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Home , Bison hunting, George Bent, William Bent

“March of the Caravan” as found in Josiah Gregg’s Commerce of the , Volume 1 (1844).

Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 44, no. 1 (Spring 2021): 34–51.

34 Kansas History “Meat as a Matter of Form”: Food, Exchange, and Power on the

by David C. Beyreis

veryone needs to eat. At the most basic level, food sustains daily life. But the significance of food extends far beyond personal sustenance. The acquisition, distribution, and consumption of foodstuffs are also actions closely associated with social, economic, and political power. Along the ESanta Fe Trail and in the region through which it passed, eatables shaped social relations and political alignments, stimulated peaceful exchange, and precipitated violent clashes. People fought over access to food. Men and women measured personal status by the ability to acquire it, be generous with it, and consume it in the proper social spaces. As it coursed through Kansas, the road between Missouri and traversed one of the richest foodscapes in . Between 1821 and 1875, food fundamentally shaped the ways people interacted and clashed with each other in the southern plains and southwestern borderlands. The significance of food as a trade item in the regions adjoining the Santa Fe Trail predated Spanish colonization. Nomadic southern plains hunters exchanged meat and robes for the garden products of Rio Grande Valley pueblos. Under ideal circumstances, this was a symbiotic relationship. Each group provided food products that complemented the diets and nutritional needs of their trade partners. Protein flowed west, carbohydrates east. Nevertheless, drought cycles sometimes exacerbated shifting military and economic patterns that made the pueblos vulnerable to plains raiders who simply took what they wanted or needed. By the early eighteenth century, the arrival of a new power in the borderlands would reorient and expand this business system.1 The search for new food resources and trade opportunities drew the into the plains- borderlands region by the early 1700s. A Shoshonean people originally from the Great Basin, the Comanche split off from their relatives in the seventeenth century and migrated south along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, drawn by the allure of vast bison herds, horses, and the prospect of trade. The

David C. Beyreis is the author of Blood in the Borderlands: Conflict, Kinship, and the Bent Family, 1821–1920, and articles on and southwest borderlands history. His work has received commendations from the National Cowboy and Heritage Museum and the Western Writers of America. His current book project examines intercultural diplomacy and foodways on the northern plains during the nineteenth century. He teaches history at Ursuline Academy of Dallas.

1. Charles L. Kenner, A History of New Mexican–Plains Indian Relations (Norman: University of Press, 1969), 3, 8–9; and Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Western Comanche Trade Center: Rethinking the Plains Indian Trade System,” Western Historical Quarterly 29, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 488.

“Meat as a Matter of Form” 35 Comanche formed an alliance with the Ute that young men in exchange for a portion of the war soon grew to dominate the northern periphery booty or bison products they might acquire, but of New Mexico. Well established in the region by the paraibo who kept the spoils to himself would the 1720s, the Comanche turned their attention not be a popular leader. Conspicuous generosity, eastward to the river valleys of the southern plains. especially in the distribution of robes and meat to Within fifty years, they had displaced the Plains his poorest neighbors, was essential to maintaining , a semisedentary agricultural people with the unity of the band. Food thus had a political long ties to the New Mexico markets whose farm and social resonance that helped knit Comanche plots and villages were easy to find and destroy. people together.3 Having smashed these enemies, the Comanche Similar processes were at work among the appropriated and expanded the Apache trade Southern , another group whose fortunes network, funneling bison meat throughout the helped shape the destiny of the lands along the southern plains and acquiring corn, beans, squash, route of the Santa Fe Trail. Like the Comanche, the and sunflower seeds from pueblo and Wichita Southern Cheyenne came from the north. Migrating farmers in exchange. As the Comanche population out of ’s lake country around 1680, they expanded, so did the geographic scope of their reinvented themselves as equestrian nomads over trading and raiding. Although horses, captives, the course of the eighteenth century. They moved and manufactured goods displaced food products west as far as the of South Dakota before as the main engine of regional commerce, the the lure of the River Valley drew a portion importation of garden produce never ceased of the people south. By the 1820s, they had split, entirely. As long as food was plentiful, the people primarily into northern and southern divisions, thrived. When the situation began to deteriorate although a third group, the , emerged in the wake of the U.S.-Mexican War, the stability by the mid-nineteenth century. The divisions were of Comanchería was undermined, and a time of not hard and fast, however, and families could starvation loomed.2 shift among them. Equestrian bison and Just as the business of food helped shape their position as key middlemen in the vast Great Comanche economic decisions and export strategies, Plains trading network were the bases of growing the distribution of food helped structure the nation’s Southern Cheyenne power.4 internal sociopolitical dynamics. Authority within Spiritual forces closely connected to food Comanche bands was never completely stable. procurement also allowed the people to prosper. Leaders, known as paraibos, could not dictate policy The political, social, and spiritual formation of to their followers. Rather, they courted support the Cheyenne was closely tied to the experiences through the acquisition of spiritual power; a record of their culture hero, Sweet Medicine, who had as an effective war leader and hunter; and wealth brought them the four Sacred Arrows as gifts from in horses, bison robes, and foodstuffs. The most the nation’s holy people. Two of the arrows gave powerful Comanche men parlayed their status the Cheyenne power over their human enemies, into the acquisition of more horses and wives. while the others made them successful bison They might lend horses to poor but ambitious hunters. The arrows resided with their Keeper among the Southern Cheyenne. The Sacred Buffalo

