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

by George Bird Grinnell

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.