74 Kansas History the Chaos of Conquest: the Bents and the Problem of American Expansion, 1846–1849 by David Beyreis
Bent’s Fort, as depicted by Works Projects Administration artist Harry Miller. Courtesy of History Colorado, Denver, Colorado. Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 41 (Summer 2018): 74–89 74 Kansas History The Chaos of Conquest: The Bents and the Problem of American Expansion, 1846–1849 by David Beyreis ames K. Polk’s election as the eleventh president of the United States upset Charles Bent deeply. Chief partner in the largest American trading firm in the Southern Plains, he feared that Young Hickory’s aggressive expansionist platform would disrupt the delicate balance of regional power necessary to the maintenance of Bent, St. Vrain and Company’s financial success. On January 24, 1845, from his home in Taos, Bent wrote Manuel Álvarez, the U.S. Jconsul in Santa Fe, “I am fearfull that this election will cause difficulty between this and our country.” Polk’s policies, combined with the rise to power of nationalist hard-liners in Mexico City, worried the trader, and for good reason. Rather than profiting from the territorial aggrandizement of the United States when war came in 1846, Bent, St. Vrain & Company suffered grievous losses. Expansion intensified conflict between white settlers and local Indian tribes over access to diminishing natural resources such as grass, timber, and the region’s shrinking buffalo herds. On its own, far from the reach of American power, the firm flourished. When the United States entered the Southern Plains, however, Bent, St. Vrain and Company’s fortunes declined rapidly.1 This article uses Bent, St. Vrain and Company as a case study to examine the impact of the U.S.-Mexican War on the American population living in the region at the time of the conflict.
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