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.
