The Mystery of John Colter by Ronald M. Anglin

Author:Ronald M. Anglin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-04-06T04:00:00+00:00

Clark had made this entry at the confluence of the Bighorn and Yellowstone rivers, and he quite likely reviewed such details when he granted Colter permission to ascend the Yellowstone with his new partners. In fact, Clark could have also told Colter that he had marked the spot of the mouth of the Bighorn—which Colter had never seen—by painting his name on a cottonwood tree near his July 26 campsite. Colter, Dickson, and Hancock had possibly been in that same area when they dissolved their partnership around the end of September and Colter was contemplating his next move.[63]

The trapping enterprise had been a bust, but Colter now had an opportunity to repay the man who had not only allowed him to leave but had sent him off with genuine good will and encouragement. The best way to thank the cartographer, Clark, was to make an important contribution to his maps. Clark had not had the chance to follow the Yellowstone or any of its tributaries south, but Colter was now in the perfect position to do so. Could it be a coincidence that Colter’s apparently illogical decision to leave Crow country took him to the source of both the Yellowstone and the Bighorn and that Clark identified both on his splendid map of the West?

Merrill J. Mattes was undoubtedly correct when he wrote that trying to describe Colter’s precise route was attempting “to prove the ultimately unprovable.”[64] Nevertheless, given Allen’s analysis of Yale’s remastered map and the above examination of when and why Colter was most likely to travel to the Yellowstone country, a modified proposal of Colter’s Route becomes possible.

Early in October of 1806, Colter began his journey from the solitary camp he had established on Pryor Creek, near the present town of Pryor, Montana. He ascended Pryor Creek and the Pryor Mountains to Sage Creek, which he followed to the approximate site of present Warren, Montana.

Colter likely wore buckskin, moccasins, and a hat, with a buffalo robe to use as both a coat and blanket. Standard supplies for Colter and the host of trappers who followed him included flint and steel, hooks and fishing line, a pipe and some tobacco, a hefty butcher knife in a sheath of buffalo hide, a tomahawk, and a good supply of pemmican (dried meat mixed with grease and berries—“a high-energy, long-keeping food”). But, most crucial, of course, were the rifle, powder horn, and balls, as well as spare rifle parts and tools for repairing the rifle. It was not a light load.[65]

Colter next went west to Clark’s Fork of the Yellowstone, which he ascended into present Wyoming. Going counterclockwise, to reach the source of the Yellowstone before winter hit, he wound to the northwest, crossing present Colter Pass, and then traveling to the headwaters of Soda Butte Creek. Working downstream to the southwest, he found the Bannock Trail leading to the Lamar River, whereupon he entered present Yellowstone Park. He descended the Lamar River through a gentle rolling high mountain plateau. “Thro.

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