“As Fine a Body of Hardy Woodsmen as Ever Took the Field”

When Colter reached St. Louis fresh from frontier violence, he must have hoped for tranquility in Missouri, but what he found was all too familiar. In July of 1810, only weeks after his arrival, a post rider on his way from Vincennes, Indiana, to St. Louis was killed by Indians and the mail lost. Then, as militia general William Clark wrote to the War Department, “four men who reside near the Missouri . . . who had been in pursuit of horses which had been stolen from them were killed in their camp . . . by the Indians.”^[1]

The brutality continued, and one particular incident triggered alarm throughout the area. In the early morning hours of June 2, 1811, three Indians attacked a family by the name of Cox who lived on Shoal Creek in Illinois. The Indians killed the family’s young son and kidnapped his sister. “From travellers, from spies, and from every other source of information direct from the hostile indian country,” wrote the editor of the Louisiana Gazette, “we have every reason to expect a general attack as soon as the corn is ripe enough for food.”^[2] Like other government officials, Clark placed the ultimate blame for this hostility not on an Indian nation but on a group he had distrusted and detested from his youth— the British.

Tension between the United States and its former mother country had been rising steadily for several years, and a group of Republican congressmen known as the war hawks were now demanding war with England. At the same time, several Indian tribes in the Missouri Territory and surrounding areas, including the Shawnee, Winnebago, Potawatomi, Miami, and Kickapoo, all of whom had a long list of grievances against the United States, had aligned themselves with the British. The Americans and Indians were intent on war, so it came as no surprise that a conflict broke out between William Henry Harrison’s troops and the Shawnee in November of 1811 at the Battle of Tippecanoe, often considered the start of the War of 1812.

Settlers in the western territories lived in constant fear of Indian attacks. Early in January, Clark received word that one hundred Winnebago warriors, eager to revenge their comrades killed at Tippecanoe, had attacked a lead-smelting operation on the Galena River. Two men were “butchered in a most horrid manner,” although George Hunt and Lewis and Clark veteran Nathaniel Pryor (who had resigned from the military in 1810) were allowed to escape after claiming they were British.^[3]

Only a month later, Indians attacked another of Colter’s fellow expedition veterans, Alexander Willard, who was “coming down the [Mississippi] river in a sleigh on the ice, [and] was fired on above Salt river and repeatedly chased by war parties.” Willard was fleeing after finding the bodies of nine members of an O’Neal family killed by Indians upstream from St. Louis. “The Winnebagos are Deturmined for War,” Clark wrote to Secretary of War William Eustis.^[4]

Despite the violence more and more common throughout the previous year, the gruesome murder of the O’Neal family pushed the settlers to the brink. Clark urged Benjamin Howard, governor of the Missouri Territory, to use federal funds to recruit rangers to patrol both sides of the Mississippi, and on March 19, 1812, Howard wrote to Eustis:

The Captain Boone appointed commander of the rangers was Colter’s friend, Nathan Boone, and Colter was among the forty-one men who enlisted at St. Charles on March 3. “We went into Building forts in Different places over the country to keep the Indians from murdering our helpless women and children,” remembered one of the rangers decades later.^[6]

A week before signing on with Nathan Boone, Colter had stopped in St. Louis to see Clark, who would have said good things about Boone. In 1808, when he launched an expedition to build Fort Osage three hundred miles upstream from the mouth of the Missouri, Clark had entrusted Boone with a key role in the mission. Now, Clark and Colter reminisced for the final time—this was also the last known contact between Colter and any veteran of the Corps of Discovery. Clark also loaned Colter forty-five dollars, which Colter probably used to prepare for his enlistment, because “the rangers were to equip themselves with good rifles or muskets and side arms as well as with clothing, horses, and provisions.”^[7]

The three hundred, seventy-five dollars and sixty cents received from Lewis’s estate ten months earlier was apparently gone.

“Nathan Boone’s company of Mounted Rangers . . . marched immediately to the northern frontier,” wrote Kate L. Gregg, “where they instituted their famous patrol . . . and helped the regulars of Lieutenant John Campbell’s company in erecting blockhouse forts.”^[8]

Less than three weeks after Colter and his fellows enlisted, the Louisiana Gazette warned that Kickapoo and Winnebago warriors had massacred settlers to the north and that the Potawatomi chief Main Poc intended to wage war against the Osage nation and attack whites while doing so. There would be no peace, reported the Gazette, “as long as there is a British subject suffered to trade within the lines of our territories.” However, the editorial continued, “The new company of rangers now doing duty in the district of St. Charles are perhaps as fine a body of hardy woodsmen as ever took the field. They cover, by constant and rapid movements, the tract of country from Salt River on the Mississippi to the Missouri near Loutre.”^[9]

