Mystery of John Colter

Ronald M. Anglin is the author of Forgotten Trails: Historical Sources of the Columbia’s Big Bend Country. He is retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, where he spent thirty years in land management in the National Wildlife Refuge System. He feels strongly that to be a good steward of an area, one must first understand its history, so that one’s mark on the land will be with love and respect, not cruelty or disdain. He and his wife, Kathy, live in Fallon, Nevada, and have two sons who are happily married with six children between them.Larry E. Morris is the author of The Fate of the Corps: What Became of the Lewis and Clark Explorers After the Expedition and The Perilous West: Seven Amazing Explorers and the Founding of the Oregon Trail. He is a curator with the Historic Sites Division of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was born and raised in Idaho Falls, Idaho, in the Snake River country roamed by the likes of Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger, and Kit Carson in the 1820s and 1830s. Larry and his wife, Deborah, are the parents of four children and have six grandchildren.

• Acknowledgments1 “Off He Started with the Speed of the Wind”: Colter’s Run2 “One of the Survivors, of the Name of Coulter”: Searching for Colter’s Roots3 “In Quest of the Country of Kentucke”: John Colter and the Legacy of Daniel Boone4 “Colter Came Running Along the Shore”: The Encounter with the Lakota Sioux5 Colter Had Just Arrived with a Letter from Capt. Clark.": Perilous Rivers and Mountains6 “Colter Expressed a Desire To Join Some Trappers”: The Partnership with Dickson and Hancock 7 "Unruly Hands to Manage": Up the Missouri with LIsa8 "Lonely Wanderings": The Riddle of Colter's Route9 "In the Midst of an Unbounded Wilderness": Washington Irving and the Legend of Colter's Run 10 "We All Now Became Blind": West with Menard and Henry11 "He Reluctantly Took Leave of Us": Surviving in Civilization12 "As Fine a Body of Hardy Woodsmen as Ever Took the Field": Colter's Final DaysEpilogue Chronology Appendix A: Accounts of Colter's RunAppendix B: The Documentary History of John Colter, 1803-1846Appendix C: The Colter Stone and Other GraffitiNotes Sources Cited IndexAbout the Authors

In the annals of American history, John Colter’s name is often mentioned in the same breath as Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett as one of the expanding frontier’s original frontiersmen. Colter is frequently cited as the discoverer of Yellowstone and holds a legendary reputation for outrunning a tribe of Blackfoot Indians hell-bent on hunting him down like an animal, a feat for which the yearly Colter’s Run foot race in Montana is named. Yet, because Colter left behind almost no written documents, such as journals or letters, precious little is known about the explorer’s life other than information gleaned from second- and third-hand accounts. . . .[The authors] devote themselves to separating the myths from the facts while offering fascinating tidbits about other people associated with Colter, such as Lewis and Clark. Readers new to Colter will be intrigued, while those familiar with his standing will be pleased to finally see a definitive biography of this noteworthy American pioneer.