Chapter III: Fort St. Vrain and Fort Adobe

In its best days Bent’s Fort did a business surpassed in volume by only one company in the United States--John Jacob Astor’s great American Fur Company. As already stated, besides Bent’s Fort the Bent partners had a post on the South Platte at the mouth of St. Vrain’s Fork, and one on the Canadian River, called the Fort Adobe, for trade with tribes of Indians hostile to the Cheyennes--trade which Colonel Bent, of course, wished to hold.

St. Vrain’s Fork runs into the South Platte from the north and west, a few miles south or southwest of Greeley, Colo.

The site of the fort, known later and now as Adobe Walls, was the scene of two hard battles between white men and Indians. The first of these took place in 1864, and was fought between the Kiowas, Apaches, and Comanches, with a few Cheyennes and Arapahoes, who were present chiefly as onlookers, and a detachment of troops under the command of Kit Carson, who then bore a commission in the United States army. Carson had with him a number of Ute scouts. The fight was a severe one, and Carson, after burning one of the Kiowa villages, was obliged to retreat. In that battle the Indians fought bravely, and one of them possessed a cavalry bugle and knew the various calls. Carson and his officers generally acknowledged that they were beaten by the Indians, and Carson finally withdrew, the Indians saving most of their property, though they lost a number of men. Among the Kiowas killed was a young man who wore a coat of mail.

At this fight a spring-wagon was found in the possession of the Indians, and its presence in the Kiowa camp has often been wondered at. At that time wagons were never used by plains Indians, whose only vehicle was the travois, which consisted of two long poles tied together over the horses’ withers, and dragging on the ground behind. Across these poles, behind the horses’ hocks, was lashed a platform, on which a considerable burden might be transported.

The late Robert M. Peck, of Los Angeles, Cal., who was a soldier, serving under Major Sedgwick, then in command of troops along the Arkansas, not long before his death told the story of an ambulance presented to one of the Kiowa chiefs by the quartermaster of the troops under Major Sedgwick, which may have been this one. Mr. Peck said:

“That was before the Kiowa war broke out in 1859. To´hau sen was always friendly to the whites, and tried to keep the Kiowas peaceable. A small party of them, his immediate following, kept out of that war. These were mostly the old warriors, but the younger men, who constituted a majority of the tribe, went on the warpath after Lieut. George D. Bayard, of our regiment killed one of the Kiowa chiefs, called Pawnee, near Peacock’s ranch, on Walnut Creek.

“That summer (1859) we had been camping along the Arkansas River, moving camp occasionally up or down the river, trying to keep Satank and his turbulent followers from beginning another outbreak. Old To´hau sen used frequently to come to our camp. Lieut. McIntyre wanted to get rid of this old ambulance, which he had long had on his hands and which in some of its parts was nearly worn out. After inducing Major Sedgwick to have it condemned as unfit for service, Lieut. McIntyre had his blacksmith fix it up a little and presented it to the old chief. McIntyre fitted a couple of sets of old harness to a pair of To´hau sen’s ponies and had some of the soldiers break the animals to work in the ambulance. But when To´hau sen tried to drive the team, he could not learn to handle the lines. He took the reins off the harness and had a couple of Indian boys ride the horses, and they generally went at a gallop. The old chief seemed very proud of the ambulance.”

The second battle of the Adobe Walls took place in June, 1874, when the Kiowas, Comanches, and Cheyennes made an attack on some buffalo-hunters, who had built themselves houses in the shelter of the Adobe Walls. The attack on the buffalo-hunters was made in the endeavor to drive these hide-hunters out of the buffalo country, in order to save the buffalo for themselves. The hunters finally drove off the Indians with much loss, but soon afterward abandoned their camp.

St. Vrain’s Fort and the Adobe Fort were abandoned between 1840 and 1850, when the fur business began to decline. By this time the beaver had begun to get scarce, having been pretty thoroughly trapped out of many of the mountain streams, and besides that the silk hat had been invented, and was rapidly taking the place of the old beaver hat, and the demand for beaver skins was greatly reduced. Now, the mountains were full of idle trappers, and a colony of these settled some miles above Bent’s Fort, on the site of the present city of Pueblo, Col., where they did a little farming and a great deal of smuggling of liquor from Mexico to the plains country. The stagnation in the beaver trade, of course, affected the business of William Bent, who, since the death of his brother Charles, had not lessened his activities in trading. At this time his chief business was in buffalo robes and in horses. The establishment at the fort was now reduced, and in the early fifties Bent tried to sell it to the government for a military post, but failing to receive what he considered a fair price for his property, in 1852 he laid large charges of gunpowder in the buildings and blew the old fort into the air.

