Beyond the Old Frontier: Adventures of Indian-Fighters, Hunters, and Fur-Traders

by George Bird Grinnell

GEORGE BENT

It was in 1828 that the Bent brothers, with St. Vrain, began this large fort, fifteen miles above the mouth of Purgatoire River. It was not completed until 1832. Four years seems a long time to be spent in the construction of such a post, even though it was built of adobe brick, but there were reasons for the delay. Charles Bent was determined that the fort should be built of adobes in order to make it fireproof, so that under no circumstances could it be burned by the Indians. Besides that, adobes were much more durable and more comfortable—cool in summer, warm in winter—than logs would have been. When the question of how the fort should be built had been decided, Charles Bent went to New Mexico, and from Taos and Santa Fé sent over a number of Mexicans to make adobe brick. With them he sent some wagon-loads of Mexican wool to mix with the clay of the bricks, thus greatly lengthening the life of the adobes.

Only a short time, however, after the laborers had reached the intended site of the fort, smallpox broke out among them, and it was necessary to send away those not attacked. William Bent, St. Vrain, Kit Carson, and other white men who were there caught the smallpox from the Mexicans, and though none died they were so badly marked by it that some of the Indians who had known them well in the early years of the trading did not recognize them when they met again.

During the prevalence of the smallpox at the post William Bent sent a runner, Francisco, one of his Mexican herders, north, to warn the Cheyennes not to come near the post. Francisco set out for the Black Hills, and on his way encountered a large war-party of Cheyennes on their way to the fort. He told them of what had happened, and warned them to return north and not to come near the post until sent for. The Cheyennes obeyed, and it was not until some time later, when all at Fort William had recovered and when the temporary stockade with all the infected material that it contained had been burned, that Bent and St. Vrain, with a few pack-mules, started north for the Black Hills to find the Cheyennes and invite them to return to the post. The year of this journey has been given me as 1831. Perhaps it may have been a year earlier.

After the smallpox had ceased, more Mexican laborers were sent for, and work on the fort was resumed. Not long before his death, Kit Carson stated that at one time more than a hundred and fifty Mexicans were at work on the construction of the post.

Accounts of the dimensions of the fort differ, but on certain points all agree: that it was of adobes, set square with the points of the compass, and on the north bank of the Arkansas River. Garrard says that the post was a hundred feet square and the walls thirty feet in height. Another account says that the walls ran a hundred and fifty feet east and west and a hundred feet north and south, and that they were seventeen feet high. J. T. Hughes, however, in his Doniphan’s Expedition, printed in Cincinnati in 1848, says:

“Fort Bent is situated on the north bank of the Arkansas, 650 miles west of Fort Leavenworth, in latitude 38° 2´ north, and longitude 103° 3´ west from Greenwich. The exterior walls of this fort, whose figure is that of an oblong square, are fifteen feet high and four feet thick. It is 180 feet long and 135 feet wide and is divided into various compartments, the whole built of adobes or sun-dried bricks.”

At the southwest and northeast corners of these walls were bastions, or round towers, thirty feet in height and ten feet in diameter inside, with loopholes for muskets and openings for cannon. Garrard speaks of the bastions as hexagonal in form.

Around the walls in the second stories of the bastions hung sabres and great heavy lances with long, sharp blades. These were intended for use in case an attempt were made to take the fort by means of ladders put up against the wall. Besides these cutting and piercing implements, the walls were hung with flint-lock muskets and pistols.

In the east wall of the fort was a wide gateway formed by two immense swinging doors made of heavy planks. These doors were studded with heavy nails and plated with sheet-iron, so that they could never be burned by the Indians. The same was true of the gateway which entered the corral, to be described later.