Milton Sublette - The Lost Mountain-Man

Milton Sublette was one of five men who banded together and formed the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. They were able to buy out his brother William, Jedidiah Smith and David Jackson. But there is more to this story.
William Sublette started Fort Laramie in 1834 known then as Fort William. The name was changed to Fort John in 1841 when it became part of the American Fur Company. In 1849, it became Fort Laramie. From 1849 to its end forty years later it remained Fort Laramie a United States Army Fort.
Now back to the subject of this post, Milton Sublette.
In 1826, he took either an arrow or a hatchet to a leg in an Indian battle in the southwest. At the time, he was only 25 years old. The leg wouldn’t heal and eventually he had part of it taken off. A year or so later another piece was taken. It is possible that he had other surgeries on the often infected leg.
He lived on using a leg made of cork and used a one mule wagon to get around when he could. He died at the ripe old mountain-man age of 36 in 1837. He was buried on the grounds of Fort Laramie in a grave that was soon forgotten. But his brother Solomon came through and put a proper marker on the grave in 1843.Years after Fort Laramie was out of business Milt Sublette’s grave and the entire Fort William and Fort John cemetery were lost. In modern times, during an attempt to stabilize the ruins of the post hospital on the hill in the northwest part of the fort. Guess what?
The hospital had been built over the old post cemetery. In the process of work on the old walls and foundations, a few bodies were discovered. One with an amputated leg – Milton Sublette.  What a perfect resting place for the old mountain-man, the most famous fort of his era. 

The old Fort Hospital - Milton Sublette's Final Resting Place

The Two Laramie's

The two greatest roads for westward expansion, the Oregon/Mormon Trail, and the Transcontinental Railroad both passed through Laramie. But not the same Laramie.

Fort Laramie of trapper and Indian wars fame sits on the Laramie and North Platte Rivers in east-central Wyoming.

Fort Laramie

Laramie the city, once actually called, Laramie City, is in the southeast corner of the state.

University of Wyoming - Game Day

Today the two Laramie’s are often confused in print. Most of the confusion results from people thinking that Fort Laramie and Laramie, the home of the University of Wyoming, are one and the same, but they are not. Every once in a while I run across something that confuses the two.

I lived and taught at Laramie High School for many years retiring from teaching in 2012. Now I live just minutes away from Fort Laramie, where I used to live before moving to Laramie City. That should help clear everything up.

Easy to remember which is which – wagons to the west passed through Fort Laramie and Rail cars to the west passed through Laramie City.

Why the name? I have posted here before about early Wyoming trapper and explorer Jacques La Ramie. La Ramie was a free trapper in and around Fort William, later to become Fort John and then Fort Laramie. He either died, was killed or was lost and never heard from again in 1820 or 21. Many things are named after him in the southeast part of the state including the small river running through Laramie the city and Fort Laramie.

Laramie River near the Fort

I have posted other parts of Jacques La Ramie legend from time to time, but this is the first I have blogged about the confusion with all things Laramie.

So where did all this start? A recent book where a man, riding the all-new transcontinental RR, got off at Fort Laramie. Oops!

Break time in the park

The Indians Wars in the West Didn’t Last Long

 

 

Starting with the 1854 Grattan Massacre, and ending with the terrible slaughter at Wounded Knee in 1890, Wyoming and the west are full of stories of the Indian battles.

 Authors and film makers have written thousands of stories, made dozens of movies and hundreds of Television shows from this, much shorter than a life time, 36 year span.

Sure there were battles before 1854 and a few spirited fights after 1890, but the majority of the Indian Wars were finished as: farmers, ranchers, squatters, prospectors, herders, shop keepers and peddlers pushed eastern civilization westward.

With the Indian wars over there was no longer a need for forts in the west. Only Fort Washakie remained. This fort stayed open until 1909. Forts: Laramie, Bridger, Fetterman, and Kearny, were long gone by 1890 as a new era pushed out the old west.

The Three Williams, John and a Fort Called Laramie

The famous Fort Laramie of the west was once Fort William. In June of 1834 the foundation log was laid at the fort on the North Platte and Laramie Rivers. William Anderson and William Sublette got into a gentlemen’s argument over what the fort should be named. Anderson wanted to name it Fort Sublette and you guessed it, Sublette thought Fort Anderson sounded like pure poetry on the plains. Anderson even offered a bottle of champagne (likely the only one for miles around) to sway Sublette.

Didn’t work, they continued the argument while downing the champagne. Tired of listening to the argument, although he did get a fair share of the champagne, William Patton offered a suggestion, “Let’s call it Fort William, all of our first names.” The name stuck and Fort William It was.

By 1841 the fort was named after John Sarpy a fur trader at the fort. By Gold Rush time it was Fort Laramie a three year old military post. The new name was given to it by mistake in Saint Louis when a not very efficient clerk, addressed something to Fort Laramie instead of Fort William on the Laramie. And that name stuck.