Concise History of New Mexico

The Old Santa Fe Trail

By COLONEL HENRY INMAN

CHAPTER XIX.
BENT'S FORTS.

The famous Bent brothers, William, George, Robert, and Charles, were
French-Canadian hunters and trappers, and had been employed almost
from boyhood, in the early days of the border, by the American Fur
Company in the mountains of the Northwest.

In 1826, almost immediately after the transference of the fur trade
to the valley of the Arkansas, when the commerce of the prairies
was fairly initiated, the three Bents and Ceran St. Vrain, also a
French-Canadian and trapper, settled on the Upper Arkansas, where
they erected a stockade. It was, of course, a rude affair, formed of
long stakes or pickets driven into the ground, after the Mexican
style known as jacal. The sides were then ceiled and roofed, and
it served its purpose of a trading-post. This primitive fort was
situated on the left or north bank of the river, about halfway between
Pueblo and Canyon City, those beautiful mountain towns of to-day.

Two years afterward, in 1828, the proprietors of the primitive
stockade in the remote wilderness found it necessary to move closer
to the great hunting-grounds lower down the valley. There, about
twelve miles northeast of the now thriving town of Las Animas,
the Bents commenced the construction of a relatively large and more
imposing-looking structure than the first. The principal material
used in the new building, or rather in its walls, was adobe, or
sun-dried brick, so common even to-day in New Mexican architecture.
Four years elapsed before the new fort was completed, during which
period its owners, like other trappers, lived in tents or teepees
fashioned of buffalo-skins, after the manner of the Indians.

When at last the new station was completed, it was named Fort William,
in honour of Colonel William Bent, who was the leader of the family
and the most active trader among the four partners in the concern.
The colonel frequently made long trips to the remote villages of the
Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Kiowas, and Comanches, which were situated far
to the south and east, on the Canadian River and its large tributaries.
His miscellaneous assortment of merchandise he transported upon
pack-mules to the Indian rendezvous, bringing back to the fort the
valuable furs he had exchanged for the goods so eagerly coveted by
the savages. It was while on one of his trading expeditions to the
Cheyenne nation that the colonel married a young squaw of that tribe,
the daughter of the principal chief.

William Bent for his day and time was an exceptionally good man.
His integrity, his truthfulness on all occasions, and his remarkable
courage endeared him to the red and white man alike, and Fort William
prospered wonderfully under his careful and just management. Both
his brothers and St. Vrain had taken up their residence in Taos, and
upon the colonel devolved the entire charge of the busy establishment.
It soon became the most popular rendezvous of the mountaineers and
trappers, and in its immediate vicinity several tribes of Indians
took up their temporary encampment.

In 1852 Fort William was destroyed under the following strange
circumstances: It appears that the United States desired to purchase
it. Colonel Bent had decided upon a price--sixteen thousand dollars--
but the representatives of the War Department offered only twelve
thousand, which, of course, Bent refused. Negotiations were still
pending, when the colonel, growing tired of the red-tape and
circumlocution of the authorities, and while in a mad mood, removed
all his valuables from the structure, excepting some barrels of
gunpowder, and then deliberately set fire to the old landmark.
When the flames reached the powder, there was an explosion which
threw down portions of the walls, but did not wholly destroy them.
The remains of the once noted buildings stand to-day, melancholy
relics of a past epoch.

In the same year the indefatigable and indomitable colonel determined
upon erecting a much more important structure. He selected a site
on the same side of the Arkansas, in the locality known as Big Timbers.
Regarding this new venture, Colonel or Judge Moore of Las Animas,
a son-in-law of William Bent, tells in a letter to the author of
the history of Colorado the following facts:--

