JOHN COLTER

The book "John Colter" by Burton Harris was published by Charles Scribner's Sons, with copyright, 1952, and is a rare out-of-print volume in the best collections of Western books.

JOHN COLTER-DISCOVERER OF YELLOWSTONE COUNTRY

According to Burton Harris, the only historian to write a completely authoritative book about John Colter, the discoverer of Yellowstone Park though unhonored in his own time was in truth one of the most extraordinary figures in Western American History.

Little is known about John Colter, and available information has, it seems, been poorly handled. The grandfather of the discoverer of Yellowstone came to Virginia from Ireland in 1700, and spelled the name Coalter. From this ancestor came a long line of descendants and various spellings of the family name.

The first concise record of John Colter is the date of his enlistment with the Lewis and Clark expedition at Maysville, Kentucky, October 15, 1803. Meriwether Lewis, who recruited him, unfortunately was either unimpressed, too busy, or not in a writing mood at the signing, since he makes little mention of this colorful figure.

During the winter, the expedition camped in Illinois country to keep away from the Spanish governor in St. Louis. Colter and several others were disciplined for doing most of their hunting at a nearby "whiskey shop." Perhaps this incident caused him to be assigned to a boat crew the next spring.

Nevertheless, it was not long until he was mentioned in the journals as a hunter, which, later on, led to his being ordered to assignments that entailed traveling alone for several days, a mark of distinction. The journal entries show an increase in respect for Colter as the small group of men descended the Columbia River, wintered in the rain at Fort Clatsop, and finally returned to the Mandan villages.

Just before the party got to the Mandans, they were joined by two trappers from Illinois, Dixon and Hancock, who had been trapping on the Missouri for two years. In the space of three or four days, Colter was recruited to join their gamble for a fortune in furs.

The trio wintered on the Clark's Fork, a tributary of the Yellowstone. Colter evidently found himself the odd man in the partnership; he resigned and departed in a canoe down river. However, at the mouth of the Platte he encountered the trading expedition of Manuel Lisa who, eager to have a competent guide, enlisted his services.

Thus in the summer of 1807, Colter turned back up the Missouri for at least another year in the wilderness. After several dangerous incidents with the Indians, the boats arrived at the mouth of the Big Horn on the Yellowstone, where the engagees immediately began building Manuel's Fort. Lisa was worried about the lack of customers. He sent Colter on a mission to inform the various tribes of his trading post.

Therefore, Colter, again alone, set out with a thirty-pound pack, probably in November, 1807, on one of the most extraordinary sales trips in our history. His route covered approximately 500 miles and, in the dead of winter, crossed at least four mountain ranges and what was to become Yellowstone Park. John Colter carried out his assignment and the following season the post reaped a harvest in furs.

Much confusion concerning the route was engendered by people who had not seen the country and were equally ignorant of the travel channels, not to mention the well-known Indian trails. Nevertheless, in the opinion of those familiar with the only feasible ways of going from one area to another, and with the two maps drawn by William Clark now available, there are not too many moot points concerning the route.

There could be no more appropriate tribute to John Colter than the fact that for a century his legend has descended verbally from one generation to another. Over a period of only seven years, Colter so impressed the men who trapped and battled Indians with him by his awesome solitary journeys and spectacular escapes, that his deeds had become legendary while he was still in the mountains.

Sincere admiration is the only possible reason why Colter's contemporaries, most of whom had had somewhat similar experiences, should have related to all newcomers the essential details of his exploits. The trappers were rarely afflicted with blushing modesty, and preferred as a rule to extol their own accomplishments.

The old trappers who stayed in the mountains after beaver hats went out of style, and served as guides for the soldiers and goldminers and immigrants, would not have bothered to discuss any of Colter's feats with their charges unless they were outstanding. The soldiers and prospectors, in turn, retold the same stories to the settlers and cowpunchers, together with an account of the difficulties they themselves had overcome. Later, the ranchers implanted in their dude-wrangler grandchildren a proper respect for Colter's role as discoverer of Yellowstone Park and Colter's Hell.

The stories about John Colter inevitably attained astounding proportions in the countless retellings; according to some versions of the legend, there must have been times when the wholly fictitious Paul Bunyan and his ox Babe would have been hard pressed to equal what the mortal man Colter did single-handed. This was the result of every narrator adding little personal touches from his own knowledge.

An old time cowman might relate the legend of John Colter in some such manner as this: "Old Colter was a funny cuss. The reason was because of what happened when he got back from a trip he took by hisself once in the dead of winter the time he walked more than five hundred miles and only discovered Yellowstone Park, Wind River Valley, Jackson Hole and a few other places, when all he was supposed to be doin' was to look up a few Indians and tell 'em they was buildin' a fort on the Big Horn.

"Well, sir, there was one of them French fiancées or engaged men or whatever you call 'em, who was always a joshin' Colter about Colter's Hell. That was 'cause when Colter got back he told everyone about them geysers squirtin' hot water all over the landscape, and about the boilin' tar springs, and the flames jumpin' right outa the ground while the earth trembled and growled underneath, and how you could scald your foot just by breakin' through a piece of stuff that looked like stone. Of course, them old trappers used to spend a lot of time thinkin' up good stories, and so they figured that durin' all the months he was by hisself, Colter had got a mite looney, if he weren't just as crazy as a bedbug, anyway.

"But then some of them fellers had knowed Colter when he was with Lewis and Clark, and he just didn't have no reputation as a liar at all. Anyway, Colter he finally got so mad that he took some of his friends over to the Stinking Water and showed 'em a few geysers and such-like around where the river comes out of the canyon between Cedar Mountain and the Rattlesnake, just above where Cody is now. Naturally that shut up all them old trappers. They seen that Colter wasn't lyin', and so they began tellin' all the newcomers about Colter's Hell; and some a those fellers really worked at spinnin' yarns, so much so that Colter hisself hardly knowed he'd ever seen what they was talkin' about."

Burton Harris rescued the real John Colter the serious young Virginian who died at the age of 38 on a Missouri farm from the mass of fiction which has been woven about him. The sifting of the facts of Colter's life from the legend required analytical skill, a comprehensive knowledge of Western history, and personal experience of the country over which Colter made his epical journeys. Mr. Harris made a painstaking study of the various Lewis and Clark journals, added many new findings, and has been able to use for the first time the recently discovered maps drawn in 1808 and 1810 by William Clark, which settle many points of route previously in controversy.

The reality is no less fascinating than the legend a story exciting enough to appeal to anyone stirred by the authentic adventures of a man who helped open the American frontier.