2. For broad surveys of Comanche history in the 1700s and early Hat, another object imbued with great significance 1800s, see Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven, CT: and power, ensured the fecundity of the bison Yale University Press, 2008), 18–104; and Thomas W. Kavanagh, The : A History, 1706–1875 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 63–192. For food and trade, see Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Politics 3. Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire, 261–63; Kavanagh, The of Grass: European Expansion, Ecological Change, and Indigenous Comanches, 28–29, 35, 43, 57, 126; Hämäläinen, “The Politics of Grass,” 187. Power in the Southwest Borderlands,” William and Mary Quarterly 67, 4. Elliott West, The Way to the West: Essays on the Central Plains no. 2 (April 2010): 179, 181–82, 184–87. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), 51–83.

36 Kansas History Indigenous women such as the Cheyenne woman shown in this undated photograph could gain status and influence through their labor in tribal foodways and sustenance activities. Here, she is working outdoors at fleshing a large hide with a small dog nearby. herds. A Northern Cheyenne priest was in charge their care for the people by providing wise counsel, of this holy object. Together, the arrows and the distributing material wealth, and forging trade and Sacred Buffalo Hat would help the people triumph political alliances with outside groups. Cheyenne over their enemies and live safely with full bellies, men of all ages led by example, and to be accused provided they lived uprightly.5 of selfishness was to lose face in the camp. Thus, The acquisition and distribution of food the imperative to make certain that all were well reinforced sociopolitical norms among the fed, clothed, and sheltered was ingrained in the Cheyenne people. The route to preeminence for Cheyenne social ethic. Without these values, the young Cheyenne men was through bravery in war people would fail.6 Cheyenne women could also and raiding and generosity at home. The older men, especially the peace chiefs, demonstrated 6. , The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Ways of Life, 2 vols. (1923; repr., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972), 5. John Stands in Timber and Margot Liberty, Cheyenne Memories, 1:336; to George Hyde, August 9, 1904, box 1, folder 1, no. 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 14–44; and Peter 4, George Bent Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, John Powell, Sweet Medicine: The Continuing Role of the Sacred Arrows, Yale University, New Haven, CT (hereafter GBP-Yale); and John H. , and Sacred Buffalo Hat in Northern Cheyenne History, 2 vols. Moore, The Cheyenne Nation: A Social and Demographic History (Lincoln: (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 1:xxiii, 2:443–45. University of Nebraska Press, 1987), 185–88.