According to a history published in 1816, Indians besieged Fort Mason, around eighty miles north of St. Louis, about this time. “Captain Boone, who commanded a company of rangers, succeeded in getting into the fort, by which it was rendered completely secure against their forces.” The history added that the Indians “remained before it 8 or 10 days, and succeeded once in setting fire to some of the cabins, which were burnt down, and at the same time a violent assault was made on the fort, which was gallantly repulsed by the garrison without much loss.”^[10]

Early in May, Boone’s rangers spotted a band of Indians about ten miles from Fort Mason and pursued them but lost the trail in darkness and a rain squall. “Captain Boone has given a good account so far of those have visited the frontier, and no doubt will continue to do so,” commented the Gazette.

At a July 4, 1812, celebration in St. Louis, thankful settlers paid tribute to Boone and his men: “Our Frontiers—watched and protected by a hardy band of Spartan Warriors—the Rangers deserve well of their country.”^[12] Colter was not there to enjoy the celebration, however; he had died two months earlier.

Colter’s military record answers certain questions about his death but raises others. He enlisted as a private on March 3 and was due payment of one dollar per day until May 6, the day he was released. Then follows this note: “Died 7 May 1812.”^[13] There is no mention of the cause of death, but he was apparently too sick to complete his nine-day enlistment term. Nor is there reason to believe he died from wounds suffered in battle. What was the nature of his illness? How long had he been sick? Did he see his wife and children before he died? All of these questions must go unanswered. Thomas James estimated that Colter was about thirty-five in 1809, which would have made him about thirty-eight at his death—the best information available on that subject.

James, also the sole source concerning the cause of Colter’s death, wrote that “a few years after [Colter left Three Forks in 1810] I heard of [his] death by jaundice.”^[14] Jaundice is a yellowish discoloration of the skin that can have any number of causes, including pancreatic cancer, malaria, kidney disease, and liver disease caused by alcoholism or hepatitis (which in turn can be caused by ingesting contaminated food or water). Whatever Colter’s malady, it came on quickly because a sick man could hardly have enlisted in Boone’s company.

Probate proceedings for Colter’s estate began on November 27, 1813, leading such historians as Stallo Vinton, Burton Harris, and Charles G. Clarke to conclude he must have died earlier that month. Subsequent historians accepted this assumption, and November 1813 thus became the de facto date for Colter’s death. While the original military record states unequivocally that Colter died on May 7, 1812, the printed copy of that record—and the indexes that followed, as well as Territorial Papers of the United States—mistakenly reprinted the name as “Cotter” (understandable because the person who wrote the original record crossed both the “l” and the “t”). The actual date of Colter’s death was thus lost to the world until Ruth Colter-Frick and Shirley Winkelhoch identified the correct date in an article in the New Haven (Missouri) Leader on June 29, 1988.

It is not known why Colter’s probate proceedings were delayed for almost a year and a half, but such a situation was not uncommon in Missouri at the time. Legal machinery turned slowly on the frontier, and official measures to settle the estates of expedition veterans George Drouillard, Thomas Howard, John Potts, and even Meriwether Lewis (all of whom died between 1808 and 1814) did not begin for at least a year after their deaths.^[15]

Colter’s estate papers show that his wife Sarah Loucy, also called Sally, had remarried by November of 1813 because her husband, James Brown, participated in the proceedings from the start. On December 4, three neighbors and friends of Colter, John Maupin, Mosias Maupin, and John Sullens (quite likely the man who arranged the meeting between Hunt’s party and Colter), appraised Colter’s property as follows:

June 15th, 1814, Labbadie Township, the appraisement of two fillies the property of John Colter, deceased by us:

The life of the great explorer was thus reduced to a list of mundane objects valued at around two hundred and fifty-eight dollars. Two references are particularly poignant: “three histories” and “one book,” appraised at a grand total of $3.25, another affirmation, along with his confident signature on a variety of documents, that Colter was a literate man. (His widow, by contrast, signed probate documents with an “x.”) What were the titles of these volumes? Were all four published books, or could one have contained Colter’s handwritten account of his travels along the Missouri, Jefferson, Gallatin, Yellowstone, Bighorn, Shoshone, Snake, or Columbia rivers? We will never know, for rather than being secured in an archive, the books were sold at auction. Benjamin Heatherly bought one for 64 cents, Samuel Cantly another for 86 cents, Mosias Maupin one for 75 cents, and John Maupin the last for 25 cents. The coffee pot brought in more than any of the books—Enoch Greenstreet bought it for $1.62 ½.

