Customer Reviews

Bent's Fort

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I flew through Bent's Fort in a week after it was recommended to me by a friend. I wasn't all that interested in the topic but I decided to read a few chapters and give it a try. I instantly became hooked. Bent's fort gives the reader an inside look into the West BEFORE it became the stuff of lore (i.e. Lincoln County War, Pat Garrett, Custer, etc.). Lavender starts with the mountain men roaming the Missouri and Rockies and their relationship with the Plains indians. His knowledge of the Indians (specifically the Cheyenne tribe), really brings the sometimes forgotten native people, down to a personal level. Most of the book centers around the Bent family and its fort located in SE Colorado between 1820 - 1870. With the Bent's into trading, much is also written about St. Louis, Santa Fe, Taos and the Arkansas and Cimarron Rivers . What I really liked about the book is the personal level Lavender gets the Old west characters down to. It feels like you know William Bent, Kit Carson and Yellow Wolf. A great deal of the book also deals with Mexico and the trader's relationship with the country up to the Mexican War and after the US gained possession of the territory. One thing that really surprised me was the amount of small, sporadic fights that went on between the Indians, the Mexicans and the whites. Lavender writes about all the small skirmishes, what precipitated them, and how things cooled off into a peaceful state again. If you do plan to read Bent's Fort, I suggest you do so with an atlas handy. Lavender writes about hundreds of places in the Southwest and it's hard to get a gauge as to where the events occurred unless you have an atlas. Also, if you are reading this book for reference material, do not plan to cite dates of events. Because the Bent's did not keep journals, many of the years listed for when things happened are just educated guesses. It's fine for the reader but if you're working on a college paper, it could be a headache. I recommend this book to any history buff who wants to know what the West was like when it was first discovered by whites and how their relationships were with the Indians and Mexicans. Lavender also gives the reader a feeling on how it was to venture out to an unknown land and what chores were needed to do daily to survive. Just remember you atlas before starting!

Despite all we read, this is the first book that made me realize that there were two Old Wests. The first really starts with the fur trade; the second starts with the flood tide of white immigration. Somewhere along this continuum, Native Americans effectively disappear as economic units and as cultures. The focus of this book is on the first West, including its transition into the second.

This then is the story of the early west, when the first white emigration was necessarily in balance not only with the aboriginal inhabitants but also with the valid claims of Spain, Mexico, Great Britain and Russia. It is a story of intense competition, the story of a hugely successful commercial empire that really opened this vast section of the American West. It is the story of the Santa Fe Trail, the main route of commerce between St. Louis and Santa Fe, and the people who sought to control it. It is the story of men and women, of the lives and fortunes of those who developed and experienced this commercial thoroughfare.

As a history it is mesmerizing. As a yarn it is eye popping. As a series of events it is unbelievable. A critical part of the Nation's Manifest Destiny, it is the story of human endurance, of culture clash, war, survival, success and failure. But mostly it is the story of a very logical, continual development, a transition, one that will make you proud to be an American.

For a book written in 1954, I was surprised at the thoughtfulness and consideration given the Indians. Over and over Lavender brings to the fore the emotional lives of the Indians, he makes clear how these immigrant whites mixed with Indians and Mexicans in a rather ho-hum no-big-deal, she's-my-wife manner, and he skewers those whites in power who brought the Sand Creek Massacre about. However he does not shrink from portraying Indian lives as more Hobbesian than many of us, steeped as we have been for decades in the "noble savage" myth, would like to admit was true, and pulls no punches in using the language of the time. My! how horrible for our own history to be given to us straight and unfiltered. Essential for Coloradoans; the names of many of the people in this book are now forever attached to the creeks, mesas, rivers, and mountains around us. Difficult to imagine that the border of Mexico was the south bank of the Arkansas River until 1848. Bent's Fort was rebuilt in the 70's, it's just east of La Junta. I have liked everything Lavender has written so far - this is another excellent entry in the list.

This is one of the all-time great histories. Well-written, as fascinating as any action-adventure fiction, but one comes away from reading this book with the feeling that you have really been there with the Bent. One of the many neglected stories of our history, and one that needed to be told. Lavender did a magnificent job with it.

The best book I've read about the mountain men and the beginnings of the migration to the West. A must read for anyone interested in the history of the USA and exploration and settlement of the Western United States. Highly recommended.

