William Bent
Charles Bent
William Bent and his older brother, Charles were born near St. Louis, Missouri, on a sprawling farm overlooking the Missouri River. They were two of the 11 children of a prominent and well-connected judge, Silas Bent, and a high-born Virginian, Martha Kerr. As children, the brothers and sisters heard tales of the great explorers and guides Lewis and Clark, Zebulon Pike, Sacagawea, Jim Bridger, Jim Beckworth and others.
Fascinated by the tales, Charles was first to answer the call of the West. At 23, he responded to an advertisement in the St. Louis Republican calling for enterprising young men to join a fur expedition. The Missouri Fur Company hired him to trap beaver in Sioux country on the distant reaches of the Missouri River. A few years later, the company hired 17-year-old William as well.
The winter trapping season of 1827-28 did not go well for the brothers. Deep in the Wind River Range of Wyoming, members of the Crow tribe attacked the expedition, driving off all but a few of their horses. The men cached their trade goods and built a crude winter camp on the Green River. Beavers were scarce so the men spent most of their energy staying alive. In spring, when they retrieved their trade goods, everything was ruined. Axes and muskets were rusted; gunpowder, coffee and flour were soaked; and blankets and textiles were mildewed.
Disillusioned with the trapper’s life, in the spring of 1829 the brothers joined a caravan of independent traders bound for Santa Fe, a trading settlement in what was then a territory of independent Mexico. It was a 38-wagon outfit loaded with trade goods for the settlers out west. The journey was fraught with challenges and danger, but this time, when the brothers returned to St. Louis, they sold their New Mexican goods for enormous profits.
Charles immediately refitted for a return trip to Santa Fe but William went back to the mountains of what is now Colorado. He joined a band of free trappers and worked the Arkansas River and its tributaries. The party built a stockade and carried on a lively business. Ute, Comanche, Apache, Cheyenne, Arapaho and Kiowa all came and William learned trading with the tribes could be more lucrative than endless hours of hard work trapping in icy streams.
An idea crystalized to build a fixed trading post where they could exchange guns, powder, cloth, beads, tobacco, knives, and axes for furs, hides and horses from the Indian tribes. In Santa Fe, William’s brother Charles and Charles’ new partner, Ceran St. Vrain, were also intrigued. They already had a trading store in Taos, another planned for Santa Fe and they were looking for more opportunities.
In the summer of 1831, William tested the idea that would transform the fur trading business, make the three men wealthy and turn them into legends of the West. He built a crude stockade close to the junction of Fountain Creek and the Arkansas River near present day Pueblo, Colorado. Charles brought wagons of supplies, and younger brothers George and Robert joined the family business.
That same summer, the brothers formed a lasting partnership with the powerful Cheyenne tribe. The chiefs explained that buffalo were more plentiful on the plains and proposed that the brothers locate their trading post where the tribes held their winter camp in Big Timbers further down the Arkansas River. They offered lucrative trade with the Cheyenne nation as inducement. Recognizing the benefits such an alliance would bring, the brothers agreed.
They selected a site on the north bank of a bend in the Arkansas River about 40 miles west of Big Timbers. It was on the far western edge of the frontier. Everything south of the river belonged to Mexico. The next spring, they began construction of their great adobe castle on the plains.
The Bent brothers’ partnership with the Cheyenne was a success from the beginning. Bent’s Fort was a center of multi-cultural excitement: Mexican traders, American soldiers and explorers, African slaves, mixed-blood scouts, mountain men, fur trappers and the many tribes of the southern plains. The fort was alive with a multitude of languages and customs.
Charles managed the business from St. Louis and bossed the annual caravans to Santa Fe and back. He and his partner, St. Vrain, married into prominent Mexican families that gave them generous land grants from the New Mexican governor, Manuel Armijo, upon which they built elaborate haciendas near Taos.
William presided over the fort and trade with the Native Americans. He quickly learned their languages and customs. Soon he spoke Cheyenne and Arapaho fluently and could communicate effectively in Comanche, Kiowa and Apache. He was also proficient in the universal sign language of the plains. Acting as a peacemaker, magistrate, negotiator, benefactor and counselor, William earned the trust and respect of the tribes.
