Site Last Updated on
March 28, 2012
Life at Bent’s Fort
The following is from an article by George Bird Grinnell appearing in Forest and Stream Magazine in the January 22, 1910 issue. The article was reprinted in the Museum of the Fur Trade Quarterly Volume 18, 1982 No. 4.
Bent’s Old Fort was a stopping place for all travelers on the Santa Fe Trail and visitors often remained there for weeks at a time, for Colonel Bent kept open house. On holidays, such as Christmas and the Fourth of July, if any number of people were there, they often had balls or dances in which trappers, travelers, Indians, Indian women and Mexican women all took part. Employed about the post there were always a Frenchman or two who could play the violin and guitar. On one occasion Frank P. Blair [Francis Preston Blair], then twenty-three years old, afterward a general in the Union Army and at one time a vice-presidential candidate, played the banjo all night at a ball at the fort. (Appointed Attorney-General of New Mexico by Gen. Kearney in 1846. Took an active part on the side of the Union in Missouri in 1860-61). Just before each Fourth of July a party was sent up into the mountains on the Purgatoire River to gather wild mint for mint juleps to be drunk in honor of the day. For the brewing of these, ice from the ice house was used. This drink was in those days called “hail-storm.” The employees at the fort were divided into classes, to each of which special duties were assigned. Certain men remained always at the post guarding it, trading with Indians and trappers and keeping the books. These we may call clerks, or storekeepers and mechanics. Another group took care of the livestock, herding and caring for the horses and mules, while still others had charge of the wagon train that hauled the furs to the States and brought back new goods to the fort. Other men, led by veteran traders, went to trade in the Indian camps at a distance.
Excepting in the summer when the trains were absent on their way to St. Louis, the population of the fort was a large one. There were traders, clerks, trappers, hunters, teamsters, herders, and laborers, and these were of as many races as there were trades. The clerks traders and trappers were chiefly Americans, the hunters and laborers might be white men, Mexicans or Frenchmen. Some of the Delawares and Shawnees-of whom Black Beaver was one of the most famous-were hunters and trappers, while others of their race were teamsters, and went back and forth with the trains between Westport and Fort William. The herders were chiefly Mexicans, as were also some of the laborers, while the cook of the bourgeois was a negro. Almost all of these people had taken Indian wives from one tribe or another and the fort was plentifully peopled with women and children as well with men.
During the summer season matters were often very quiet about the fort. In April, just about the time that the Indians set out on their summer buffalo hunt, the train started for St. Louis. It was under the personal conduct of Colonel Bent, but in charge of a wagon master who was responsible for everything. It was loaded with robes. With the train went most of the teamsters and herders, together with some of the laborers. The journey was to last nearly six months, for each heavy wagon was drawn by six yoke of oxen driven by a teamster, who might be a white man or a Delaware or a Shawnee. With the train went great herds of horses to be sold when the settlements were reached. Agent Fitzpatrick says that the Cheyennes moved with the train as far as Pawnee Fork and then scattered on their hunt.
Back at the fort only a few men were left; the clerks, a trader or two and a few laborers and herders. There were frequent calls there by Indians, chiefly war parties stopping by to secure supplies of arms and ammunition. Hunting parties occasionally called to procure ordinary goods. Parties of white travelers came and stayed for a little while and then went on again. During this time especial precautions were taken against trouble with the Indians. At night the fort was closed early and conditions sometimes arose under which admission to the fort might be refused by the trader. This watchfulness, which was never relaxed, was not caused by any special fear of Indian attacks, but was merely the carrying out of those measures of prudence which Colonel Bent had always practice, and which he had so thoroughly inculcated in his men that they had become fixed habits.
Usually the Cheyenne Indians were freely admitted to the fort and were allowed to wander through it more or less at will. They might go up on the roof and into the watchtower, but were warned by the chiefs not to touch anything. They might go about and look, and if they wished to, ask questions, but as the sun got low a chief or principal man went through the fort and said to the young men who were lounging here and there, “Now, soon these people will wish to close the gates of the house, and you had better now go out and return to your camps.” When this was said the young men always obeyed, for in those days the chiefs had control over their young men; these listened to what was said to them and obeyed. On one occasion a war party of Shoshoni came down from the mountains and visited Bent’s Fort and insisted on coming in. The trader in charge, probably Murray [“Goddamn” Lucas Murray], declined to let them in and when they endeavored to force their way into the post he killed one of them, when the others went away. The Indian’s body was buried at some little distance from the fort and his scalp was afterward given to a war party of Cheyenne and Arapahoe. In winter the scenes at the fort were very different. Now it harbored a much larger population. All the employees were there, except a few traders and teamsters and laborers who might be out visiting the different camps, and who were constantly going and returning. The greater part of the laborers and teamsters had little or nothing to do and spent most of the winter in idleness, lounging about the fort or occasionally going out hunting. Besides the regular inhabitants there were many visitors, some of whom spent a long time at the fort. Hunters and trappers from the mountains, often with their families, came in to purchase goods for the next summer’s journey, or to visit, and then having supplied their wants returned to their mountain camps. All visitors were welcome to stay as long as they pleased. Though the fort was full of idle men, nevertheless time did not hang heavy on their hands. There were amusements of various sorts, hunting parties, games, and not infrequent dances, in which the moccasined [sic] trappers in their fringed, beaded or porcupine-quilled buckskin garments swung merry-faced and laughing Indian women in the rough but hearty dances of the frontier. To the employees of the fort liquor was ever dealt out with a sparing hand, and there is no memory of any trouble among the people who belonged at the post. It was a contented and cheerful family that dwelt within these four adobe walls.