The hearty souls that were part of this book are long gone. Jedidiah Smith, William Bent, Ceran St. Vrain and various players from the Old West are part of this menangerie that is brought together by brilliant author David Lanvender who passed away several years ago. The book is 395 pages of sorrow, courage, ruggedness and entreprneurialship that starts with the arrival of the Bents from the Old World, From here, their decendants emmigrated to Missouri where William Bent and his brother George were born. The story tells of early adventures of the Bents trapping for beavers for their fur which came at great physical cost to the trapping parties, the fomration of a fur company to rival competitors incuding Astor's company and the grand establishment of Bent's Fort on the Santa Fe Trail which served as a way station for traders, both white and indian, to exhange goods and money. The old fort lasted from 1833 to 1849 when William Bent decided that the rising conflicts on the Great Plains between the Indians and the white men would hinder trade. The great cholera outbreak among the Southern Cheyenne in 1849 which wiped out half of the tribe further reduced trade potential and was another factor in its closure. Having lost his brothers to disease and war and was not willing for anybody to use his fort, he demolished the fort to erase it from his memory and set up a new fort further east. His new fort would survive only another decade when he gave it over to the United States Army as part of the Fort Lyon complex when he realized that Indian trade was all but gone and that the Civil War was on the horizon.

The story discusses William Bent's family relationships. He married a Cheyenne woman to show his sincerity to the Indians that he wished to stay in that part of the country for the long haul. His son Charles Bent was known for his depredations of white settlers while one of his other sons George fought for the Confederacy. After he sold his new fort to the U.S. Army, he soldiered in the trade business until he died from pneumonia in 1869. Ceran St. Vrain was his long-time partner who went his separate way to settle down in New Mexico where he died in 1870. On the whole this book was a great read with a substantial end note section which is almost a book to itself and an index. I recommend this book to anybody who wants to know how business and trade was in the Old West.

This work is an outstanding introduction to the overall narrative of the early Southwest. It taught me how much the early West was connected by trade and about the often overlooked period in between the high-water mark of the fur trade and the Civil War.

Despite at least one reviewer's condescending attitude toward Lavender's writing, I found that he portrayed his main characters as morally mixed. The Bents come off as mainly good and noble, but even they are portrayed as having faults. The Indians are treated with respect, even while being described as apparently suffering from a 19th century form of ADD. The cruelty of whites and Indians is criticized, as it should be.

My main criticisms of the books are (1) its length and (2)Lavender's historical method. The book probably could have been shorter. Lavender goes into way too much detail about things not directly tied to the Bents and their trade. Even so, the book is not terribly longer than it should have been. Perhaps 10 - 20% could have been cut.

The other troubling aspect of the book is that it's hard to tell where direct documentary evidence ends and where Lavender's storytelling begins. Endnotes are far and few between and aren't always so helpful.

Nevertheless, the story flows, and is interesting to read. How nice it would be if all recent historical writing was this readable!

One fantastic, engrossing book! Bent's Fort is in southeastern Colorado and this book gives the history of that area along with Taos and Sante Fe. Couldn't put the book down. The fort bordered what was then the United States and Mexico. We see how the Bent brothers establish a trading post along the Arkansas River in the 1830's and began a long career of not only in trading with the Indians and Mexicans, but also get involved in the uprising of hostilities between Mexico and the United States. The cultural descriptions of our Native Americans is very well done. It is a great read and as another reviewer said, it is as if the characters simply come alive and you feel as though you know them personally.

David Lavender wrote Bent's Fort in 1954. His book has all of the virtues of a popular history written during that time period. The story is driven by bigger than life characters forging history in an exotic locale. The book was a fun read enjoyable in the same way as those big 1950's technicolor movies. Great on plot but a little weak on the history.

To the modern reader, the book is very dated. The Indians are "Red Savages" and the Mexicans are lazy and shiftless. Not surprisingly, the Anglo Fur Traders are heroes straight out of a Hollywood central casting. David Lavender writes with the easy racism that was common in the pre civil rights era. In the past fifty years, American historians have made great progress in the study of the West. We now have a much more nuanced understanding of how the West was really settled.

I would recommend this book to those who like the "lite" version of history. A fun read with plenty of good guys and bad guys. Something to read between the tomahawk throwing contest and working on the buffalo hide beer can holder. However, the serious reader should check out David Fridtj Halaas' "Halfbreed". There is no better an example of how much Western History writing has progressed in the past half century.

I am glad to see thi book is still available. It is a marvelous read and great for introducing an intelligent readership to the elements that made Manifest Destiny possible. The Bents were an important influence in this era and did as much as J. J. Astor to move the country west to the Pacific from their mid-continent location. Very much recommended for any American History library.