In the winter of 1852–53 he had two trading houses of logs among the Cheyennes at the Big Timbers, and in the autumn of 1853 began to build his new fort of stone on the north side of the Arkansas River, about thirty-eight miles below old Fort William, and finished it the same year. This was the winter camp of the Cheyennes. At that time the Big Timbers extended up the river beyond the fort, and within three miles of the mouth of Purgatoire River, but by 1865 practically all the timber had been cut down, leaving the fort in the midst of a treeless prairie.

In 1858 gold was discovered in the country northwest of the new fort. There was a rush of gold-seekers to the country the following year, and for some reason William Bent decided to lease his post to the War Department. This he did. A garrison was sent there. It was at first intended to call the new fort Fort Fauntleroy, after the colonel of the old Second Dragoons, but finally the place was rechristened Fort Wise, in honor of the Governor of Virginia. The following summer, 1860, the troops built a stockade half a mile above Bent’s old stone buildings. When the Civil War began in 1861 and Governor Wise joined the Confederates, the post was again renamed; this time Fort Lyon, in honor of General Lyon, who had been killed not long before at Wilson’s Creek, Mo. In 1866 the river threatened to carry away the post, and it was moved twenty miles up the river.

Meanwhile William Bent had built a new stockade on the north side of the river, in the valley of Purgatoire Creek, and lived there, continuing to trade with the Indians. Kit Carson lived on the same side of the river, and not far from the Bent stockade. Carson died at Fort Lyon, May 23, 1868, and his friend William Bent, at his home, May 19, 1869. Ceran St. Vrain died October 29, 1870. The last year of his life was spent at Taos, N. M., but he died at the home of his son Felix, in Mora, N. M.

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 deerskin hunting-shirts and leggings, with long fringes on the outer seams of the arms and legs, the shirts decorated with designs worked in colored porcupine quills, and on their feet moccasins covered with quill work and beading.

This great establishment, standing alone in the midst of a wilderness, much impressed the traveller, who not long before had left a region where men, if not crowded 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 danger, 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 courtyard and on the roofs of the houses, clad in long deerskin dresses and bright 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, excited 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-legged under a shade, smoking the long-stemmed Indian 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, repasts which lacked sweets and condiments.

Here, as it seemed to him, were gathered people from the ends of the earth: old trappers whose faces were lined and leathery from long exposure to the snows of winter and the burning heats of summer; Indians, some of whom were clad in civilized clothing, but retained the reserve and silence of their race; Mexican servants, 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 adventures 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 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 court was full of people with 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 carronades; and when the sun set, the Indians retiring 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 tolerable view of this post in the season of business.”

Soon after the construction of the fort a brass cannon had been purchased in St. Louis and brought out for the purpose of impressing the Indians. It was used there for many years, but in 1846, when General Kearny passed by, some enthusiastic employee 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 Fé, and during the day always 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 made a gala day at Bent’s Fort. The army had encamped 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 August 2 the fort was 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. Every one was busy talking--a babel of tongues and jargons. The employees, 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 rejoicing 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 announced the approach of the troops. At the head of the column rode General Kearny, behind him a company of the old First United States Dragoons, behind the dragoons a regiment of Missouri volunteer cavalry and two batteries of volunteer artillery, and of infantry but two companies. It was an army of 1,700 men, and yet to the Indians assembled at the fort it must have seemed indeed an army, for perhaps few of them had ever dreamed that there were half as many men in the whole “white tribe.” The column drew near the fort, swinging to the left, forded the river to the Mexican bank, turned again up the valley, and went on its way, a part to the city of Mexico, a part to California, and a part only to Santa Fé, whence but a few months later they would march to avenge the murder of Charles Bent, now doling out mint-juleps to the loitering officers in the little room upstairs in the fort.

From an original daguerreotype]