Perhaps the most important persons at the fort, after the directing head who governed the whole organization, were the traders who dealt out goods to the Indians in the post, receiving their furs in payment, and who were sent off to distant camps with loads of trade goods to gather from them the robes which they had prepared, or to by the horses and mules.
Of these traders there were seven or eight of whom the following are remembered: Murray an Irishman, known to the Indians as Pau e sih, Flat Nose; Fisher [Robert Fisher], an American, No ma ni, Fish; Hatcher [John Hatcher], a Kentuckian, He him ni ho nah, Freckled Hand; Thomas Boggs, a Missourian, Wohk po hum, White Horse; John Smith [Blackfoot John Smith], a Missourian Po o om mats, Gray Blanket; Kit Carson , a Kentuckian, Vi hiu nis, Little Chief, and Charles Davis, a Missourian, Ho nih, Wolf.
L. Maxwell [Lucien Maxwell], Wo wihph pai I sih, Big Nostrils, was the superintendent or foreman at the fort, but had nothing to do with the trading. He looked after the herds and laborers and fort matters in general.
Murray, who was a good hunter and trapper and a brave man, was one of the two more important men among these traders. He usually remained at the fort and was almost always left in charge when the train went to the States. Hatcher, however, was probably the best trader and the most valued of the seven.
Each of these traders had especially friendly relations with some particular tribe of Indian, and each was naturally sent off to the tribe that he knew best. Besides this, often when villages of Indians came and camped somewhere near the post, the chiefs would request that a particular man be sent to their village to trade. Sometimes to a very large village two or three traders would be sent, the work being more than one man could handle in a short period of time.
When it was determined that a trader should go out he and the chief clerk talked over the trip. The trader enumerated the goods required and these were laid out, charged to him, and then packed for transportation to the camp. If the journey was over level prairie, this transportation was by wagon, but if over rough country, pack mules were used. If on arrival at the camp the trader found that the trade was going to be large and that he required more goods, he sent back his wagon or some of his animals to the post for additional supplies. When he returned from his trip and turned in his robes, he was credited with the goods that he had received. The trade for robes ended in the spring, and during the summer the traders often went to different villages to barter for horses and mules.
A certain proportion of the trade with the Indians was for spirits, but this proportion was small. The Indians demanded liquor, and though Colonel Bent was strongly opposed to giving it to them, he knew very well that unless he did something toward satisfying their demands, whiskey traders from Santa Fe or Taos might come into the territory and gratify the Indians’ longing for drink, and at the same time take away the trade from the fort. Two or three times a year, therefore, after many visits from the chiefs, asking for liquor, promising to take charge of it and see to its distribution and to be responsible that payment should be made for it, a lot of liquor would be sent out to a camp packed in kegs of varying sizes. A trader coming into the villages would deposit his load in the lodge of a chief. The Indians wishing to trade would come to the lodge and offer what they had to trade, and each would be assigned a keg of a certain size, sufficient to pay for the robes, horses or mules that he sold. Each Indian then tied a piece of cloth or a string to his keg so as to mark it as his, and it remained in the chief’s lodge, unopened for the present. When the trade had been completed, the trader left the village, and not until he had gone some distance did the chief permit the Indians to take their kegs of liquor. Sometimes while the traders were in a camp trading ordinary goods a party of men from Taos or Santa Fe would come into camp with whiskey, and then, at once there would be an end of all legitimate business until the Indians had become intoxicated, drunk all the spirits and become sober again. No trader ever wished to have whiskey in the camp where he was working. We commonly think of the trade at one of these old forts as being wholly for furs, but at Bent’s Fort this was not the case. In later times, furs, that is to say buffalo robes, were indeed, a chief article of trade and were carried back to the States to be sold there, but a great trade also went on in horses and mules, of which the Indians possessed great numbers, and of which they were always getting more. These horses and mules were taken back to the settlements and sold there, but they were also sold to anyone who would buy them. The cavalyard was a part of every train which returned to the States, the animals being herded by Mexicans and being in charge of a trader, who disposed of them when they reached the settlements. The Indians constantly paid for their goods in horses and mules, but this was not the only source from which horses came. About 1845 William Bent sent his brother George Bent, with Tom Boggs and Hatcher down into Old Mexico to trade for horses and mules. They brought back great herds and with them a celebrated rider know at the fort, and in later years to all the Cheyennes, as One-eyed Juan, whose sole occupation was breaking horses, a vocation which he followed until he was too old to get into the saddle. It was said of him that when he wished to show off he would put a saddle on a wild horse, and placing a Mexican dollar in each one of the huge wooden stirrups, would mount the horse, and no matter what the horse might do these dollar were always found under the soles of the rider’s feet when the animal stopped bucking. While the chief market at which the horses and mules were sold was St Louis, yet on at least one occasion Hatcher took a herd of horses which had been bought wild from the Comanches and broken by the Mexicans at the fort over to Taos and Santa Fe and sold them there. Occasionally they sold good broken horses to the Indians for robes.