Like most of his neighbors, Colter was a poor man, but he had a roof over his head, three horses for work and travel, and a cow for milk and cheese. Sarah Loucy had a cotton wheel and a flax wheel to make clothes. Each of the four people in the family had a feather bed to sleep on, a chair to sit on, and their own plate, cup, and knife, fork, and spoon.

Conspicuously missing from the inventory were Colter’s absolute necessities: his rifle and ammunition. Also missing from the probate papers is any mention of the sixty-five dollars that the United States government owed Colter for his service as one of Boone’s rangers. No evidence has ever been found that either Colter or his heirs received any of that money. Nor is there any mention in the probate file of Colter’s land warrant and whether any cash was ever paid for it. These are three items to add to the long list of Colter mysteries.

After being sued, Thomas James paid $176.00 to Colter’s estate in 1816. There was also income from the sales of the inventory listed above. One sale brought in $213.48 ½ and another $53.35. Hartley Sappington bought the mare for $42.75, John Woollums the “little spinning wheel” for $7.12 ½, Zachariah Sullens the plow iron for $8.00, and James Kiggins the weeding hoe for $1.43 3/4. As Harris wrote, “The sale bill of [Colter’s] personal property reveals with appalling clarity the austerity of life on the frontier.” Over the years, the estate made payments to William Clark, Edward Hempstead, Sheriff Thompson, Joseph Charless (editor of the Louisiana Gazette), John Sullins, Elizabeth Maupin, Auguste Chouteau, and a host of others.^[16]

On October 22, 1821, more than nine years after Colter’s death, and eighteen years and one week after he enlisted with Lewis and Clark, the probate proceedings were finally closed. The original administrator, Daniel Richardson, had died himself, and his sons Richard and Amos Richardson handled the filing. Colter’s widow received $124.11.^[17]

Despite the kind of intense research so common in the Colter world, no historian or enthusiast or descendant has identified Colter’s burial site with any certainty, something that is somehow fitting for a man surrounded by so much mystery.^[18] Although Colter’s probate papers are quite detailed, no information is included concerning his burial. In fact, not a single nineteenth-century record related to the burial has been found. Early in the twentieth century, however, with the celebration of the centennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, renewed interest in Colter surged, no doubt spurred on by Hiram Martin Chittenden’s successful book, The American Fur Trade of the Far West, which included an entire chapter on Colter. Chittenden said nothing about Colter’s burial, but given the unending allure of the Colter story–and the irresistible urge to fill in the blanks–amateurs and professionals alike began telling parts of the Colter legend not mentioned in primary documents. And, just as his birth in Virginia and the family’s move to Maysville, Kentucky, had been added to the known “facts,” one tale after another of his burial–or lack thereof–soon complemented the narratives of a horse stolen by Lakota Indians and a thrilling escape from Three Forks.

Chittenden wrote that in 1811, at the time Colter talked with the westbound Astorians, he had “lately married and was living near the river above the point where the little creek La Charette empties into the main stream.”^[19]

Chittenden failed to note, however, that La Charette was across the Missouri from Colter’s residence and that there was no record of his ever having lived in La Charette. Nevertheless, a number of writers, beginning with Eva Emery Dye in 1904, concluded that since Colter lived in La Charette, he must have died there. Dye even added that he married an Indian squaw, which, as seen, has no basis in the historical documents. The theory that Colter died in La Charette, with the clear implication that he was also buried there, is thus based on a misunderstanding, but it has been propagated into the twenty-first century.^[20]

Another hypothesis concerning Colter’s burial site appeared in 1926 and has become the best-known theory. In the spring of that year, the Missouri Pacific Railroad had begun work to bypass an old tunnel that had become a train bottleneck. The railroad had built the tunnel through a bluff in the 1850s–the first tunnel west of St. Louis–and the construction project had given rise to the community of Dundee. The bluff became known as Tunnel Hill. The remarkable increase in traffic on the Missouri Pacific during the World War I and the early 1920s placed a heavy burden on the operation mainly because of inadequate double-track mileage. A study was conducted, and the railroad decided to double-track a number of sections, including the area near Tunnel Hill. As construction crews started work on the top of the bluff, they accidentally unearthed human skeletal remains. Word quickly spread of the discovery. On May 21, 1926, the Washington Citizen reported: “Workers employed by Sprague and Nisely Construction Company at Dundee say that eight or ten graves on Dundee Hill above the tunnel have been unearthed so far. . . . Skull bones from two graves were black. Trees several feet in diameter were over some graves. It was said that it was generally believed that the graves were of Indians. Human bones and remains of one box (coffin) were dumped in a car at one time.”^[21]