“Meat as a Matter of Form” 37 gain status and influence through tribal foodways. 1840, overlapping with the expansion of the Santa They were the ones who turned a carcass into Fe trade. The Southern Cheyenne were caught in sustenance and bloody hides into the tanned robes the middle of two separate conflicts. Between the that clothed and sheltered the family and were also Arkansas and South Platte Rivers, ranging north the item most sought by American traders on the and east, including across Kansas, they fought with southern plains. The meals that they cooked were the Pawnee. South of the Arkansas, toward the Red also closely tied to Cheyenne ceremonialism and River, they clashed with the Comanche and their were often the price paid or the reward given for the allies.9 completion of a sacred task, such as quillwork or The balance of power surged back and forth the renewal of the Sacred Arrows in times of tribal between the Cheyenne and their eastern enemies. distress. Moreover, their expertise as procurers of Indeed, one Cheyenne warrior compared the roots, berries, and herbs supplemented the people’s struggle between the nations to a fight between two 7 diet and enlarged their pharmacopeia. evenly matched bison bulls. The Pawnee ranged far lthough the control and distribution of from their villages in present-day Nebraska, raiding food resources enhanced the quality of the New Mexico frontier for horses and mules. life and helped cement internal social According to one of ’s employees, the cohesionA among southern plains nations, groups Pawnee “frequently made raids out on the Plains also violently contested control of valuable hunting to the buffalo range” as far west as the upper grounds in the corridor and beyond. Arkansas River Valley. Events turned temporarily The rivalries for access to this vast meat emporium against the Cheyenne around 1830. When the threatened to destabilize the southern plains. Pawnee wiped out a party of Cheyenne horse William Boggs, a relative of William and Charles raiders and mutilated the bodies, the kinfolk of the Bent who was employed by their company, recalled slain men vowed revenge. The entire Cheyenne that “in those days there was deadly hostility nation moved against their enemies, following the existing between the various nations that inhabited Sacred Arrows into the fight. However, during a the plains and mountain ranges adjacent to their skirmish along the Platte River, a crippled Pawnee hunting grounds, which they never permitted any warrior wrenched the lance to which the arrows of their enemies to trespass on.” What this violence had been lashed from the hands of a Cheyenne often did was create safe spaces—“neutral zones”— warrior. The result was devastating. The Cheyenne in which bison could flourish. Hunters entered retreated in dismay. They had “lost their medicine power,” recalled William Bent’s son, George.10 these places at their own risk. While war raged, The Cheyenne got the upper hand in the ironically, the bison population expanded.8 The conflict with the Pawnee only after a long and bitter height of these wars came between roughly 1820 and conflict, aided by events beyond the scope of their control. Deprived of spiritual power over their

7. Thomas B. Marquis, Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962), 86; Grinnell, The Cheyenne 9. Dan Flores, “Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy: The Southern Indians, 1:159, 210, 249–50; and David C. Beyreis, “‘If You Had Fought Plains from 1800 to 1850,” Journal of American History 78, no. 2 (September Bravely I Would Have Sung for You’: The Changing Roles of Cheyenne 1991): 475. Women during Nineteenth-Century Plains Warfare,” : The 10. George Bird Grinnell, The Fighting (New York: Charles Magazine of Western History 69, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 11–13. Scribner’s Sons, 1915), 69; William M. Boggs, “The W. M. Boggs 8. William Montgomery Boggs, “William M. Boggs Narrative,” 57, Manuscript about Bent’s Fort, , the Fur Trade, and Life among Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New the Indians,” ed. LeRoy R. Hafen, Magazine 7 (1930): 48; George Haven, CT; West, The Way to the West, 61–62; and Lemuel Ford, “A Bent to George Hyde, February 6, 1905, box 1, folder FF9, and February Summer upon the Prairies,” in The Call of the Columbia: Iron Men and 15, 1905, box 1, folder FF10, George Bent Papers, Denver Public Library, Saints Take the Oregon Trail, ed. Archer Butler Hulbert (Denver, CO: Western History Collections, Denver, CO (hereafter GBP-DPL); and The Stewart Commission of Colorado College and the Denver Public George E. Hyde, Life of George Bent, Written from His Letters (Norman: Library, 1934), 275. University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 47–52.