He, too, made a powerful marriage alliance. In 1835, he married, Mis-Stan-Sta (Owl Woman) daughter of White Thunder, the powerful Cheyenne Holy Man and Keeper of the Sacred Arrows. Arranged by her father, the alliance benefited both sides. White Thunder gained direct access to the goods of Bent, St. Vrain & Company while William was assured a special place in the life of the tribe and guaranteed a ready market.
In July, 1846, with the outbreak of the Mexican-American War, General Stephen Kearny and his Army of the West arrived at Bent’s Fort. Kearny’s orders were to first demand the surrender of Santa Fe and seize the territory of New Mexico, then go on to claim California for the United States. The army used the fort as a way station and supply depot.
Governor Armijo surrendered New Mexico without a fight and Kearny appointed Charles Bent as its first territorial governor. It seemed a logical choice. The Bent trade empire had made him known to businessmen, political leaders, traders and merchants everywhere. The businessmen were happy with the land grab, but ordinary citizens were not and peace was fragile. On January 9, 1847, the citizens of Taos rose in revolt and a frenzied mob killed Charles Bent.
William was grief stricken. Though he continued trade at the fort, his trials were not over. Six months later, another brother George died, probably of consumption (tuberculosis). Then, Owl Woman died ofcomplications during childbirth. In addition, fashions were changing and the fur trade went into decline. Ceran St. Vrain wanted to end the Native American side of the trade and focus his attention on Mexico, and his partnership with William dissolved in February, 1849. Ready for a change, William offered to sell Bent’s Fort to the army — which had continued to impose on his hospitality and patriotism without compensating him — but the government would not meet his price.
Then, in the summer of 1849, cholera struck. Nearly half the southern Cheyenne tribe was stricken. Death was everywhere on the plains, including on the Santa Fe Trail and in the military camps. William evacuated his family and trade goods to Fort St. Vrain on the South Platte River, his northernmost outpost. For the next three years he would focus on his northern market. Competition was stiff and profit margins proved slim, so in 1852, William and the family returned south.
Sadly, they found Bent’s Fort – the “castle on the plains”– in disrepair. The walls of the old adobe fort were crumbling and the plaza was choked with weeds. William decided to abandon the fort and move. He salvaged what he could of the timbers, building materials and trade goods and the rest he destroyed to prevent the fort from falling into the hands of outlaws.
In the fall of 1853, William built a new fort at Big Timbers, approximately 40 miles further east on the Arkansas River, near present-day Lamar, Colorado. The idea made little sense. The once plentiful buffalo herds, grass and wood supplies were dwindling. Trade was moving to the hands of independent, itinerant traders, thus fixed locations were bad for business. But it was a business that William knew, and for 30 years he had cast his lot on the plains. He would remain with the Cheyenne.
His new fort did not compare in size to the old one, but it was still impressive. With 18-foot stone walls, 12 rooms arrayed around a central courtyard and a great warehouse outside the east wall. Like its predecessor, it provided shelter and comfortable accommodations to travelers and it symbolized the power and authority of the Bents.
Bent resumed trading with the Native Americans but could not sustain the levels of trade enjoyed in the 1830s and 1840s and the fort proved unprofitable. In July, 1860, the army rented the facility and used it for storage of goods owed to the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes based on treaties. The army built barracks around the fort and added defensive features. After briefly naming it Fort Fauntleroy, then Fort Wise, it finally became Fort Lyon and the army used the fort until it flooded in 1867.
When William leased his fort to the army, he and his family moved to his ranch on the south side of the Arkansas River at the mouth of the Purgatoire River near Boggsville, close to present-day Las Animas, Colorado. He built a stockade and continued limited trading with the settlers and plains tribes. While on a supply trip to Missouri, Bent stopped to see his daughter Mary and her husband on their ranch near Kansas City. There he contracted pneumonia and died on May 19, 1869. Originally buried on his daughter’s ranch, his remains were moved when the property was sold and he is now buried in the Bent County Las Animas Cemetery.
Bent’s Old Fort, the original, was meticulously reconstructed in the 1970s and is now operated as a living history museum by the National Parks Service, recreating the sights, sounds and smells of the past with guided tours, demonstrations and special events. Learn more at nps.gov/beol
All that remains of Bent’s New Fort is the foundation. A monument marks its location on U.S. Highway 50 at County Road 35, nine miles east of Lamar, Colorado. Learn more at nps.gov/safe/learn/historyculture/bents-new-fort-exhibits.htm