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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
Bent's Old Fort, on the north bank of the Arkansas
River in southeastern Colorado, was one of the most significant outposts
on the Santa Fe Trail and as the principal outpost of American
civilization on the southwestern Plains was instrumental in shaping
national destiny there. In the heart of Indian country and buffalo
hunting grounds and at the crossroads of key overland routes, it was a
fur trading center and rendezvous for traders and Indians; a way station
and supply center for emigrants and caravans; and the chief point of
contact and cultural transmission between whites and Indians of the
southern Plains. In the 1840's, when traffic on the Santa Fe Trail was
at its height, Bent's Old Fort, on the Mountain Branch, resembled a
great Oriental caravansary and an Occidental mercantile house. In its
later years it was a military staging base for the U.S. conquest of New
Mexico.
Among the earliest western fur traders were the
brothers William and Charles Bent and Ceran St. Vrain, all of whom in
the 1820's began to engage in the Mexican and Indian trade. In 1831 or
1832 Charles Bent and St. Vrain formed a partnership, which in time
became Bent, St. Vrain, and Co., and entered the Santa Fe trade. In the
late 1820's or early 1830's William Bent, who had apparently been
trading independently, erected a large adobe fort on the north bank of
the Arkansas River, 12 miles west of the mouth of the Purgatoire. At
first named Fort William, it was also known as Bent's Fort and finally
as Bent's Old Fort. Elaborately constructed, it was eventually a massive
adobe structure of quadrangular shape having 24 rooms lining the walls,
supported by poles. Two 30-foot cylindrical bastions, equipped with
cannon, flanked the southwest and northeast corners. The walls were 15
feet high and 2 feet thick and extended 4 feet above the building roofs
to serve as a banquette and were pierced with loopholes. On the south
side was a cattleyard, enclosed by a high wall. A self-sufficient
institution, the fort was operated by about 60 persons of many
nationalities and vocations, including blacksmiths, trappers and
traders, carpenters, mechanics, wheelwrights, gunsmiths, cooks, cattle
herders, hunters, clerks, teamsters, and laborers.
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William Bent, prominent fur
trader, won the respect of the Indians. (Colorado Historical
Society) |
The fort was the headquarters of Bent, St. Vrain, and
Co. and the great crossroads station of the Southwest, for it was
located at the junction of the north-south route between the Platte
River and Santa Fe and the east-west route up the Arkansas River to the
mountains. Mountain men stopped by to exchange their beaver skins,
obtain supplies and traps, and visit with one another. Traders forwarded
their fur shipments and obtained goods. For 16 years Bent, St. Vrain,
and Co. managed a highly profitable trading empire stretching from Texas
to Wyoming and from the Rockies to Kansas, as well as participating in
the Santa Fe trade.
In 1835 William Bent, who acted as resident manager
at the fort, married the daughter of a prominent Southern Cheyenne and
became especially influential with that tribe. Besides encouraging
intertribal peace, he required his employees to trade fairly with the
Indians and restricted the use of whisky in trade. His influence helped
the Arapahos and Southern Cheyennes remain friendly to the United States
until well after the War with Mexico. Because of its reputation as a
neutral area in Indian country, the post was a natural meetingplace for
southern Plains tribes and U.S. officials, as well as for intertribal
councils.
In 1835 Col. Henry Dodge met at the fort with the
chiefs of several tribes to discuss depredations on the Santa Fe Trail.
Five years later, at a major peace council held 3 miles to the east,
William Bent served as mediator among several tribes, including the
Cheyennes and Comanches, who made a peace pact. Taking advantage of the
fort's location and Bent's singular influence, the Government in 1846
designated it as the Upper Platte and Arkansas Indian Agency. The agent
was Tom Fitzpatrick. His activities among the Indians inhabiting a huge
area, running eastward from the Rockies and from the Arkansas River on
the south to the Missouri River on the north, helped bring about
treaties at Forts Laramie (1851) and Atkinson (1853) that temporarily
brought a degree of peace to the Plains.
Powerful as the Bents and St. Vrain were, as the War
with Mexico (1846-48) approached, events beyond their control were
destined to destroy the company and the trade. In 1846 the U.S. Army
decided to use their post as a staging base for the conquest of New
Mexico. That summer Gen. Stephen W. Kearny and his Army of the West,
consisting of about 1,650 dragoons and Missouri Volunteers-from Fort
Leavenworth, Kans., followed by some 300 to 400 wagons of Santa Fe
traders, rested at the fort before proceeding to occupy New Mexico.
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Lt. James W. Abert made this
sketch of Bent's Old Fort in the mid-1840's. (Denver Public Library,
Western Collection) |
When Kearny departed, Government wagon trains
congregated in ever-increasing numbers. Horses and mules overgrazed
nearby pastures. Quartermaster stores piled up at the fort, and
soldiers, teamsters, and artisans in Government employ occupied the
rooms. Not only did the Government fail to compensate the company
adequately, but trade also suffered because the Indians were reluctant
to come near when so many whites were present. Following the soldiers
into New Mexico were scores of settlers, gold seekers, and other
adventurers who slaughtered the buffalo, fouled the watering places,
destroyed scarce forage, and used up precious wood. The company was
caught between the millstones of resentful Indians and invading
whites.
Several other factors accelerated the company's
demise. In 1847 Charles Bent, who the year before had been appointed the
first Governor of New Mexico Territory, was assassinated by Taos Indians
during a revolt. The following year St. Vrain sold his interest in the
company to William Bent. The final blow was a cholera epidemic, which in
1849 spread from emigrant wagons and decimated the Plains tribes. That
same year the disillusioned William Bent abandoned the fort, moved 38
miles down the Arkansas, and founded Bent's New Fort in an ill-fated
attempt to restore his trading business.
Bent may have partially blown up and burned Bent's
Old Fort at the time he departed. By 1861, at the end of more than a
decade of disuse, the fort's rehabilitated walls sheltered a stage
station on the Barlow and Sanderson route between Kansas City and Santa
Fe. When the railroads replaced stagecoaches, the buildings served as
cattle corrals and gradually collapsed and disintegrated. Yet as late as
1915 parts of the old walls were still standing.
Early in the 1950's the State Historical Society of
Colorado acquired Bent's Old Fort from the Colorado chapter of the
Daughters of the American Revolution. The society arranged with Trinidad
(Colo.) State Junior College to perform the initial archeological
investigation and determine the fort's general outlines. The society
then erected a low wall, about 3 to 4 feet high, delineating them. After
the National Park Service activated Bent's Old Fort National Historic
Site in 1963, it tore down the wall and completed comprehensive
archeological excavations. Plans are being made to reconstruct the fort.
Exhibits at the site interpret its significance.
NHL Designation: 12/19/60
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/sitea9.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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