Leaving ten men in camp to get out stone for the new post,
Colonel Bent took a part of his outfit and went to a Kiowa
village, about two hundred miles southwest, and remained
there all winter, trading with the Kiowas and Comanches.
In the spring of 1853 he returned to Big Timbers, when
the construction of the new post was begun, and the work
continued until completed in the summer of 1854; and it
was used as a trading-post until the owner leased it to
the government in the autumn of 1859. Colonel Sedgwick had
been sent out to fight the Kiowas that year, and in the fall
a large quantity of commissary stores had been sent him.
Colonel Bent then moved up the river to a point just above
the mouth of the Purgatoire, and built several rooms of
cottonwood pickets, and there spent the winter. In the
spring of 1860, Colonel Sedgwick began the construction of
officers' buildings, company quarters, corrals, and stables,
all of stone, and named the place Fort Wise, in honour of
Governor Wise of Virginia. In 1861 the name was changed to
Fort Lyon, in honour of General Lyon, who was killed at the
battle of Wilson Creek, Missouri. In the spring of 1866,
the Arkansas River overflowed its banks, swept up into the
fort, and, undermining the walls, rendered it untenable for
military purposes. The camp was moved to a point twenty
miles below, and the new Fort Lyon established. The old
post was repaired, and used as a stage station by Barlow,
Sanderson, and Company, who ran a mail, express, and
passenger line between Kansas City and Santa Fe.

The contiguous region to Fort William was in the early days a famous
hunting-ground. It abounded in nearly every variety of animal
indigenous to the mountains and plains, among which were the panther
--the so-called California lion of to-day--the lynx, erroneously termed
wild cat, white wolf, prairie wolf, silver-gray fox, prairie fox,
antelope, buffalo, gray, grizzly and cinnamon bears, together with
the common brown and black species, the red deer and the black-tail,
the latter the finest venison in the world. Of birds there were
wild turkeys, quail, and grouse, besides an endless variety of the
smaller-sized families, not regarded as belonging to the domain of
game in a hunter's sense. It was a veritable paradise, too, for the
trappers. Its numerous streams and creeks were famous for beaver,
otter, and mink.

Scarcely an acre of the surrounding area within the radius of
hundreds of miles but has been the scene of many deadly encounters
with the wily red man, stories of which are still current among the
few old mountaineers yet living.

The fort was six hundred and fifty miles west of Fort Leavenworth,
in latitude thirty-eight degrees and two minutes north, and longitude
one hundred and three degrees and three minutes west, from Greenwich.
The exterior walls of the fort, whose figure was that of a parallelogram,
were fifteen feet high and four feet thick. It was a hundred and
thirty-five feet wide and divided into various compartments. On the
northwest and southeast corners were hexagonal bastions, in which
were mounted a number of cannon. The walls of the building served
as the walls of the rooms, all of which faced inwards on a plaza,
after the general style of Mexican architecture. The roofs of the
rooms were made of poles, on which was a heavy layer of dirt, as in
the houses of native Mexicans to-day. The fort possessed a billiard
table, that visitors might amuse themselves, and in the office was
a small telescope with a fair range of seven miles.

The occupants of the far-away establishment, in its palmy days
(for years it was the only building between Council Grove and the
mountains), were traders, Indians, hunters, and French trappers,
who were the employees of the great fur companies. Many of the latter
had Indian wives. Later, after a stage line had been put in operation
across the plains to Santa Fe, the fort was relegated to a mere
station for the overland route, and with the march of civilization
in its course westward, the trappers, hunters, and traders vanished
from the once famous rendezvous.

The walls were loopholed for musketry, and the entrance to the plaza,
or corral, was guarded by large wooden gates. During the war with
Mexico, the fort was headquarters for the commissary department,
and many supplies were stored there, though the troops camped below
on the beautiful river-bottom. In the centre of the corral, in the
early days when the place was a rendezvous of the trappers, a large
buffalo-robe press was erected. When the writer first saw the famous
fort, now over a third of a century ago, one of the cannon, that
burst in firing a salute to General Kearney, could be seen half
buried in the dirt of the plaza.

By barometrical measurements taken by the engineer officers of the
army at different times, the height of Bent's Fort above the ocean
level is approximately eight thousand nine hundred and fifty-eight
feet, and the fall of the Arkansas River from the fort to the great
bend of that stream, about three hundred and eleven miles east,
is seven feet and four-tenths per mile.

