AI Summary
5 min readIn the autumn of 1808, two men paddled dugout canoes along the Jefferson River in present-day Montana, checking beaver traps in the heart of Blackfoot Country. They were John Colter and John Potts, both veterans of the Lewis and Clark expedition. When a noise startled them, Potts insisted it was buffalo. Colter warned it was the Blackfeet. Moments later, 500 to 600 warriors appeared on both banks. Potts refused to surrender, shot a warrior dead, and was immediately pierced with so many arrows that he looked "like a pin cushion." His body was hacked to pieces. The relatives of the dead warrior wanted to do the same to Colter, but the chiefs held a council. When they finished, one of them motioned toward the open prairie and said, "Go, go away." What followed—John Colter sprinting naked across cactus-covered prairie while being hunted by Blackfoot warriors—became one of the most famous survival stories of the American frontier.
The Man Before the Legend
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:05) **The Trap that Started a Legend** - John Colter and John Potts are ambushed by hundreds of Blackfeet while checking beaver traps on the Jefferson River in 1808.
- 2 (04:40) **Introduction to the Series** - Host Chris Wimmer frames the episode as the first of three about John Colter, the first mountain man.
- 3 (05:10) **Recruiting the Corps of Discovery** - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark assemble the expedition that will cross the continent.
- 4 (06:36) **The Mystery of Colter’s Origins** - Historians have searched for 200 years and found almost nothing about Colter’s life before the expedition.
- 5 (07:28) **Growing Up on the Kentucky Frontier** - Colter’s early years in Kentucky were a brutal education in survival.
- 6 (08:50) **Enlistment and First Record** - Colter enlists in the Corps of Discovery in October 1803 at $5 per month.
- 7 (10:39) **Court Martial and Rehabilitation** - Colter’s frontier independence clashes with military structure, leading to the expedition’s first court martial.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
John Colter, a young Kentucky frontiersman, joins the Corps of Discovery to explore the continent with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Colter initially bristles at the military structure of the expedition but he soon becomes one of its most trusted members. The Corps of Discovery completes the journey of a lifetime by traveling to the Pacific Ocean and back, but John Colter decides to stay in the West and become one of the earliest American fur trappers.
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