven years old. The fight when she was captured took place in
1835, or three years before the great fight on Wolf Creek.
Before the Mexican War the Arkansas was the boundary between the United
States and Mexico, and Bent’s Fort was, therefore, on the extreme
border of the United States. In those days the Indians used to make
raids into Mexican territory, sweeping off great herds of horses and
mules. They also captured many Mexicans, and many a Comanche and Kiowa
warrior owned two or three peons, whom he kept to herd his horses for
him.
These peons were often badly treated by their Mexican masters, and
after they had been for a short time with the Indians, they liked the
new life so well that they would not return to their old masters, even
if they had the opportunity. Many of these men led the warriors in
raids into Mexico. They kept in communication with peons in the Mexican
settlements, and from them learned just which places were unguarded,
where the best herds and most plunder were to be secured, and where
the Mexican troops were stationed. The peon then led his war-party to
the locality selected, and they ran off the herds, burned ranches, and
carried off plunder and peon women and men. Some of the peons captured
became chiefs in the tribes that had taken them. In the old days,
Colonel Bent sometimes purchased these Mexican peons from the Kiowas.
In 1908 one of these peons was still living at the Kiowa Agency,
eighty-two years old.
Carson was employed by the Bents as hunter for many years. Sometimes he
remained at the fort, supplying the table with meat, at other times he
went with the wagon-train to Missouri, acting as hunter for the outfit.
The following advertisement from the Missouri _Intelligencer_ marked
Carson’s first appearance on the page of history:
“NOTICE: To whom it may concern: That Christopher Carson, a boy
about sixteen years, small of his age, but thickset, light hair,
ran away from the subscriber, living in Franklin, Howard Co., Mo.,
to whom he had been bound to learn the saddler’s trade, on or about
the first day of September last. He is supposed to have made his
way toward the upper part of the State. All persons are notified
not to harbor, support or subsist said boy under penalty of the
law. One cent reward will be given to any person who will bring
back said boy.
“DAVID WORKMAN.
“Franklin, Oct. 6, 1826.”
This runaway boy joined the Santa Fé caravan of Charles Bent, and from
that time on for a number of years was employed by Bent and St. Vrain.
From 1834 to 1842, he was constantly at the fort. He married a daughter
of Charles Beaubien, of Taos, who, with his son, Narcisse Beaubien, was
killed at the time of the Pueblo massacre in January, 1847.
During the Civil War, Carson received a commission in the militia of
New Mexico or Colorado, and rose to the rank of colonel and brevet
brigadier-general.
V
LIFE AT BENT’S FORT