The angry Blackfeet decided to have some sport in killing Colter. They stripped him and turned him loose on a broad, sandy plain covered with short grass full of prickly pear, giving him about a hundred yards' head start before they took after him, yelling at the top of their lungs. For six miles Colter outran all but one of the pursuers, a big man who gained steadily. On the bank of the Madison River, at the other edge of the plain, Colter turned at bay and managed to kill his pursuer with his own spear, taking the broken spear and a shred of blanket as his rightful loot. Then he dived under a large mass of driftwood lodged along the river and lay there until nightfall. With his feet full of prickly pear needles, naked, and his only weapon a broken spear, Colter retraced his steps 250 miles to Lisa's post, reaching there somewhat underweight and completely tanned by the summer sun, but ready for more trapping in a few days.
The Bighorn post built by Lisa furnished the Crows an outlet for their buffalo robes, acknowledged by both Indian and white to be the finest produced anywhere in the west. Although the furs never produced much profit at Bighorn, a steady supply of fine robes moved down the river each year to the St. Louis market until the last of the buffalo herds had been slaughtered in the Crow country seventy-five years later.
When Manuel Lisa returned to St. Louis he helped organize the Missouri Fur Company, which was entrusted to return a Mandan chief safely to his home after a visit to Washington, D.C., with Lewis and Clark. After some serious trouble with the Arikara villages, Lisa finally took the chief home and continued upriver in 1809 to put in a new post at Three Forks to exploit the fine beaver country in the upper Missouri drainage. The spot seemed ideal, in a pleasant valley with adequate timber for buildings and firewood, and plenty of pasture for the many buffalo nearby.
But by 1810 the Blackfeet had developed a deep enmity toward all American fur men and, having driven the Shoshoni back into Idaho, were claiming the Three Forks country. They considered themselves disgraced that Lewis had killed two Blackfeet and had escaped without punishment. When Colter and Potts killed two more, and Colter escaped, the blood debt grew. Then, early in the spring of 1810, a Blackfoot war party went on a big raid into Crow country along the Yellowstone, only to suffer a serious defeat when they were intercepted by a large number of Crows armed with their new guns purchased from Lisa's post. The Blackfeet hated anyone who would help arm their enemies.
As soon as the Blackfeet learned that Lisa was building a new post at Three Forks, about a mile from where Colter had hid in the driftwood, they gathered about 200 warriors and kept the post under constant harassment. Trappers were killed or wounded, traps and furs were stolen, hunters were attacked, the horse herd was always in danger, until Andrew Henry, in charge of the post, decided to abandon the place while he still had some men able to work.
Henry packed up his stock of goods, destroyed the post, and retreated up the Madison River and across Reynolds Pass to the headwaters of the Snake, which is called Henry's Fork to this day. Here he spent the winter, but found the snows deep, the hunting poor, and his men suffering from cold and hunger, but with a great deal of hard work they managed to secure forty packs of beaver, which Henry brought down the Missouri in 1811. These troubles with the Blackfeet blocked the American fur men from trading with the tribe for buffalo robes for twenty years, a rather serious situation, for the Blackfeet had the biggest supply of robes handy to good river transportation.
That same year, 1811, Wilson Price Hunt and his men, on their way overland to help set up Oregon fur posts for John Jacob Astor, blazed a new path through the buffalo country to the Rockies. Hunt decided he would not follow up the Missouri as Lewis and Clark had done, braving the hostile Blackfeet for about 300 miles. Instead he bought horses from the Arikaras and started out to the west overland, passing just to the north of the Black Hills and crossing the middle of the great rampart of the Bighorn Range. He found the traveling easy and the buffalo plentiful, but no good beaver country until he reached the mountains. He went on west, with many trials and tribulations, and finally reached the mouth of the Columbia and the new fur post, Astoria.
The next new route across the buffalo country was opened up by Robert Stuart, one of Hunt's men. He was sent back from Astoria with five men to carry messages to Astor in New York. He had trouble with both the route and a shortage of food until he reached the headwaters of the Platte River in southern Wyoming. Along the Green River just west of the continental divide they found a few buffalo:
To our great joy we discovered three buffalo bulls, and after considerable trouble, we, about 2 P.M., killed one (an old run down one), which soon made us determine on camping. So ravenous were our appetites, that we ate part of the animal raw; then cut up most of what was eatable and carried it to a brook at some little distance, where we encamped, being hungry enough to relish a hearty meal. We sat up the greater part of the night eating and barbecuing meat; I was very much alarmed at the ravenous manner in which all ate, but happily none felt any serious effects therefromprobably in consequence of my not allowing them to eat freely before they had supped a quantity of broth.
Once the party had reached the eastern slope of the divide, the traveling was much easier and they were in good buffalo country. "We killed three buffalo cows this morning, which are the first of these animals we have been able to lay our paws on, the hump meat is by far the most delicious I have ever tasted."
Once Stuart reached the North Platte, he followed that stream down to the Missouri, but found it too shallow for canoes. Later flat-bottomed boats were used to go down the Platte on the spring flood.
Hunt's westward journey showed that it was practicable to carry trade goods across the plains by pack train, and Stuart found a good trail for the trains along the Platte River to the heart of the Wyoming mountains. Both parties found plenty of buffalo east of the mountains, and neither had trouble with the Indians. Hunt's experience with the Cheyennes indicated that the nomadic tribes of the plains, ranging well to the west of the Missouri, would welcome traders in their own lands, instead of having to depend on other tribes to act as middlemen.
12. The Santa Fe Trail
Santa Fe, queen of the southwest, and for two centuries the northern outpost of the Spanish empire in North America, was also the only gateway to the southern plains for a century and a half of that period. The viceroy in Mexico and the governors at Santa Fe kept a watchful, jealous eye on the French trading and exploring activities in the Mississippi basin, and especially for any movement from the Illinois country that might look like encroachment on the Great Plains, which Spain looked on as her own.
In 1720, when the Spanish learned that French traders were visiting tribes in the Missouri country, they sent a detachment of soldiers to the Platte River to investigate. This force was surprised by an Indian war party with a few Frenchmen accompanying it, and was driven back to Santa Fe without accomplishing anything.
Twenty years later two Mallett brothers, Pierre and Paul, brought a supply of trade goods out from Illinois to the Great Plains and set up a small trading post on the Arkansas River near the Rocky Mountains. The Spanish governor had them arrested and their goods seized for what he called an invasion of Spanish lands, but the traders appealed their case, claiming they were operating within the boundaries of French Louisiana. It took years for the case to pass through the Spanish court system, until finally a high court at Havana ruled that the traders had been seized in French territory and that they must be released and their goods restored.