Big Timbers is a wooded riparian area in Colorado along both banks of the Arkansas River that is famous as a campsite for Native American tribes and travelers on the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail. [1]
Big Timbers is a wooded riparian area in Colorado along both banks of the Arkansas River that is famous as a campsite for Native American tribes and travelers on the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail. [1]
The Spanish knew this area as La Casa de Palo or the House of Wood, [1] because wood was scarce along the banks of the Arkansas River except for that specific area. Cottonwood was the primary type of timber found there. It was known by its Spanish name following Juan Bautista de Anza's defeat of Cuerno Verde and the parties signed a peace treaty there in 1785–1786. [2] At its greatest extent, Big Timbers may have stretched from the mouth of the Purgatoire to the present-day Kansas-Colorado border, a distance of 100 kilometres (62 mi) [1]
Seasonally the Cheyenne that camped at Bent's Old Fort moved 30 miles (48 km) down the Arkansas River from their camp [3] to Big Timbers. [lower-alpha 1] Alongside the Arkansas River for 40 miles (64 km) Big Timbers was a prime location for hunting buffalo, a major source of food for the Cheyenne. [5] The tribe also lived on roots and berries. [6] Big Timbers was their desired camp site in the winter, [7] due to the relatively mild weather. [8]
According to Hyde, William Bent's wife, Owl Woman and her children traveled with her tribe to Big Timbers during the winter months and were at the fort itself during the summer. [9] During the Cheyenne's winter visit to Big Timbers, Bent accompanied his family with goods for trading. [6] At Big Timbers, Bent lived in accordance with Cheyenne customs which was a more casual, unstructured way of life. His life at Bent's Fort was somewhat structured with William having a leadership role. [10]
Such was the rhythm of village life. Always movement — sometimes to Big Timbers close to the buffalo herds, sometimes to the fort, but always someplace where grass was thick, wood plentiful, and water fresh and sweet. [6]
A favorite camping ground for the Cheyenne and Arapaho, William Bent located Bent's New Fort near Big Timbers and present-day Lamar to trade with the Native Americans. [11] Alexander Barclay and William Tharp also traded at Big Timbers. [8]
The Cheyenne are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. Their Cheyenne language belongs to the Algonquian language family. Today, the Cheyenne people are split into two federally recognized nations: the Southern Cheyenne, who are enrolled in the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in Oklahoma, and the Northern Cheyenne, who are enrolled in the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana.
The Sand Creek massacre was a massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho people by the U.S. Army in the American Indian Wars that occurred on November 29, 1864, when a 675-man force of the Third Colorado Cavalry under the command of U.S. Volunteers Colonel John Chivington attacked and destroyed a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho people in southeastern Colorado Territory, killing and mutilating an estimated 69 to over 600 Native American people. Chivington claimed 500 to 600 warriors were killed. However, most sources estimate around 150 people were killed, about two-thirds of whom were women and children. The location has been designated the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site and is administered by the National Park Service. The massacre is considered part of a series of events known as the Colorado Wars.
The Colorado War was an Indian War fought in 1864 and 1865 between the Southern Cheyenne, Arapaho, and allied Brulé and Oglala Sioux peoples versus the U.S. Army, Colorado militia, and white settlers in Colorado Territory and adjacent regions. The Kiowa and the Comanche played a minor role in actions that occurred in the southern part of the Territory along the Arkansas River. The Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux played the major role in actions that occurred north of the Arkansas River and along the South Platte River, the Great Platte River Road, and the eastern portion of the Overland Trail. The United States government and Colorado Territory authorities participated through the 1st Colorado Cavalry Regiment, often called the Colorado volunteers. The war was centered on the Colorado Eastern Plains, extending eastward into Kansas and Nebraska.
Bent's Old Fort is an 1833 fort located in Otero County in southeastern Colorado, United States. A company owned by Charles Bent and William Bent and Ceran St. Vrain built the fort to trade with Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Plains Indians and trappers for buffalo robes. For much of its 16-year history, the fort was the only major white American permanent settlement on the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and the Mexican settlements. It was destroyed in 1849.
William Wells Bent was a frontier trader and rancher in the American West, with forts in Colorado. He also acted as a mediator among the Cheyenne Nation, other Native American tribes and the expanding United States. With his brothers, Bent established a trade business along the Santa Fe Trail. In the early 1830s Bent built an adobe fort, called Bent's Fort, along the Arkansas River in present-day Colorado. Furs, horses and other goods were traded for food and other household goods by travelers along the Santa Fe trail, fur-trappers, and local Mexican and Native American people. Bent negotiated a peace among the many Plains tribes north and south of the Arkansas River, as well as between the Native American and the United States government.
Fort Lyon was composed of two 19th-century military fort complexes in southeastern Colorado. The initial fort, also called Fort Wise, operated from 1860 to 1867. After a flood in 1866, a new fort was built near Las Animas, Colorado, which operated as a military post until 1897.