It was in a relatively fair state of preservation thirty-three years
ago, but now not a vestige of it remains, excepting perhaps a mound
of dirt, the disintegration of the mud bricks of which the historical
structure was built.

The Indians whose villages were located a few miles below the fort,
or at least the chief men of the various tribes, passed much of their
time within the shelter of the famous structure. They were bountifully
fed, and everything they needed furnished them. This was purely from
policy, however; for if their wishes were not gratified, their
hunters would not bring in their furs to trade. The principal chiefs
never failed to be present when a meal was announced as ready, and
however scarce provisions might be, the Indians must be fed.

The first farm in the fertile and now valuable lands of the valley of
the Rio de las Animas[60] was opened by the Bents. The area selected
for cultivation was in the beautiful bottom between the fort and the
ford, a strip about a mile in length, and from one hundred and fifty
to six hundred feet in width. Nothing could be grown without irrigation,
and to that end an acequia, as the Mexicans call the ditch through
which the water flows, was constructed, and a crop put in. Before
the enterprising projectors of the scheme could reap a harvest,
the hostile savages dashed in and destroyed everything.

Uncle John Smith was one of the principal traders back in the '30's,
and he was very successful, perhaps because he was undoubtedly the
most perfect master of the Cheyenne language at that time in the
whole mountain region.

Among those who frequently came to the fort were Kit Carson,
L. B. Maxwell, Uncle Dick Wooton, Baptiste Brown, Jim Bridger,
Old Bill Williams, James Beckwourth, Shawnee Spiebuck, Shawnee Jake
--the latter two, noted Indian trappers--besides a host of others.

The majority of the old trappers, to a stranger, until he knew their
peculiar characteristics, were seemingly of an unsociable disposition.
It was an erroneous idea, however; for they were the most genial
companions imaginable, generous to a fault, and to fall into one of
their camps was indeed a lucky thing for the lost traveller.
Everything the host had was at his guest's disposal, and though
coffee and sugar were the dearest of his luxuries, often purchased
with a whole season's trapping, the black fluid was offered with
genuine free-heartedness, and the last plug of tobacco placed at the
disposition of his chance visitor, as though it could be picked up
on the ground anywhere.

Goods brought by the traders to the rendezvous for sale to the
trappers and hunters, although of the most inferior quality, were
sold at enormously high prices.

Coffee, by the pint-cup, which was the usual measure for everything,
cost from a dollar and twenty cents to three dollars; tobacco a dollar
and a half a plug; alcohol from two dollars to five dollars a pint;
gunpowder one dollar and sixty cents a pint-cup, and all other
articles at proportionably exorbitant rates.

The annual gatherings of the trappers at the rendezvous were often
the scene of bloody duels; for over their cups and cards no men were
more quarrelsome than the old-time mountaineers. Rifles at twenty
paces settled all difficulties, and, as may be imagined, the fall
of one or the other of the combatants was certain, or, as sometimes
happened, both fell at the word "Fire!"

The trapper's visits to the Mexican settlements, or to the lodges
of a tribe of Indians, for the purpose of trading, often resulted
in his returning to his quiet camp with a woman to grace his solitary
home, the loving and lonely couple as devoted to each other in the
midst of blood-thirsty enemies, howling wolves, and panthers, as if
they were in some quiet country village.

The easy manners of the harum-scarum, reckless trappers at the
rendezvous, and the simple, unsuspecting hearts of those nymphs of
the mountains, the squaws, caused their husbands to be very jealous
of the attentions bestowed upon them by strangers. Often serious
difficulties arose, in the course of which the poor wife received
a severe whipping with the knot of a lariat, or no very light
lodge-poling at the hands of her imperious sovereign. Sometimes
the affair ended in a more tragical way than a mere beating, not
infrequently the gallant paying the penalty of his interference with
his life.

Garrard, a traveller on the great plains and in the Rocky Mountains
half a century ago, from whose excellent diary I have frequently
quoted, passed many days and nights at Bent's Fort fifty years ago,
and his quaint description of life there in that remote period of
the extreme frontier is very amusing. Its truth has often been
confirmed by Uncle John Smith, who was my guide and interpreter in
the Indian expedition of 1868-69, only two decades after Garrard's
experience.