A month later a St. Louis newspaper published a feature story describing the incident–as well as Colter’s exploring and trapping career. It read in part:

The reporter added that there were about fifteen Colter (or Coulter) families in Franklin County and that the oldest Colter was seventy-year-old Sam, a great-grandson of the explorer. Dr. E. B. Trail, a longtime Colter researcher, heard about the discovery and went to the construction site. In his investigation he visited with Sam Coulter, who signed the following notarized affidavit in November of 1926: “About 1883, I was talking with Mr. Jacob Krattli of Dundee, Missouri. He told me that sometime prior to this time he had been talking to a group of old time settlers at Dundee, Missouri, and that they had told him that John Colter, the famous trapper and guide, was buried on Tunnel Hill.”^[23]

Maupin family tradition also offers support for the Tunnel Hill theory. (As noted, John Maupin helped appraise property for the estate sale.) In a 1972 letter to researcher Ralph Gregory, Mabel Maupin stated that her husband had told her “John Colter was buried over the old Pacific tunnel. I believe this would all fit in with Dr. Trails account, which, I believe reported that his farm was 1½ miles from the mouth of the Boeuf–is the right distance S. W. I doubt that there were any markers at the graves over the tunnel. When the [1926] cut was made there were not too many skeletons–but the men did report some Indian graves, which contained some Indian’s artifacts. My husband was there and saw this and so were some of the [neighbors] . . . . I recall that my husband and the other neighbor men helped dig graves two or three times in the Richardson Cemetery, which is much nearer New Haven.”^[25]

Several historians have repeated this story. Burton Harris’s treatment is typical: “Colter was buried in the graveyard on the top of what is now called Tunnel Hill, according to trustworthy old-time residents around Dundee. . . . the Missouri Pacific dug a tunnel through the hill, directly under the graves, when its lines were first extended westward in 1850.”^[26]

This oral tradition is significant because it has been so widely reported. In addition, the site is close to the likely site of Colter’s cabin–.98 miles to be exact. However, since the account is thus far uncorroborated and is both late (not recorded for more than a century after Colter’s death) and third hand (the parties who reported the story heard it from someone who heard it from someone else) it proves nothing in and of itself.^[27]

The Tunnel Hill theory still holds interest, however, because a skull found at the site has been retained. In 1972, Ralph Gregory interviewed William Harold Bailey, who obtained a skull from the hill when it was excavated in 1926. Bailey, who later became a dentist, was in his twenties at the time; his interest in human anatomy motivated him to keep the skull. The Bailey family still has the skull, and in 2003 a graduate student in forensic anthropology examined it and concluded it belonged to a white, middle-aged male who died of unknown causes.^[28]

An unbroken male lineage back to Colter exists, and DNA samples could be collected from one of Colter’s male descendants and compared to the DNA of the skull. A match would indicate that Colter’s body (or the body of a close relative—and there are no likely candidates) had indeed been buried at Tunnel Hill.

Forty years after the Tunnel Hill story appeared, in 1966, the most bizarre conjecture concerning Colter’s final resting place was published. As this story goes, after his return from the West, Colter settled on Boeuf Creek and married a Missouri “Corn Cracker” by the name of Nancy Hooker. When he died, Nancy was so poor that she did not have enough money to bury John. She reportedly left his remains in their bed and went to live with her brother. In 1926, someone stumbled upon a fallen-down cabin and found a skeleton with a leather pouch that had “Colter” branded on it. Various other sources say the leather pouch had “J C” branded on it. The pouch had papers from the fur-trade era inside, but no one knows what became of the pouch.^[29]

This whole story, and its variations, is undoubtedly the figment of an active imagination. Colter was a man with family and friends, including the powerful William Clark and an administrator responsibly handling his estate, none of whom would have tolerated such a thing.^[30]

In 1970, Lewis and Clark scholar Charles G. Clarke offered yet another account of Colter’s burial:

This claim is problematic for a variety of reasons. The supposed inscription, for example, gives every appearance of having been written many years after Colter’s death. As discussed earlier, the first known mention of Colter’s having been born in Virginia appeared in the early 1900s, with the work of Dye and Thwaites. Thomas James was the first to claim that Colter died of jaundice, and his book was not published until 1846. (That edition, however, was quickly taken out of circulation, and James’s views were not commonly known until the book was reprinted in 1916.) Moreover, a tombstone inscribed shortly after Colter’s death would have given 1812 as the year of his death, not 1813, (the year generally accepted until the 1990s).

