When Beaver Skins Were Money 
I.—Bent’s Fort, Pioneer Settlement of Colorado—Stirring 
Scenes in the Southwest 
By GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL 
W HENEVER the history of the Southwest 
shall be written, more than one long 
and interesting chapter must be devoted 
to the first permanent settlement on its plains 
and the first permanent settler there. In all ac¬ 
counts of that great country through which the 
old Santa Fe trail passed, William Bent and 
Bent’s Old Fort have frequent mention. 
Who were the Bents and whence did they 
come? 
Silas Bent was born in the Colony of Massa¬ 
chusetts in 1768. He was educated for the bar 
and came to St. Louis in 1804 at the time when 
the Government of Louisiana was turned over 
to the American authorities. Here he served 
as a judge of the Superior Court and here he 
resided until his death in 1827. 
Of his seven sons, John was educated for the 
bar and became a well-known attorney of St. 
Louis. The youngest son, Silas, as flag lieu¬ 
tenant of the flagship Mississippi, was with Perry 
in Japan, and wrote a report on the Japan cur¬ 
rent for an American scientific society. He 
delivered addresses on meteorology in St. Louis 
in 1879, and on climate as affecting cattle breed¬ 
ing in the year 1884. Four other sons, Charles, 
William W., and later George and Robert, were 
prominent in the Indian trade on the Upper 
Arkansas and elsewhere between 1820 and 1850, 
and remained trading in that region until they died. 
The leading spirit in this family of Indian 
traders was William W. Bent. Early in life 
Charles and William Bent had been up on the 
Missouri River working for the American Fur 
Company. Colonel Bent stated that he went up 
there in the year 1816 when very young.* Very 
likely he was then a small boy only ten or twelve 
years old. It was there that Charles and Wil¬ 
liam Bent became acquainted with Robert Camp¬ 
bell of St. Louis, who remained a firm friend 
of the brothers throughout his life. William 
Bent could speak the Sioux language fluently 
and the Sioux had called him Wa si' cha chis- 
chi' la, meaning Little White Man, a name which 
confirms the statement that he entered the trade 
very young, and seems to warrant the belief 
that his work for the fur company was at some 
post in the Sioux country. 
•The history of “The Bent Family in America” gives 
1 e jii 5 William Bent’s birth as 1809, which can 
hardly be made to agree with his statement. 
In his testimony before the joint commission, 
which inquired into Indian affairs on the plains 
in 1865, William Bent stated that he had first 
come to the Upper Arkansas and settled near 
the Purgatoire, just below the present city of 
Pueblo, Colo., in 1824; that is to say, two years 
before he and his brother began to erect their 
first trading establishment on the Arkansas. 
Previous to this time William Bent had been 
trapping in the mountains near there, and may 
very well have done some individual trading 
with the Indians. 
William Bent was undoubtedly the first per¬ 
manent white settler in what is now Colorado, 
and for a very long time he was not only its 
first settler, but remained its most important 
white citizen. 
By his fair and open dealings, by his fear¬ 
less conduct and by his love of justice, William 
Bent soon won the respect and confidence of the 
Indians with whom he had to do. Among the 
rough fraternity of mountain trappers he was 
also very popular, his reputation for courage 
being remarkable even among that class of dar¬ 
ing men. He was tirelessly active in prosecut¬ 
ing the aims of his trade, making frequent trips 
to the camps of the various tribes with which 
he, and later his company, had dealings, and to 
the Mexican settlements in the valley of Taos 
and to Santa Fe. Every year, probably, from 
1824 to i 864 ; he made at least one journey from 
the fort on the Arkansas, across the plains of 
Colorado, Kansas and Missouri to the settle¬ 
ments on the Missouri frontier. 
About 1835 William Bent married Owl Woman, 
the daughter of White Thunder, an important 
man among the Cheyennes, and at that time the 
keeper of the medicine arrows. Bent’s Fort was 
his home, and there his children were born, 
fl he oldest child, Mary, was born about 1836, 
Robert in 1839—his own statement made in 1863 
says 1841—George in July, 1843, and Julia in 
1847. Owl Woman died at the fort in 1847 in 
giving birth to Julia, and her husband afterward 
married her sister, Yellow Woman. Charles 
Bent was the child of this second marriage. 
William Bent appears to have been the first 
of the brothers to go out into the Southwestern 
country, but his brother Charles must soon have 
joined him there, and the two, with Ceran St. 
Vrain, established the early trading post on 
the Arkansas. After occupying the stockade 
above Pueblo for two years or more, they moved 
down below Pueblo and began to build the much 
more ambitious post, afterward known as Bent’s, 
or Bent’s Old Fort, or Fort William. It appears 
that George and Robert Bent did not come out 
to the fort until after it was completed—perhaps 
after it had been for some time in operation. 
Benito Vasquez was at one time a partner in 
the company. 
In 1828 the Bent brothers, with St. Vrain, 
began this large fort down the river, fifteen 
miles above the mouth of Purgatoire Creek. 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 
1 aos to Santa Fe sent over a number of Mexi¬ 
cans to make adobe brick. With them he sent 
some wagonloads 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, small¬ 
pox broke out among them, and it was thus 
necessary to hurry them away. William Bent, 
St. Vrain, Kit Carson and some other white 
men who were there caught the smallpox from 
the Mexicans, and though none of them 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 Chey¬ 
ennes not to come near to the post. Francisco 
set out for the Black Hills and on his way en¬ 
countered a large war party of Cheyennes then 
on their way to the fort. He told them of what 
had happened, and warned them to return north 
and not to come near to the post until they 
were summoned. 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 set on fire and consumed, 
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 
* 
