Jan. 15, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
89 
23, 1868, and his friend, Wm. Bent, at his home, 
May 19, 1869. Ceran St. Vrain died Oct. 29, 
1870. The last years of his life were spent at 
Taos, in Mexico, but he died at the home of his 
son, Felix, in Mora, New Mexico. 
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 deer skin 
hunting shirts and leg¬ 
gings, with long fringes 
on the outer seams of the 
arms and legs, the shirts 
decorated with designs 
worked in colored porcu¬ 
pine quills, and on their 
feet moccasins covered 
with quill work and bead¬ 
ing. This establishment, 
standing alone in the 
midst of a wilderness, 
greatly impressed the 
traveler, who not long 
before had left a region 
where men, if not crowd¬ 
ed 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 dan¬ 
ger, 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 court yard and 
on the roofs of the 
houses, clad in long deer 
skin dresses and brr'ght 
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, ex¬ 
cited 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-leg¬ 
ged under a shade smok¬ 
ing the long-stemmed In¬ 
dian 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—which meals lacked sweets or condiments. 
Here, as it seemed to him, were gathered peo¬ 
ple from the ends of the earth, old trappers 
whose faces were lined and leathery from long 
exposure to the snows of winter and the burn¬ 
ing heats of summer; Indians, some of whom 
were clad in civilized clothing, but retained the 
reserve and silence of their race; Mexican ser¬ 
vants 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 adventure 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 
KIT CARSON. 
From a photograph of the painting in the Capitol at Denver, Colo. 
Courtesy of Sports Afield. 
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 whole area was filled with their 
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 carro- 
nades; and when the sun set, the Indians re¬ 
tiring 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 toler¬ 
able view of this post in the season of business.” 
Soon after the construction of the fort a brass 
cannon had been pur¬ 
chased in St. Louis and 
brought out for the pur¬ 
pose of impressing the 
Indians. It was used 
there for many years, but 
in 1846, when General 
Kearny passed by, some 
enthusiastic employe 
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 Fe, 
and during the day al¬ 
ways 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. 
The passage of General 
Kearny’s little army on 
its march into Mexico 
was a gala day at Bent’s 
Fort. The army had en¬ 
camped nine miles below 
the post to complete its 
organization, for it had 
come straggling across the 
plains from Missouri in 
small detachments. On 
the morning of Aug. 2 
the fort w T as filled to 
overflowing with people, 
soldiers and officers, white 
trappers, Indian trappers, 
Mexicans, Cheyennes, 
Arapahoes, Kiowas and 
Indian women, the wives 
of trappers from the far 
away Columbia and St. 
Lawrence. Everyone was 
busy talking, a babble of 
tongues and jargons. The 
employes, with their 
wives and children, had 
gathered on the flat roofs 
to witness the wonderful spectacle, while in a 
securely hidden nook Charles Bent was rejoic¬ 
ing the souls of a few of his army friends with 
the icy contents of “a pitcher covered with the 
dew of promise.” 
A cloud of dust moving up the valley “at the 
rate of a horse walking fast” at length an¬ 
nounced the approach of the troops. At the 
head of the column rode General Kearny, be¬ 
hind him a company of the old First U. S. Dra¬ 
goons, behind the Dragoons a regiment of Mis¬ 
souri volunteer cavalry and two batteries of 
volunteer artillery, and of infantry but two com 