Concerned about these issues, Gregory wrote a letter to Clarke, which reads in part: “I did not find the grave of Colter at the Fee Fee cemetery and the only record I saw was a typewritten one that Mrs. Olson [apparently an employee or volunteer at the cemetery] had. I believe the record is spurious and wish you had not said anything about it.”^[32]

Clarke replied: “I had run across this and the inscription on the headstone, many years ago–long before Mrs. Olson had mentioned it. Some early writer had mentioned this headstone, perhaps in a newspaper account, and it has been repeated since. I can find no other mention of where they knew he died of jaundice. It seems to have come from the headstone inscription. Now this headstone could have been erected at the Tunnel Hill site, and probably Colter was not buried at Fee Fee Baptist Church.”^[33]

Subsequent research has further weakened the case against the Fee Fee Baptist Church theory. A check of the Fee Fee Cemetery records showed that the first internment there took place in 1822, ten years after Colter’s death. In addition, in 2005, archivists at the St. Charles Historical Society were unable to locate any records mentioning Colter’s burial.^[34]

In 1984, Ruth Colter-Frick became interested in the old cemeteries located along the river bluffs between Dundee and New Haven. She reported that she and her brother Forrest were searching for Colter’s tombstone when Forrest

The stone marked “JC” and the grave marker for Hiram Coalter are the key evidence for this site, but whether “JC” referred to John Colter is unknown. Furthermore, after the death of Hiram Colter (John’s son), each of his sons named one of their sons Hiram, and those sons did likewise. The Hiram buried on the bluff has not been positively identified. Also, the site proposed by Colter-Frick does not have an oral tradition associated with it. Finally, in an era where individuals were often buried in small cemeteries close to their homes, this cemetery is relatively distant from the likely site of Colter’s cabin–about eight or nine miles upriver.

Research within the last few years, however, has brought a possible Colter burial place to light that carries a strong family tradition and is also located close (.45 miles) to the likely cabin site. When the Astorians camped at the mouth of Boeuf Creek in March of 1811, a man by the name of Sullens put them in touch with Colter. Is is possible that a Sullens descendant has likewise offered crucial details as to Colter’s whereabouts?

The property owned by Sullens in 1812 has stayed continually with the family and is now owned by Harold Humphrey, a descendant of John Sullens, and his wife, Janet. Their son, Kurt D. Humphrey, said in a 2009 interview that John Colter is buried in the family cemetery and that the family has kept that secret for two hundred years to allow Colter to rest in peace. Now, however, in deference to Colter’s descendants, Humprey has announced the details of where he believes Colter is buried.^[36]

Clearly, Colter’s burial spot is likely to remain a mystery of mysteries because this entire discussion of possible sites deals with oral tradition, educated speculation, and pure guesswork but lacks the true stuff of history: primary documents. That lack of certainty is somehow fitting for a man surrounded by so much mystery. A newly discovered document is the most likely way this conundrum—or those linked to Colter’s birth, his youth, his run, his route, and his death—would be resolved. Perhaps, some day, the discovery of a trunk of old letters stowed away in the attic of an old house will suddenly be announced–as was the case with William Clark’s letters published in Dear Brother.

Until that time, the monument erected by the Tavern Bluff Party in 1998 will serve quite nicely as a headstone of sorts:

Wherever John Colter is buried, one can only hope the grave sits at the edge of a bluff overlooking the wide Missouri River because the Missouri was Colter’s River.

Who more than Colter would have appreciated the retrospections of John C. Nierhardt?

“The Missouri is unique among rivers. I think God wished to teach the beauty of a virile soul fighting its way toward peace—and His precept was the Missouri.” ^[37]

Along the Missouri, Colter had watched Clark taking notes, estimating distances, and sketching maps; he had seen Lewis taking “long, solitary walks, collecting specimens, animal and plant, noting the physical characteristics of the land, judging the fertility of the soil, the presence of springs of good water, like sites for homesteads, trading posts, and fortifications.”^[38]

“The Missouri—my brother—is the eternal Fighting Man! . . . the Missouri is more than a sentiment—even more than an epic. It is the symbol of my own soul, which is, I surmise, not unlike other souls. In it I see flung before me all the stern world-old struggle become materialized.” ^[39]