It must be remembered that a large proportion of these horses purchased from the Indians, and especially from the Comanches, were wild horses taken by the Comanches, from the great herds which ran loose on the ranches in Old Mexico. Practically all these horses bore Mexican brands.
After the emigration to California began, herds of horses and mules were sent up to the emigrant trail on the North Platte River to be sold to emigrants on their way to California. On one occasion Hatcher, with a force of Mexican herders, was sent up there in charge of a great herd of horses and mules and remained alongside the trail until he had disposed of all his animals. He carried back with him the gold and silver money received for them in leather panniers packed on the backs of animals.
Important members of the fort household, were Chipita, Andrew Green, the bourgeois cook, the old French tailor, whose name is forgotten, and the carpenter and the blacksmith.
Chipita was the housekeeper and laundress, the principal woman at the post and the one who, on the occasion of dances or other festivities managed these affairs. She was a large, very good-natured and kindly woman and is said to have been married to one of the employees of the fort.
Andrew Green, the black cook, has already been spoken of as having ultimately been set free. (Andrew Green, Chas. Bent’s slave was called Dick by the trappers. He went with St. Vrain’s company of trappers in the expedition to Taos and fought gallantly, being badly wounded in an engagement with the Pueblos and Mexicans). [According to David Lavender in Bent's Fort, there were two slaves, Dick and Andrew Green. Black Charlotte was Dick's wife, and she was the cook at the fort. Charlotte, who may be the same as Chipita, described herself as the "only lady in de whole damn Indian country," and was a favorite partner at the dances] The old French tailor had come up from New Orleans. He had a shop in one of the rooms of the fort where he used to make and repair clothing for the men. Much of the clothing was of buckskin, which he himself dressed, for he was a good tanner.
In winter the teamsters and laborers spent their evenings usually in playing cards and checkers in the quarters by the light of tallow candles, the only lights they had to burn. These candles were made at the fort, Chipita doing the work. They were moulded of buffalo tallow in old-fashioned tin moulds, perhaps a dozen in a set. The work of fixing the wicks in the moulds occupied considerable time. The tallow was then melted, the refuse skimmed from it, the fluid grease poured into the moulds and the wicks, which hung from the top, were cut off with a pair of scissors. Then the moulds were dipped in a barrel of water standing by to cool the candles, and presently they were quite hard and could be removed from the moulds ready for use.
In the winter Chipita would sometimes vary the monotony of the life by getting up a candy pulling frolic in which the laborers and teamsters all took part, and which was more or less jollification. During the afternoon and evening the black New Orleans molasses, which was used in the Indian trade was boiled, and after supper the people gathered in one of the rooms and pulled the candy. Candy such as this was a great luxury and was eagerly eaten by those who could get it.
The work of the carpenter and blacksmith whose shops stood at the back of the fort, was chiefly on the wagons which they kept in good order. For them winter was the busy season, for it was their duty to have everything in good order and ready for the train to start out in April.
There was no surgeon at the fort, Colonel Bent doing his own doctoring. He possessed an ample medicine chest which he replenished on his trips to St. Louis. He had also a number of medical books and no doubt these and such practical experience as came to him with the years made him reasonably skillful in the rough medicine and surgery that he practiced. With the train he carried a small medicine chest which occasionally came in play.
For many years Bent’s Fort was the great and only gathering place for the Indians in the southwestern plains, and at different times there were large companies of them present there.
