Historical September 1986 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Even today the reconstructed adobe building “appears” like a mirage along the northern bank of the Arkansas River in southwest Colorado.
The original “castle” was purposely burned in 1849. Its demise ended one of the major periods of commercial development between St. Louis and the Southwest through its capital, Santa Fe. Bent’s Fort was the last outpost on the American side.
But we have to start at the beginning.
It was 1817 when the Chouteau-DeMun trading party brought $30,000 worth of goods and furs into Santa Fe.
They had crossed the Arkansas River into what was then Spanish territory near the mouth of the Purgatoire River.
They were arrested in Santa Fe by the Spanish authorities and spent the next five years in jail.
In 1822 Mexico won its independence from Spain and the Santa Fe trade picked up in earnest, with profits approaching 1000 percent or higher.
The trip from St. Louis to Santa Fe was 800 miles, most of it over high plains and desert.
The crossing at the Purgatoire meant the trading parties left the United States and entered Mexican lands, lands often full of Indians and devoid of water.
The full name of the Purgatoire, more a creek than a river, is El Rio de Las Animas Perdidas En Purgatoire, The River of Lost Souls in Purgatory.
Some say putting Bent’s Fort near its conjunction with the Arkansas doomed the Santa Fe trade enterprise from the beginning.
The creek was named after the discovery of the old Spanish arms and armor left from soldiers who had deserted the main force of Spanish explorers in the mid-sixteenth century and died along the creek.
Even the Indians who first found the remnants of these dead soldiers considered the entire valley of the creek tainted. Nevertheless, Charles Bent and Ceran St. Vrain decided it was the best place for a commercial fort modeled in operation on the northern fur centers along the Missouri River in Dakota and Montana.
The Bent and St. Vrain partnership brought together the historic French trading interests with the newly arrived American opportunistic style. Charles Bent was the mastermind and leader. St. Vrain was the gregarious trader and master of languages. Charles talked his brother, William, into joining the company because of his friendship with the Indians who considered William more like them than his white brothers.
It was William who designed and built the adobe fort while Charles brought the goods from St. Louis and St. Vrain ran the Santa Fe end of the company.
It is difficult for us to imagine the nature of successful trading in the first third of the nineteenth century.
The trip from St. Louis to Santa Fe took about one month.
The Mexican government did not discourage the trade, but it severely taxed it from the beginning, imposing a duty equivalent to half the profits of the company or four times the St. Louis value of the merchandise. Actually, this full duty was rarely paid.
The Mexican customs agents were easily bought and influenced by the traders.
In addition, the duty evolved into a wagon tax flat rate.
The enterprising St. Louis traders simply made the wagons larger and larger, until the fully developed Murphy Wagon had wooden, spoked wheels seven feet in diameter.
Thus, the loads of merchandise grew dramatically while the tax remained the same or was avoided with judicious bribes and threats.
The difficult part of the trip to Santa Fe was after leaving Bent’s Fort.
The northern route over Raton Pass meant a very difficult mountain climb and even more difficult descent into the desert and volcanic plains south of the pass.
The southern or river route meant crossing the desert east of the Sangre de Christo Mountains, finding the usually dry river bed of the Cimarron River, and turning west along the river to join with the mountain route about 150 miles south of Raton Pass.
The southern route was considered the most dangerous because of the Comanche Indians and the lack of water. Jedediah Smith, one of the most literate and experienced traders and hunters of the mountains, took the southern route in 1826 and missed the Cimarron River — it had been dry so long its bed had blended with the surrounding country and he couldn’t find it.
The Comanche killed him and tried to sell his guns and saddles at Bent’s Fort a couple weeks later.
In the middle of the reconstructed Bent’s Fort is a large courtyard where the hunters, trappers, and traders gathered to talk and eat.
The last time we were there, a bucket of cow brains was sitting on the hide press in the middle of that courtyard.
The National Park Service staff was cooking elk recently brought in by a local hunter.
A buffalo, longhorn bull, and several horses were eating in the corral at the back of the fort.
The Arkansas River was barely visible among the weeds south of the fort.
The Purgatoire was all but dried up east of the fort.
A couple mule deer grazed in the weeds along the Arkansas.
The old wagon routes were plainly visible from the scars in the sandstone.
The rooms of the “adobe castle” displayed artifacts and packing boxes from old St. Louis firms like Campbell’s Hardware and the trading company of Pratte and Chouteau.
When we left the fort and headed over Raton Pass into New Mexico, we saw the many place names reminiscent of old St. Louis families and trading partners.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, September 1986.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Source dates Mexican independence to 1822 and Jedediah Smith’s death to 1826; historical chronology retained for editorial checking rather than silently corrected.
Original source: SD_Times1986_09.pdf, printed page(s) 6; PDF page(s) 6.