Rosalie, a half-breed French and Indian squaw, wife of the carpenter,
and Charlotte, the culinary divinity, were, as a Missouri teamster
remarked, "the only female women here." They were nightly led to
the floor to trip the light fantastic toe, and swung rudely or gently
in the mazes of the contra-dance, but such a medley of steps is
seldom seen out of the mountains--the halting, irregular march of the
war-dance, the slipping gallopade, the boisterous pitching of the
Missouri backwoodsman, and the more nice gyrations of the Frenchman;
for all, irrespective of rank, age, or colour, went pell-mell into
the excitement, in a manner that would have rendered a leveller of
aristocracies and select companies frantic with delight. And the
airs assumed by the fair ones, more particularly Charlotte, who took
pattern from life in the States, were amusing. She acted her part
to perfection; she was the centre of attraction, the belle of the
evening. She treated the suitors for the pleasure of the next set
with becoming ease and suavity of manner; she knew her worth, and
managed accordingly. When the favoured gallant stood by her side
waiting for the rudely scraped tune from a screeching fiddle,
satisfaction, joy, and triumph over his rivals were pictured on his
radiant face.

James Hobbs, of whom I have already spoken, once gave me a graphic
description of the annual feast of the Comanches, Cheyennes, and
Arapahoes, which always took place at Big Timbers, near Fort William.

Hobbs was married to the daughter of Old Wolf, the chief of the
Comanches, a really beautiful Indian girl, with whom he lived
faithfully many years. In the early summer of 1835, he went with his
father-in-law and the rest of the tribe to the great feast of that
season. He stated that on that occasion there were forty thousand
Indians assembled, and consequently large hunting parties were sent
out daily to procure food for such a vast host. The entertainment
was kept up for fifteen days, enlivened by horse races, foot races,
and playing ball. In these races the tribes would bet their horses
on the result, the Comanches generally winning, for they are the best
riders in the world. By the time the feast was ended, the Arapahoes
and Cheyennes usually found themselves afoot, but Old Wolf, who was a
generous fellow, always gave them back enough animals to get home with.

The game of ball was played with crooked sticks, and is very much
like the American boys' "shinny." The participants are dressed in
a simple breech-cloth and moccasins. It is played with great
enthusiasm and affords much amusement.

At these annual feasts a council of the great chiefs of the three
tribes is always held, and at the one during the season referred to,
Hobbs said the Cheyenne chiefs wanted Old Wolf to visit Bent's Fort,
where he had never been. Upon the arrival of the delegation there,
it was heartily welcomed by all the famous men who happened to be at
the place, among whom were Kit Carson, Old John Smith, and several
noted trappers. Whiskey occupied a prominent place in the rejoicing,
and "I found it hard work," said Hobbs, "to stand the many toasts
drank to my good health." The whole party, including Old Wolf and
his companion the Cheyenne chief, got very much elated, and every
person in the fort smelt whiskey, if they did not get their feet
tangled with it.

About midnight a messenger came inside, reporting that a thousand
Comanche warriors were gathering around the fort. They demanded
their leaders, fearing treachery, and desired to know why their chief
had not returned. Hobbs went out and explained that he was safe;
but they insisted on seeing him, so he and Hobbs showed themselves
to the assembled Indians, and Old Wolf made a speech, telling them
that he and the Cheyenne chief were among good friends to the Indians,
and presents would be given to them the next morning. The warriors
were pacified with these assurances, though they did not leave the
vicinity of the fort.

It was at this time that Hobbs was ransomed by Colonel Bent, who gave
Old Wolf, for him, six yards of red flannel, a pound of tobacco, and
an ounce of beads.