George Bird Grinnell was an American anthropologist, historian, naturalist, and writer. Originally specializing in zoology, he became a prominent early conservationist and student of Native American life. Grinnell has been recognized for his influence on public opinion and work on legislation to preserve the American bison. Mount Grinnell in Glacier National Park in Montana is named after him.
Roman Nose, also known as Hook Nose, was a Native American of the Northern Cheyenne. He is considered to be one of, if not the greatest and most influential warriors during the Plains Indian War of the 1860s. Born during the prosperous days of the fur trade in the 1820s, he was called Môséškanetsénoonáhe ("Bat") as a youth. He later took the warrior name Wokini, which the Euro-Americans rendered as Roman Nose. Considered invincible in combat, this fierce warrior distinguished himself in battle to such a degree that the U.S. military mistook him for the Chief of the entire Cheyenne nation.
Lean Bear, alternatively translated as Starving Bear, was a Cheyenne peace chief. He was a member of the Council of Forty-four, a tribal governance devoted to maintaining peace with encroaching United States settlers. Lean Bear's most notable peace deals include the Treaty of Fort Wise and a meeting with US President Abraham Lincoln. His work towards peace between his people and the American settlers in the Southern Plains was cut short when he was killed by the 1st Colorado Cavalry Regiment and violent retaliations ensued.
The Treaty of Fort Wise of 1861 was a treaty entered into between the United States and six chiefs of the Southern Cheyenne and four of the Southern Arapaho Indian tribes. A significant proportion of Cheyennes opposed this treaty on the grounds that only a minority of Cheyenne chiefs had signed, and without the consent or approval of the rest of the tribe. Different responses to the treaty became a source of conflict between whites and Indians, leading to the Colorado War of 1864, including the Sand Creek Massacre.
Edmund Gasseau Choteau Le Guerrier, of American and Cheyenne parentage, was a survivor of the Sand Creek massacre in 1864. He was an interpreter for the U.S. government during the Indian Wars between the Cheyenne and the United States, and later became a successful rancher.
William Guerrier was a businessman and Cheyenne interpreter on the Santa Fe Trail and Oregon Trail and is believed to have been the first rancher in Wyoming.
George Bent, also named Ho—my-ike in Cheyenne, was a Cheyenne-Anglo who became a Confederate soldier during the American Civil War and waged war against Americans as a Cheyenne warrior afterward. He was the mixed-race son of Owl Woman, daughter of White Thunder, a Cheyenne chief and keeper of the Medicine Arrows, and the American William Bent, founder of the trading post named Bent's Fort and a trading partnership with his brothers and Ceran St. Vrain. Bent was born near present-day La Junta, Colorado, and was reared among both his mother's people, his father and other European Americans at the fort, and other whites from the age of 10 while attending boarding school in St. Louis, Missouri. He identified as Cheyenne.
Owl Woman was a Cheyenne woman., a daughter of White Thunder, a well-respected medicine man of the Cheyenne tribe. She was married to an Anglo-American trader named William Bent, with whom she had four children. Owl Woman was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame for her role in managing relations between Native American tribes and the Anglo-American men.
The early history of the Arkansas Valley in Colorado began in the 1600s and to the early 1800s when explorers, hunters, trappers, and traders of European descent came to the region. Prior to that, Colorado was home to prehistoric people, including Paleo-Indians, Ancestral Puebloans, and Late prehistoric Native Americans.
Andrew Edward Masich is the President and CEO of the Senator John Heinz History Center, an affiliate museum of the Smithsonian Institution. Masich was previously Chairman of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (2011-2016).
Bent's New Fort was a historic fort and trading post along the banks of the Arkansas River in what is now Bent County, Colorado, about nine miles west of Lamar, on the Mountain Route branch of the Santa Fe Trail. William Bent operated a trading post with limited success at the site and in 1860 leased the fort to the United States government, which operated it as a military outpost until 1867. In 1862, it was named Fort Lyon. The fort was abandoned after a flood of the Arkansas River in 1867.
Jimmy's Camp was a trading post established in 1833. The site is east of present-day Colorado Springs, Colorado on the southeast side of U.S. Route 24 and east of the junction with State Highway 94. Located along Trapper's Trail / Cherokee Trail, it was a rest stop for travelers and was known for its spring. Jimmy Camp was a ranch by 1870 and then a railway station on a spur of the Colorado and Southern Railway. After the ranch was owned by several individuals, it became part of the Banning Lewis Ranch. Now the land is an undeveloped park in Colorado Springs.
Amache Ochinee Prowers, also known as Walking Woman, was a Native American activist, advocate, cattle rancher, and operator of a store on the Santa Fe Trail. Her father was a Cheyenne peace chief who was killed during the Sand Creek massacre on November 29, 1864, after which she became a mediator between Colorado territorial settlers, Mexicans, and Native Americans during the 1860s and 1870s. She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2018.
John Wesley Prowers was an American trader, cattle rancher, legislator, and businessman in the territory and state of Colorado. Married to Amache Prowers, a Cheyenne woman, his father-in-law was a Cheyenne chief who negotiated for peace and was killed during the Sand Creek massacre.