Almost a Legend

Watching a football game on television Saturday, Wyoming V. Utah State, as part of the promo they mentioned Jim Bridger and the fact that he was the first white man to visit the Great Salt Lake and the first into Yellowstone. Bridger may very well have been the first non-Indian into the Great Salt Lake Valley, at least I and many other western historians believe that. But the first into Yellowstone, I don’t think so.

John Colter, like Bridger, a Virginian was much more likely to have been the first into Yellowstone. It is most unlikely the two ever met and very possible that Colter was in Yellowstone while Bridger was but a toddler with a birth date in 1804.

Bridger became a legend in the west and Colter seems to have just slipped away into history. Colter left the west by 1810 and never returned, leaving a legend in the making, unmade.

Colter never lived long enough for people to believe any of his tales of Yellowstone. He died of Jaundice in 1813 leaving behind $124 and change. But then the story of the almost a legend in the west turns bizarre. He was buried on Tunnel Hill near present day Dundee Missouri. In 1926 his remains, along with the remains of five or six others, were dug up during a railroad excavation of the site. All were dumped somewhere nearby, buried in an unmarked embankment.

Not a very fitting finish to the first white man in to Yellowstone.

Crazy Discovery Tail

Not sure if every state has a tail of discovery, but Wyoming does. I would rather call it, the, who was here first story. The answer is, of course, Indians, several tribes. But much like Columbus discovering America, when there were already a million, or so people here, Wyoming, for years taught about who the first, non-Indian to enter Wyoming was, and like Columbus often said they were the discoveries of Wyoming.

Many texts tell us that a brother duo, the Verendrye’s were likely the first non-natives to visit the cowboy state. Nice, but this is based on the fact that school children in South Dakota found a lead plate in 1913 that was buried by Chevalier de la Verendrye dated March 30, 1743. This is a fine tail, and likely true, with a few details filed in, but it was a long way to Wyoming from Fort Pierre, South Dakota.

Historical speculation seemed to get carried away. Some would be historians assumed the Verendrye’s must have journeyed on to the Black Hills from Fort Pierre and then might just have gone on to Wyoming. Maybe just to say they had been there, just kidding.

Fort Pierre is some 200 miles from the Wyoming border; believe I will stick with my belief. John Colter, who traveled west with Lewis and Clark, left the ‘Corpse of Discovery’ on the west coast and made his way back east, stopping in what is today Yellowstone. No one believed him when he told tales of Yellowstone wonders, but later they were proved true, and I have been there to see them.

Historical facts are just that, they can be proven; historical speculation belongs in fiction, not textbooks.