38 Kansas History human enemies and their richest source of food, their tipis at night. Stealing these horses required the Cheyenne struggled. Although they made four great daring, but the Cheyenne warrior who drove new arrows, these were not adequate substitutes for them off came away with a resource that enhanced the originals. About five years after the loss, White his ability to hunt more effectively and provide Thunder, the priest in charge of the arrows, and for his kin group.13 American observers also noted his wife undertook a hazardous journey east to the the hostilities and the rationale for Cheyenne Pawnee villages to negotiate for the return of the raiding. One officer reported that the Cheyenne sacred items. White Thunder’s host allowed him were stealing “vast numbers of horses and mules” to choose one of the arrows to take home. Tellingly, from their enemies and noted that “war parties are he chose one of the buffalo arrows, for the people constantly passing from one tribe to another.” As would always need to eat. The negotiators agreed successful as their horse-raiding ventures were, that the Pawnee would return the visit by coming the Cheyenne suffered two stinging defeats in the to the Cheyenne villages along the Arkansas River.11 late 1830s. The Kiowa, close allies of the Comanche, The meeting on the Arkansas corresponded with an wiped out a war party of forty-two Cheyenne. In expedition by a regiment of U.S. dragoons intent on their attempt to avenge this defeat, the Cheyenne making peace in the region. The Americans made suffered another setback when they attacked a fine speeches about the benefits of peace, and the Indians exchanged gifts of guns and horses, but in Kiowa-Comanche encampment along Creek. the end, little changed. War erupted again, but the Among the casualties of this failed assault was power of the Pawnee, pressed by the Cheyenne, White Thunder, the keeper of the Medicine Arrows. hammered by Lakota raiders from the north, and This setback capped a tumultuous decade for the 14 ravaged by disease, faded.12 Southern Cheyenne. onflict between the Cheyenne and The peace that the warring nations ultimately Comanche also revolved around agreed upon had a dramatic long-term effect on access to animals and food resources. environmental and food resources along the Santa HostilitiesC between these nations began in the Fe Trail corridor. In 1840, the Cheyenne, , Comanche, and Kiowa met at the Arkansas River 1820s when a portion of the Cheyenne people to end their hostilities. The exchange of gifts— accelerated their migration into the Arkansas River horses, guns, and blankets—and a feast provided Valley. They came for the same reasons that had by Cheyenne women sealed a lasting peace. The drawn the Comanche decades earlier. The valley cessation of war allowed all the parties involved to was rich in grass, water, and timber—resources turn their attention to other matters of raiding and that would support large herds of horses and hunting. The Cheyenne accelerated their campaigns bison. Comanche horse herds were particularly against the Ute in the west, while the Comanche tempting targets, and George Bent recalled that the turned south, unleashing cataclysmic raids on the Cheyenne had great success raiding their enemies. Mexican frontier. The ability to travel freely and Highly trained horses, known as buffalo runners, safely also opened up the previously dangerous were especially valuable, so much so that the “neutral” bison grounds for exploitation. Hunting Comanche staked the animals immediately outside for subsistence purposes and the acquisition of bison robes for personal use and trade boomed

11. Bent to Hyde, February 6, 1905, box 1, folder FF9, GBP-DPL; and in the early 1840s. Comanche, Cheyenne, and Bent to Hyde, December 18, 1913, box 3, folder 4, GBP-Yale; Hyde, Life American traders such as the Bents benefited in the of George Bent, 51–52. 12. Ford, “A Summer upon the Prairies,” 296; Hyde, Life of George Bent, 53; and Richard White, The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, 13. Bent to Hyde, October 22, 1908, box 3, folder 12, GBP-Yale. Environment, and Social Change among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos 14. Ford, “A Summer upon the Prairies,” 298–99; Hyde, Life of George (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 200–05. Bent, 72–75; and Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes, 42–59.

“Meat as a Matter of Form” 39 Innumerable bison herds populated the Kansas plains and facilitated the Santa Fe trade. At the same time, Native bison hunting captured the at- tention and imagination of those traveling the Santa Fe Trail. This illustration appeared in Thomas Loraine McKenney’s History of the Indian Tribes of North America, Volume 1 (1848). short term. There was plenty of food and wealth to availability of meat allowed entrepreneurs to load go around. However, the peace ultimately laid the their wagons with trade goods instead of bulky food groundwork that helped undermine the natural stores.16 Hunting also had the potential to imbue resource base of the Arkansas River Valley and white travelers with great social power. Like the accelerate violence along the Santa Fe Trail in the Comanche and Cheyenne, Americans valued the years after 1846.15 skills that went into hunting and accorded respect For the Americans who plied the Santa Fe Trail and prestige to those most adept at bringing in between the Missouri frontier and New Mexico, the meat. Santa Fe caravans tended to be profoundly acquisition of food was critical for reasons beyond democratic organisms. Although traders and the immediate necessity of filling hungry stomachs. travelers often organized themselves into structured The huge bison herds of the Kansas plains were companies “for mutual security and defense” central to the foodways of this overland business. and elected captains after much haranguing and Abundant herds “helped make possible the Santa speechifying, the power of the group’s leader was Fe trade,” wrote historian Stephen Hyslop. The mostly limited to getting the expedition going in the morning and choosing campsites. His

15. Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes, 63–69; Brian DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War (New Haven, 16. Stephen G. Hyslop, Bound for Santa Fe: The Road to New Mexico CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 78–80; and Flores, “Bison Ecology and and the American Conquest, 1806–1848 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Bison Diplomacy,” 483. Press, 2002), 10.

40 Kansas History power was more aspirational than real. 17 The Santa Fe Trail was also a hypermasculine work environment. As such, to distinguish themselves, men used their physicality to carve out a place for themselves within their parties. Hunting skills and food procurement brought recognition and approbation to the men who did it successfully and with flair. American travelers took enormous appetites with them on the journey to Santa Fe, and their diet was considerably varied. Some of them theorized that the clean air, hard work, and hardy fare cured all manner of ailments. Physicality, the natural environment, and a western diet could remake weaklings and those suffering Being well supplied was never more crucial to one’s survival than in from tuberculosis into robust, renewed masculine the preparation for a long overland journey. The Last Chance Store, 18 located in Council Grove, Kansas, was originally built in 1857 and specimens. Eyewitness accounts often stressed claimed to be the last place to obtain supplies on the Santa Fe Trail the ravenous appetites stimulated by the nature before reaching Santa Fe in the New Mexico Territory, some six hun- of the trip and the food travelers consumed.19 dred miles away. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Simply preparing a meal on the plains could be an adventure. Cooking over a bison-chip fire was one dog fat a good cure for saddle sores, but the meat novel experience. Some men remained skeptical and was “not esteemed savory,” even when consumed never got over their distaste of food prepared this in the company of notables such as Kit Carson. One way. Others “became believers” in the effectiveness traveler cooked a mess of frogs on the westbound of the method and tastiness of the food and coffee journey but, hard-pressed on the eastbound leg, prepared with this exotic resource.20 Grapes, plums, settled for . “American” food such as ham, and chickens were popular with travelers. eggs, honey, and veal, on the other hand, provided Antelope, however, tasted like poor goat, and men a much-appreciated taste of home on the prairies approached dog meat warily. They found prairie- and plains.21

17. Josiah Gregg, The Commerce of the Prairies, ed. Max L. Moorhead 21. Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail (1883; repr., Mineola, NY: Dover (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954), 26, 28, 31. Publications, 2002), 376; Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, 378, 424; James 18. Jimmy L. Bryan, Jr., The American Elsewhere: Adventure and Josiah Webb, Adventures in the Santa Fe Trade, 1844–1847, ed. Ralph P. Bieber Manliness in the Age of Expansion (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 64, 69, 122, 168–69; John 2017), 117, 119, 123; and Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, 23. James Abert, Abert’s New Mexico Report, foreword by William A. Keleher 19. Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, 39; Leo E. Oliva, ed., “‘A Faithful (Albuquerque, NM: Horn & Wallace Publishers, 1962), 29, 174–75; Susan Account of Everything’: Letters from Katie Bowen on the Santa Fe Trail, Shelby Magoffin,Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico: The Diary of Susan 1851,” Kansas History 19, no. 4 (Winter 1996–1997): 269. Shelby Magoffin, 1846–1847, ed. Stella M. Drumm (New Haven, CT: Yale 20. Frank S. Edwards, A Campaign in New Mexico with Colonel Doniphan University Press, 1962), 6–7; Oliva, “‘A Faithful Account of Everything,’” (London: James S. Hodson, 1848), 10; and C. F. Ruff Journal, July 8, 1846, 281; and Joseph Williams, Narrative of a Tour from the State of Indiana to the box 1, Ruff Papers, