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days the chiefs had control over their young 
men; these listened to what was said to them 
and obeyed. 
On one occasion a war party of Shoshom 
came down from the mountains and visited 
Bent’s Fort and insisted on coming in. The 
trader in charge, probably Murray, declined to 
let them in and when they endeavored to force 
their way into the post he killed one of them, 
■when the others went away. The Indian’s body 
was buried at some little distance from the fort 
and his scalp was afterward given to a war 
party of Cheyenne and Arapahoe. 
In winter the scenes at the fort were veiy 
different. Now it harbored a much larger popu¬ 
lation. All the employees were there, except a 
few traders and teamsters and laborers who 
might be out visiting the different camps, and 
who were constantly going and returning. The 
greater part of the laborers and teamsters had 
little or nothing to do and spent most of the 
winter in idleness, lounging about the. fort or 
occasionally going out hunting. Besides the 
regular inhabitants there were many visitors, 
some of whom spent a long time at the fort. 
Hunters and trappers from the mountains, often 
with their families, came in to purchase goods 
for the next summer’s journey, or to visit, and 
then having supplied their wants returned to 
their mountain camps. All visitors were wel¬ 
come to stay as long as they pleased. 
Though the fort was full of idle men, never¬ 
theless time did not hang heavy on their hands. 
There were amusements of various sorts, hunt¬ 
ing parties, games, and not infrequent dances, in 
which the moccasined trappers in their fringed, 
beaded or porcupine-quilled buckskin garments 
swung merry-faced laughing Indian women in 
the rough but hearty dances of the frontier. To 
the employes of the fort liquor was ever dealt 
out with a sparing hand, and there is no memory 
of any trouble among the people who belonged 
at the post. It was a contented and cheerful 
family that dwelt within these four adobe walls. 
Perhaps the most important persons at the 
fort, after the directing head who governed the 
whole organization, were the traders who dealt 
out goods to the Indians in the post, receiving 
their furs in payment, and who were sent off to 
distant camps with loads of trade goods to gather 
from them the robes which they had prepared, 
or to buy the horses and mules. 
Of these traders there were seven or eight of 
whom the following are remembered: Murray, 
an Irishman, known to the Indians as Pau e slh , 
Flat Nose; Fisher, an American, No man!', 
Fish; Hatcher, a Kentuckian, He him'ni ho nah', 
Freckled Hand; Thomas Boggs, a Missourian, 
Wohk'pohum', White Horse; John Smith, a 
Missourian, Po 5 om' mats, Gray Blanket, Kit 
Carson, a Kentuckian, Vihiunls', Little Chief, 
and Diaries Davis, a Missourian, Honlh', Wolf. 
L. Maxwell, Wo wihph' pai i slh', Big Nostrils, 
was the superintendent or foreman at the fort, 
but had nothing to do with the trading. He 
looked after the herds and laborers and fort 
matters in general. 
Murray, who was a good hunter and| trapper 
and a brave man, was one of the two more im¬ 
portant men among these traders. He usually 
remained at the fort and was almost always left 
in charge when the train went to the States. 
Hatcher, however, was probably the best trader 
and the most valued of the seven. 
Each of these traders had especial friendly re¬ 
lations with some particular tribe of Indian, and 
each was naturally sent off to the tribe that he 
knew best. Besides this, often when villages of 
Indians came and camped somewhere near the 
post, the chiefs would request that a particular 
man be sent to their village to trade. Some¬ 
times to a very large village two or three traders 
would be sent, the work being more than one 
man could handle in a short period of time. 
When it was determined that a trader should 
go out, he and the chief clerk talked over the 
trip. The trader enumerated the goods required 
and these were laid out, charged to him, and then 
packed for transportation to the camp. If the 
journey was over level prairie, this transporta¬ 
tion was by wagon, but if over rough country, 
pack mules were used. If on arrival at the camp 
the trader found that the trade was going to be 
large and that he required more goods, lie sent 
back his wagon or some of his animals to the 
post for additional supplies. When he returned 
from his trip and turned in his robes, he was 
credited with the goods that he had received. 
The trade for robes ended in the spring, and 
during the summer the traders often went to 
different villages to barter for horses and mules. 