Along the Missouri, Colter had watched Sergeant Floyd suffer and die. “A little before his death he said to Captain Clark, ‘I am going to leave you’; his strength failed him as he added, ‘I want you to write me a letter.’ He died with a composure which justified the high opinion we had formed of his firmness and good conduct.”^[40]

“Here is the concrete representation of the earnest desire, the momentarily frustrate purpose, the beating at the bars, the breathless fighting of the half-whipped but never-to-be-conquered spirit, the sobbing of the wind-broken runner, the anger, the madness, the laughter. And in it all the unwearying urge of a purpose, the unswerving belief in the peace of a far away ocean.”^[41]

Along the Missouri, Colter had seen a band of Lakota warriors “on a hill, hooting, jeering, and proclaiming their readiness to kill the Americans”; he had gazed on the “earth lodges, fortifications, and extensive fields of corn, beans, and squash” that “were all signs of the culture of the Missouri Valley villagers” called the Arikiara; and he had met the congenial Mandan chief called Sheheke, who told the captains, “If we eat you Shall eat, if we Starve you must Starve also.”^[42]

“Not only in its physical aspect does the Missouri appeal to the imagination. From Three Forks to its mouth—a distance of three thousand miles—this zigzag watercourse is haunted with great memories. Perhaps never before in the history of the world has a river been the thoroughfare of a movement so tremendously epic in its human appeal, so vastly significant in its relation to the development of man.” ^[43]

Along the branches of the Missouri, Colter had traveled westward with the captains, searched for and found Yellowstone Lake and Brooks Lake, and run for his life from Blackfoot warriors.

“In the building of the continent Nature fashioned well the scenery for the great human story that was to be enacted here in the fullness of years. She built her stage on a large scale, taking no account of miles; for the coming actors were to be big men, mighty travelers, intrepid fighters, laughers at time and space. . . . And that the arrangements might be complete, she left a vast tract unfinished, where still the building of the world goes on—a place of awe in which to feel the mighty Doer of Things at work.” ^[44]

But what spot along the Missouri would have been more memorable to John Colter than the gentle bluff spotted with timber rising on the west side of the mouth of the Bighorn, where Fort Raymond stood, the home he had returned to time and again, where a group of friends could swap tales, savor pipes stuffed with tobacco, rest their bones around a fire, and imagine ways to spend their fortunes? But as good as any fortune was seeing the swans and pelicans and geese landing on the water, the gangs of buffalo coming down to the river to drink, and the sound of friendly Crow warriors approaching on their magnificent horses.

Notes

William Clark to the War Department, September 12, 1810, U. S. War Department, Extracts of Letters about Indian Affairs, 1807-1811, Ohio State Historical Society, Columbus.

Louisiana Gazette, July 4, 1811, cited in Gregg, “The War of 1812,” 10.

Capt. Horatio Stark to Col. Daniel Bissell, January 6, 1812, Territorial Papers, 14:506, cited in Jones, William Clark, 204.

Gregg, “War of 1812,” 11; William Clark to the Secretary of War, February 13, 1812, Territorial Papers, 8:161, cited in Jones, William Clark, 204.

Governor Howard to the Secretary of War, March 19, 1812, Territorial Papers, 14:531-32. Regarding the slaughter of the nine members of the O’Neal family, one witness of the carnage wrote, “The youngest child, about one year old, was thrown alive into a large oven and baked.” (Walter Williams, History of Northeast Missouri, 513.)

Boone Manuscript Collection, Vol. 15, 1782-1815, No. 82, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison. Documents in the National Archives, the William Henry Collection at the Indiana Historical Society, and Territorial Papers (vol. 14, p. 567) discuss the pay roll of Captain Boone’s company both during and after Colter’s enlistment, but no mention has been found of Colter’s pay being made to his widow or anyone else.

Hurt, Nathan Boone, 86–87.

Gregg, “War of 1812,” 12.

Louisiana Gazette, March 21, 1812, cited in Gregg, “War of 1812,” 14, and Hurt, Nathan Boone, 87.

10.

McAfee, History of the Late War, 320.

11.

Hurt, Nathan Boone, 87.

12.

Louisiana Gazette, May 9, 1812, cited in Hurt, Nathan Boone, 89.

13.

Louisiana Gazette, July 11, 1812, cited in Gregg, “War of 1812,” 15.

14.

Muster Roll and Company Pay Roll, Captain Nathan Boone’s Company of U.S. Mounted Rangers, War of 1812, National Archives. See Colter-Frick, Courageous Colter, 137-38, for reprints of these documents.

15.

James, Three Years Among the Indians, 36.

