Background
John Colter was born about 1775 in or near Staunton, Virginia, United States, the son of Joseph and Ellen (Shields) Colter. His grandfather Michael and great-grandfather Micajah seem to have spelled the name Coalter.
(The author, Charles Griffin Coutant (1840 - 1913), was a ...)
The author, Charles Griffin Coutant (1840 - 1913), was a resident of Cheyenne and served as a Wyoming state librarian and archivist. John Colter ( 1774 – 1813) was a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806). Though party to one of the more famous expeditions in history, Colter is best remembered for explorations he made during the winter of 1807–1808, when he became the first known person of European descent to enter the region now known as Yellowstone National Park, and to see the Teton Mountain Range. Colter spent months alone in the wilderness, and is widely considered to be the first mountain man. Contents of this book: •THE FIRST AMERICAN TO ENTER WYOMING— •A MEMBER OF THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION— •REMAINS IN THE VICINITY OF THE YELLOWSTONE FROM 1806-10 •HE TRAPS ALONG THE BIG HORN, BIG WIND RIVER, AND CROSSES THE RANGE TO THE PACIFIC SLOPE IN 1807— •RETURNS BY WAY OF THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, OF WHICH HE WAS THE DISCOVERER — •His ADVENTURE WITH THE BLACKFEET— •A RACE FOR LIFE— •RELATES HIS STORY TO CAPT. CLARK, BRADBURY AND OTHERS. This book originally published in 1899 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.
https://www.amazon.com/John-Colter-Explorer-Mountain-Trapper-ebook/dp/B012LMUCBG?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B012LMUCBG
( John Colter was a crack hunter with the Lewis and Clark...)
John Colter was a crack hunter with the Lewis and Clark expedition before striking out on his own as a mountain man and fur trader. A solitary journey in the winter of 1807-8 took him into present-day Wyoming. To unbelieving trappers he later reported sights that inspired the name of Colter's Hell. It was a sulfurous place of hidden fires, smoking pits, and shooting water. And it was real. John Colter is known to history as probably the first white man to discover the region that now includes Yellowstone National Park. In a classic book, first published in 1952, Burton Harris weighs the facts and legends about a man who was dogged by misfortune and "robbed of the just rewards he had earned." This Bison Book edition includes a 1977 addendum by the author and a new introduction by David Lavender, who considers Colter's remarkable winter journey in the light of current scholarship.
https://www.amazon.com/John-Colter-His-Years-Rockies/dp/0803272642?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0803272642
( From the first account of “Colter’s Run,” published in ...)
From the first account of “Colter’s Run,” published in 1810, fascination with John Colter, one of America’s most famous and yet least known frontiersmen and discoverer of Yellowstone Park, has never waned. Unlike other legends of the era like Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Kit Carson, Colter has remained elusive because he left not a single letter, diary, or reminiscence. Gathering the available evidence and guiding readers through a labyrinth of hearsay, rumor, and myth, two Colter experts for the first time tell the whole story of Colter and his legend.
https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-John-Colter-Discovered-Yellowstone/dp/1442262826?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1442262826
John Colter was born about 1775 in or near Staunton, Virginia, United States, the son of Joseph and Ellen (Shields) Colter. His grandfather Michael and great-grandfather Micajah seem to have spelled the name Coalter.
The earliest record of Colter is that of his formal enlistment in Lewis and Clark’s company, October 15, 1803, at Louisville. The captains mention him frequently in the journals, and he was repeatedly chosen for especially hazardous services. On the return journey, at the Mandan villages, he asked to be released in order to join two trappers; and the captains, as a token of appreciation, consented, August 16, 1806.
In the following summer he was met at the mouth of the Platte by Manuel Lisa’s trapping party and was persuaded to return with them. On their arrival at the mouth of the Big Horn, November 21, where Lisa began the building of a trading post, Fort Raymond, Colter was dispatched on a mission to the Crows and other tribes south of the Yellowstone. Afoot and alone, “with a pack of thirty pounds weight, his gun and some ammunition” (Brackenridge), he set out on this daring venture, through a region wholly unknown to white men. The tracing lettered “Colter’s route in 1807, ” on Clark’s map in the Biddle-Alien edition of the journals, credits Colter with penetrating to a point southwest of Jackson Lake and with traversing Yellowstone Park.
Defects of the map have prompted considerable speculation regarding this journey, but it seems safe to conclude that since the charting is based upon information not only from Colter, but from Lisa, Drewyer, and Major Andrew Henry, the route traced is approximately correct. How much of the journey was motived in a passion for discovery and how much in mere obedience to Lisa’s orders cannot be said, but Chittenden chooses to stress Colter’s merit as an explorer.
From Fort Raymond, in the spring of 1808, Colter journeyed to the Three Forks of the Missouri, a region rich in beaver. It was guarded from intrusion, however, by hostile Blackfeet, and in a battle between these Indians and a party of Crows and Flatheads, on whose side he fought, Colter was badly wounded. The encounter in this locality by which he is most widely known and in which his companion, John Potts, was butchered, occurred in the fall of the same year. Dangers, however, according to Thomas James the trapper and trader, “had for him a kind of fascination”; he had no sooner recovered from his injuries than he again ventured to the place, and again he had a narrow escape.
Later he descended the Yellowstone and the Missouri to the Hidatsa village, at the mouth of the Knife, to recuperate. Here the great expedition of the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company found him in September 1809, and he was engaged to guide the party of Menard and Henry, which James joined at Fort Raymond, to the Three Forks. It arrived April 3, 1810, and began the erection of a stockade. An escape, nine days later, from an attack in which five men were killed, at last decided Colter to quit. With two companions he started for St. Louis about the 21st, arriving there before the end of May. He was not again to see the wilderness.
After reporting to Clark and telling his story to Bradbury, Brackenridge, and others, he took up a farm, probably on his bounty land, near the present village of Dundee, on the Missouri River. His death, which according to James was due to jaundice, probably occurred at the farm.
( From the first account of “Colter’s Run,” published in ...)
(The author, Charles Griffin Coutant (1840 - 1913), was a ...)
( John Colter was a crack hunter with the Lewis and Clark...)
Colter, according to Thomas James, "was about five feet ten inches in height and wore an open, ingenious and pleasing countenance of the Daniel Boone's tamp. Nature had formed him, like Boone, for hardy indurance of fatigue, privations and perils. ” James said further that “his veracity was never questioned among us, ” and that “his character was that of a true American backwoodsman. ”
Colter married a young woman whose first name was Sally but whose surname has not been discovered.