A certain proportion of the trade with the 
Indians was for spirits, but this proportion was 
small. The Indians demanded liquor, and though 
Colonel Bent was strongly opposed to giving it 
to them, he knew very well that unless he did 
something toward satisfying their demands, 
whiskey traders from Santa Fe or 1 aos might 
come into the territory and gratify the Indians 
longing for drink, and at the same time take 
away the trade from the fort. Two or three 
times a year, therefore, after many visits from 
the chiefs, asking for liquor, promising to take 
charge of it and see to its distribution and to 
be responsible that payment should be made for 
it, a lot of liquor would be sent out to a camp 
packed in kegs of varying sizes. A trader com¬ 
ing into the villages would deposit his load in 
the lodge of a chief. The Indians wishing to 
trade would come to the lodge and offer what 
they had to trade, and each would be assigned 
a keg of a certain size, sufficient to pay for the 
robes, horses or mules that he sold. Each In¬ 
dian then tied a piece of cloth or a string to his 
keg so as to mark it as his, and it remained in 
the chief’s lodge, unopened for the present. 
When the trade had been completed, the trader 
left the village, and not until he had gone some 
distance did the chief permit the Indians to take 
their kegs of liquor. Sometimes while the 
traders were in a camp trading ordinary goods, 
a party of men from Taos or Santa Fe would 
come into the camp with whiskey, and then at 
once there would be an end of all legitimate 
business until the Indians had become intoxi¬ 
cated, drunk all the spirits and become sober 
again. No trader ever wished to have whiskey 
in the camp where he was working. 
We commonly think of the trade at one of 
these old forts as being wholly for furs, but at 
Bent’s Fort this was not the case. In later times 
furs, that is to say buffalo robes, were, indeed, 
a chief article of trade and were carried back 
to the States to be sold there, but a great trade 
also went on in horses and mules, of which the 
Indians possessed great numbers, and of which 
they were always getting more. These horses 
and mules were taken back to the settlements 
and sold there, but they were also sold to any¬ 
one who would buy them. The cavalyard was 
a part of every train which returned to the 
States, the animals being herded by Mexicans 
and being in charge of a trader, who disposed 
of them when they reached the settlements. 
The Indians constantly paid for their goods 
in horses and mules, but this was not the only 
source from which horses came. About 1845 
William Bent sent his brother, George Bent, with 
Tom Boggs and Hatcher, down into Old Mexico 
to trade for horses and mules. They brought 
back great herds and with them a celebrated 
rider known at the fort, and in later years to 
all the Cheyennes, as One-eyed Juan, whose sole 
occupation was breaking horses, a vocation which 
he followed until he was too old to get into the 
saddle. It was said of him that when he wished 
to show off he would put a saddle. on a wild 
horse, and placing a Mexican dollar in each one 
of the huge wooden stirrups, would mount the 
horse, and no matter what the horse might do 
these’dollars were always found under the soles 
of the rider’s feet when the animal stopped 
bucking. 
While the chief market at which the horses 
and mules were sold was St. Louis, yet on at 
least one occasion Hatcher took a herd of horses 
which had been bought wild from the Comanches 
and broken by the Mexicans at the fort over to 
Taos and Santa Fe and sold them there. Occas¬ 
ionally they sold good broken horses to the In¬ 
dians for robes. 
It must be remembered that a large propor¬ 
tion of these horses purchased from the Indians, 
and especially from the Comanches, were wi.d 
horses taken by the Comanches from the great 
herds which ran loose on the ranches in Old 
Mexico. Practically all these horses bore Mexi¬ 
can brands. 
After the emigration to California began, herds 
of horses and mules were sent up to the emi¬ 
grant trail on the North Platte River to be sold 
to emigrants on their way to California. On one 
occasion Hatcher, with a force of Mexican herd¬ 
ers, was sent up there in charge of a great herd 
of horses and mules and remained alongside the 
trail until he had disposed of all his animals. 
He carried back with him the gold and silver 
money received for them in leather panniers 
packed on the backs of animals. 
Before starting on another similar trip Hatcher 
said to Colonel Bent: “It. is useless to load 
down our animals with sugar, coffee and flour 
to carry up there. We will take only enough to 
last us to the trail, and there we can buy all we 
need from the emigrants. Moreover, they have 
great numbers of broken-down horses, and it 
would be a good idea to buy these for little or 
nothing and then drive them back here and let 
them get rested and fat, and then we can take 
them up there and sell them again. The wis¬ 
dom of this was at once apparent and the sug¬ 
gestion was followed out. 
Important members of the fort household were 
Chipita, Andrew Green, the burgeois’ cook* the 
old French tailor, whose name is forgotten, and 
the carpenter and the blacksmith. 
Chipita was the housekeeper and laundress, the 
principal woman at the post and the one who, 
on the occasion of dances or other festivities, 
managed these affairs. She w T as a large, very 