The chief was taken in charge by a lieutenant, who showed him all
over the fort, letting him see the rifle port-holes, and explaining
how the place could stand a siege against a thousand Indians. Finally,
he was taken out on the parapet, where there was a six-pounder at
each angle. The old savage inquired how they could shoot such a thing,
and at Hobbs' request, a blank cartridge was put in the piece and
fired. Old Wolf sprang back in amazement, and the Indians on the
outside, under the walls, knowing nothing of what was going on,
ran away as fast as their legs could carry them, convinced that
their chief must be dead now and their own safety dependent upon
flight. Old Wolf and Hobbs sprang upon the wall and signalled and
shouted to them, and they returned, asking in great astonishment
what kind of a monstrous gun it was.

About noon trading commenced. The Indians wished to come into the
fort, but Bent would not let any enter but the chiefs. At the back
door the colonel displayed his goods, and the Indians brought forward
their ponies, buffalo-robes, deer and other skins, which they traded
for tobacco, beads, calico, flannel, knives, spoons, whistles,
jews'-harps, etc.

Whiskey was sold to them the first day, but as it caused several
fights among them before night, Bent stopped its sale, at Hobbs'
suggestion and with Old Wolf's consent. Indians, when they get drunk,
do not waste time by fighting with fists, like white men, but use
knives and tomahawks; so that a general scrimmage is a serious affair.
Two or three deaths resulted the first day, and there would have been
many more if the sale of whiskey had not been stopped.

The trading continued for eight days, and Colonel Bent reaped a rich
harvest of what he could turn into gold at St. Louis. Old Wolf slept
in the fort each night except one during that time, and every time
his warriors aroused him about twelve o'clock and compelled him to
show himself on the walls to satisfy them of his safety.

About a hundred trappers were in the employ of Bent and his partners.
Sometimes one-half of the company were off on a hunt, leaving but
a small force at the fort for its protection, but with the small
battery there its defence was considered sufficient.

One day a trapping party, consisting of Kit Carson, "Peg-leg" Smith,
and James Hobbs, together with some Shawnee Indians, all under the
lead of Carson, started out from Bent's Fort for the Picketwire to
trap beaver.

Grizzlies were very abundant in that region then, and one of the
party, named McIntire, having killed an elk the evening before, said
to Hobbs that they might stand a good chance to find a grizzly by
the elk he had shot but had not brought in. Hobbs said that he was
willing to go with him, but as McIntire was a very green man in the
mountains, Hobbs had some doubts of depending on him in case of an
attack by a grizzly bear.

The two men left for the ravine in which McIntire had killed the elk
very early in the morning, taking with them tomahawks, hunting-knives,
rifles, and a good dog. On arriving at the ravine, Hobbs told
McIntire to cross over to the other side and climb the hill, but on
no account to go down into the ravine, as a grizzly is more dangerous
when he has a man on the downhill side. Hobbs then went to where he
thought the elk might be if he had died by the bank of the stream;
but as soon as he came near the water, he saw that a large grizzly
had got there before him, having scented the animal, and was already
making his breakfast.

The bear was in thick, scrubby oak brush, and Hobbs, making his dog
lie down, crawled behind a rock to get a favourable shot at the beast.
He drew a bead on him and fired, but the bear only snarled at the
wound made by the ball and started tearing through the brush, biting
furiously at it as he went. Hobbs reloaded his rifle carefully,
and as quickly as he could, in order to get a second shot; but,
to his amazement, he saw the bear rushing down the ravine chasing
McIntire, who was only about ten feet in advance of the enraged beast,
running for his life, and making as much noise as a mad bull. He was
terribly scared, and Hobbs hastened to his rescue, first sending his
dog ahead.

Just as the dog reached the bear, McIntire darted behind a tree and
flung his hat in the bear's face, at the same time sticking his
rifle toward him. The old grizzly seized the muzzle of the gun in
his teeth, and, as it was loaded and cocked, it either went off
accidentally or otherwise and blew the bear's head open, just as the
dog had fastened on his hindquarters. Hobbs ran to the assistance
of his comrade with all haste, but he was out of danger and had sat
down a few rods away, with his face as white as a sheet, a badly
frightened man.

After that fearful scare, McIntire would cook or do anything, but
said he never intended to make a business of bear-hunting; he had
only wished for one adventure, and this one had satisfied him.