According to this map, John Colter traveled in a southwesterly direction from the mouth of the Bighorn River.[42] He must have mapped the area because his route cast of the Absaroka Range (Yellowstone’s eastern boundary) conforms so accurately with existing geographic conditions that his journey to the Park’s border may be followed like tracks in the snow. From Fort Manuel he ascended Pryors Fork some fifty miles to Pryors Gap.[43] Passing through this opening, he crossed westward to Clarks Fork, which he ascended to Dead Indian Creek. From there he evidently quartered a divide to the south, which brought him upon a river called Mick-ka-appa, where he first smelled sulphur. So he renamed the stream Stinking Water River. It is known today as the North Fork of Shoshone River. In ascending this stream, Colter quickly gained elevation, and in a hanging valley about midway up the range he found a clan of Indians for whom he was obviously searching. On the Map of 1814 they are identified as “Yep-pe, Band of Snake Indians, 1000 Souls.”
From these denizens of both prairie and mountain, Colter undoubtedly first learned of the Yellowstone marvels. The acquisition of this interesting information at a point in relatively close proximity to the features, together with other favorable conditions, impelled him to project an exploration of the “enchanted land.” After listening to eloquent descriptions of the natural phenomena nothing could be more natural than for such an adventurous explorer to experience an intense desire to visit the country. Remember, his mission of informing the clans concerning the establishment of Fort Manuel at the mouth of the Bighorn River had been performed. Now he was on his own with leisure time on his hands. Although the season was advanced, late November often finds the Park open for travel. Tribal accounts describing a vast wilderness of multiform grandeur made the restless trapper burn with curiosity. One can easily envision him weighing the factors of distance, time, and the known hazards, until he struck a favorable balance. His sign talk in council with the chiefs could probably be sifted out and summarized in these terms: “Less than two hundred miles ... the trails are known by your scouts, and they are still open.... A matter of five or six suns ... your horses are fat and strong ... game is plentiful.... Well, what are we waiting for?”
Such an appraisal of the situation is in complete accord with the known realities. Colter was an experienced explorer; he knew how to conduct an expedition. This procedure eliminates the element of foolhardiness so conspicuous in the usual picture visualized of a solitary trapper on snowshoes, wending an uncertain course among river labyrinths running in various directions, mountain ranges of interminable lengths, and gargoylian lakes. Instead, the enterprise now conforms to a standard characteristic of Colter’s levelheaded courage and judgment. Of course he may have gone alone and on foot, but if so why, after leaving the Yellowstone country, did he depart from the straight-of-way down Clarks Fork toward Fort Manuel and head back to the Yep-pe village as the map so clearly shows? Logic insists that Indian scouts were with him, or at least that he had borrowed a horse from them, which he was obliged to return. Thus, Colter’s famous journey into the land of scenic mystery was efficiently accomplished late in November. With the aid of Yep-pe Indian leaders, if not under their guidance, he had gone where no white man had ever been before, and he still reached Manuel’s Fort in good season, or else the Map of 1814 would not have been inscribed “Colter’s Route in 1807.”
But, where precisely in Yellowstone Park did Colter travel? This question poses an extremely difficult problem in research. (The serious student will find the many ramifications involved in the problem explored more fully in the Appendix.) Unfortunately the dotted line appearing on the Map of 1814, marked “Colter’s Route in 1807,” is of no help whatever in answering the question. In fact, the map complicates the problem because the geography depicted on the western loop, or so-called Yellowstone Park section of the map, is wholly fictitious. Unlike the valid section east of the Absarokas, the western section bears no similarity to anything in Yellowstone Park, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, America, the world, or the moon! It is, in fact, a plat of bogus geography comparable only to the kind found in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. In short, it is obvious that “Colter’s Route in 1807,” beyond the Yep-pe village, was not properly described because it depicts him as visiting the drainage of all the river systems within a radius of five hundred miles of that Indian encampment. The most obvious errors in that part of the map which impinges upon the western section of this so-called “Colter’s Route” are:
(1) Three Forks are shown to the northeast instead of northwest.
(2) Lake Biddle, usually identified as Jackson Lake, could only be Brooks Lake and be on the Bighorn drainage. Jackson Lake lies due south about fifty miles, on the other side of the Continental Divide.
(3) The Rio Del Norte (Green River of the Colorado) is far and away to the south. It is grotesquely misplaced.
(4) The South Fork of Snake River is not depicted, neither is the Jackson Lake area.
(5) Upper Yellowstone River is not shown, and Lake Eustis (presumed to be Lake Yellowstone) is fantastic in all respects.
In view of these egregious errors it is a monumental mistake to insist, as so many authors in effect have done, that Colter was a human helicopter who hopped all over the Rocky Mountains in connection with his Yellowstone exploration. Actual geography and common sense prove that he could not possibly have made such an extensive journey, particularly so late in the season. Just as certainly, geography and common sense attest that in traveling a normal western loop essential to yield conformity with the map’s figure eight[44] Colter would have seen precisely the type of country the Map of 1814 does not depict, but which, nevertheless, is actually there! A normal half circle would have brought him upon the Upper Yellowstone River, South Fork of Snake River, Yellowstone Lake, and the thermal areas at Thumb of Lake and Hayden Valley. These paint pots, hot springs, and geysers, particularly Dragon’s Mouth and Mud Volcano, satisfy the descriptions he made and easily meet the requirement of the terms on the map, “Boiling Spring,” “Hot Springs Brimstone,” and also Washington Irving’s reference “... of gloomy terrors, hidden fires, smoking pits, noxious streams....” In effect, these areas alone would qualify as “Colter’s Hell.”
J. N. Barry
Eastern section of Colter’s route.
A true sketch of the Cody, Wyoming, area as it is mapped today.