16.

See Morris, Fate of the Corps, 191–99.

17.

Colter’s probate papers, Franklin County Probate Court, Union, Missouri; Harris, John Colter, 163.

18.

Colter-Frick, Courageous Colter, 170. As Colter-Frick points out, the surviving estate papers and totals listed therein make it impossible to trace the amounts received and paid out over the years and reach a sum anywhere near the total of $121.11. (Courageous Colter, 148–73.) Interestingly, Colter’s estate was settled in a courthouse in the newly formed county seat of Franklin County, Missouri, on land where his cabin likely stood.

19.

Chittenden, The American Fur Trade, 2:712.

20.

Eva Emery Dye to Dr. Hosmer, April 4, 1904. “Yes,” Dye wrote, “Coalter died at Charrette, married a squaw there and lived near Daniel Boone.” (Dye Collection [Mss 1089, Box F 45], Oregon Historical Society.) As late as 2003, Lowell M. Schake wrote that “Colter died of jaundice two years later at Charrette, Missouri.” (La Charrette: Village Gateway to the American West [Lincoln, Nebraska: Universe, Inc., 2003], 137.) La Charette was located approximately sixty miles beyond St. Louis on the north banks of the Missouri River, across the river from the community of St. John’s. It existed for approximately thirty years. During the short life of the village it played a vital role in shaping the American West. Located in a transition zone between the frontier and the more civilized east, it was a melting pot where French, English, Whites, Blacks, Indians, and later German immigrants interacted. Daniel Boone and his family had moved to the area in 1799. After it ceased to exist, a new community called Marthasville developed in a narrow valley immediately to the north of where La Charette once stood. Today Marthasville is recognized as the oldest town of continual habitation in Warren County, Missouri.

21.

Washington Citizen, May 21, 1926. Although Colter’s military record lists the dates of his discharge and death, it says nothing about his burial. One contemporary account shows how a burial was handled by the rangers during this period. In July 1813, Captain David Musick’s Company of United States Rangers had a skirmish with a party of Winnebago Indians near Fort Mason on the Mississippi in which a soldier named John M. Duff was fatally wounded; a few days later he was buried with military honors in St. Louis. (Louis Howard Conrad, Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri [1901], 1:384.) Colter’s burial was less likely to find its way into the official record because he was discharged before his death and because he was not wounded in action. If he were buried near Fort Mason, the related military record has been lost.

22.

Julius Kleimann, “A Steam Shovel Digs Up Old John Colter,” Sunday Magazine–St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 27, 1926. Courtesy of Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri, Columbia.

23.

E. B. Trail Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri, Columbia. Although Sam Coulter cited Jacob Krattli as his source, Krattli seems to have had two opinions on the matter and reportedly told his son that he thought there were only four or five graves on the hill and that they all belonged to riders atop box cars killed when the trains entered the tunnel. (There was very little room between the top of a train car and the ceiling of the tunnel, and any riders sitting on top of a car and unaware of the upcoming tunnel could have been killed.) (Jim Miller to Ralph Gregory, March 10, 1972, copy in Ron Anglin’s possession.)

24.

E. B. Trail, “The Life and Adventures of John Colter,” Old Travois Trails, Vol. 2 No. 5, January and February, 1942, 20.

25.

Mrs. Charles Maupin to Ralph Gregory, March 20, 1972, bracketed explanation added, copy in Ron Anglin’s possession.

26.

Harris, John Colter, 162-63.

27.

Ron Anglin visited Tunnel Hill in 2003 and found evidence that a cemetery had indeed been there at one time. He wrote: “I made a measurement from the high point to the approximate location of Colter's cabin at New Port (using Garmin Global Position System [GPS] map 76S receiver). The distance was approximately one mile. The only thing I found unusual on Tunnel Hill was some yucca plants. I asked Marc Houseman, Director of the Washington, Missouri, Historical Society Museum, if there was any significance about the yucca plants, since they are not native to Missouri. He told me at the time, ‘I don't have any specific information on yucca plants as they relate to graveyards, other than the tradition of the nineteenth century to plant the nonnative plants in cemeteries. The old timers called them “century plants” since they virtually last forever. The fact that they stay green year round was looked upon as symbolic of eternal life–“forever green!” It’s the same with cedar trees and periwinkle, myrtle or vinca; all are green year round and found in many early Missouri cemeteries. Also, the yucca blooms once annually so it's a way of “decorating” the grave with flowers without visiting the cemetery.’”

28.

Ralph Gregory, “A Paper on the Life of John Colter in Franklin County, Missouri,” 1972, unpublished, copy in Ron Anglin’s possession. Heather Shawver, the graduate student who examined the skull, reported: “The skull is complete and intact, except for a few anterior teeth, which were lost postmortem. The skull has not been cut, which means that this not an anatomy specimen. It was either dug out of the ground from an archaeological or historic site, or it was never buried. There is no evidence of surface weathering or bleaching, so it is unlikely that the skull lay on the ground exposed. The lack of insect or carnivorous activity indicates that the individual was sheltered, either in a sturdy coffin or in (for example) a basement. The entire skull has been covered in some sort of glue or varnish, which was a common preservation technique in the past. The skull is of a man . . considered to be a Caucasian. He has a high forehead and very little prognathism. His nose is narrow and tall, with a deviated septum. His chin is square and projecting, and his palate is narrow, with fairly crowded teeth. He has a few traits that are considered Native American, such as shovel-shaped incisors and curved, “Tented” nasals. However, his teeth are barely worn for his age, indicating a Western diet . . . Aging is again difficult, perhaps even more so for this individual. Almost all of his sutures are fused, indicative of advanced age. However, his teeth show wear more suggestive of someone in their thirties or forties . . . Therefore, all we can say about this individual is that he was a white male (with some Native American traits) who died of unknown causes sometime during mid-life, sometime in the (not particularly recent) past." (Shawyer, “A Tale of Two Crania [Inherited Skulls with No Provenance],” December 26, 2003, unpublished, copy in Ron Anglin’s possession.)

29.

Raymond W. Thorp, “Colter’s Bones,” Old West magazine, Summer 1966.

30.

One of the variations, included as a “follow-up” to a 1913 account of Colter’s Run written by Edwin Sheldon, read as follows: “In 1812 the United States declared war on Great Britain, and Colter enlisted. Fighting under Nathan Boone, he died while in the service of his country. However, after such an eventful life, he died, not by the hand of the British soldiers or the many Indians he encountered in his travels, but by jaundice. After his death, his remains were shipped back to Missouri to his wife. However, Sallie was unable to provide a proper burial. Leaving him lying in state in their cabin, she moved into her brother's home. Amazingly, John Colter’s body continued to lie in the cabin for the next 114 years, the house slowly falling to ruins around him. In 1926, the land on which the cabin once sat was being cleared and during the process his bones, as well as a leather pouch portraying his name, was found. Afterwards, his remains were gathered and buried on a bluff in New Haven that overlooks the Missouri River.” (Posted on the “Legends of America” website in 2009, http://www.legendsofamerica.com/ne-johncolter.html, accessed on 1/5/2014.)

31.

Clarke, Men of the Expedition, 47.

32.

Ralph Gregory to Charles G. Clarke, January 8, 1972, copy in Ron Anglin’s possession.

33.

Charles G. Clarke to Ralph Gergory, January 15, 1972, copy in Ron Anglin’s possession.

34.

Margaret Wherry, Historical Sketch of the Old Fee Fee Baptist Church, 5; n. d. Larry Morris visited the St. Charles Historical Society in 2005 and an archivist reported that no records related to Colter’s burial could be found.

35.

Colter-Frick, Courageous Colter, 210-12.

36.

Kurt Humphrey signed the following statement now in Ron Anglin’s possession: “To Whom It May Concern: I can attest to and do solemnly swear before almighty God & to my ancestors spirits that John Colter of the Lewis & Clark Expedition of the Missouri River in 1804 is buried here in our family cemetery (TWP 44 N Range 2 West). He is buried in the SE section of said cemetery burial plot # 34 on map that I gave copy to county assessor office in 1990 here in Franklin, County, MO. I listed him as unknown for same reason I left the Indian Mound that joins the West end of said cemetery. For it had been a family secret as my family had and still is John Colter’s burial guardians. One can note that other cemetery plot maps I gave to County I showed their Indian mounds. I now speak up for I believe every one has a right to know where their fore father’s and fore mothers are at on this earth. I have nothing to gain or lose in making this info public on this 23rd day of October 2009 Sincerely Kurt D. Humphrey”

37.

Neihardt, The River and I, 8.

38.

Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, 141.

39.

Neihardt, The River and I, 8.

40.

Coues, History of the Expedition, 1:79.

41.

Neihardt, The River and I, 8.

42.

Ronda, Among the Indians, 27, 23; Clark’s journal entry, November 1, 1804, Moulton, Journals, 3:225.

43.

25. Neihardt, The River and I, 8.

44.

Neihardt, The River and I, 8.