AI Summary
5 min readIn the late summer of 1806, with the Corps of Discovery just two months from completing its historic journey back to St. Louis, John Colter asked Meriwether Lewis and William Clark for permission to leave. The expedition had traveled more than 4,000 miles to the Pacific Ocean and back, losing only one man to a ruptured appendix. They were at the junction of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, on the future border of Montana and North Dakota. The hardest parts were behind them. Colter wanted to stay on the Missouri and trap beaver. Lewis and Clark granted the request.
Colter partnered with two men named Dixon and Hancock, but the partnership lasted only one winter. By spring 1807, all three were heading back down the Missouri toward St. Louis, their fortunes unrealized. Near the Platte River in present-day Nebraska, only a couple weeks from St. Louis, Colter saw keelboats flying the flag of a new enterprise led by Manuel Lisa. Lisa was a shrewd fur trader who had paid close attention when Lewis and Clark returned the previous September and told of western streams filled with beaver. He had partnered with Pierre Menard and William Morrison, outfitted two keelboats with $16,000 worth of supplies, and launched the most ambitious private fur trading expedition the Missouri had ever seen. Lisa had already recruited six veterans of the Lewis and Clark expedition, including George Dr
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:09) **Colter Requests to Leave the Corps of Discovery** - As Lewis and Clark’s expedition nears its triumphant end, John Colter shocks the group by asking to stay behind in the wilderness.
- 2 (03:03) **A Failed Partnership and a Fateful Turnaround** - Colter’s first trapping venture fails over one winter, but a chance encounter with Manuel Lisa’s expedition pulls him back into the wild.
- 3 (06:12) **The Lisa Expedition and the Impossible Mission** - After building Fort Raymond, Manuel Lisa sends Colter on a 500-mile solo winter trek to find the Crow and other tribes.
- 4 (08:57) **Colter’s Solitary Winter Journey Across the Divide** - Colter pushes through deep snow and harsh terrain, relying on his supernatural sense of direction to survive.
- 5 (12:31) **Crossing the Divide and Discovering Colter’s Hell** - Historians debate Colter’s exact route, but he almost certainly crossed at Union Pass and encountered geothermal wonders that would later be derisively named “Colter’s Hell.”
- 6 (16:34) **The Real Location of Colter’s Hell** - Historian Hiram Chittenden muddied the records, but the National Park Service clarifies that Colter’s Hell was not in Yellowstone National Park.
- 7 (17:40) **The Battle at the Three Forks** - Colter, now recovered, joins 800 Crow and Flathead warriors in a massive battle against 1,500 Blackfeet, suffering a severe leg wound.
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Show Notes
John Colter’s extraordinary adventures in the West continue with a 500-mile winter trek across the Rocky Mountains, during which he becomes the first American to see the Teton Mountains and Jackson Hole. He witnesses marvelous geothermal wonders in the region that will eventually become Yellowstone National Park. And he performs another feat of endurance after he narrowly survives a battle against Blackfoot warriors.
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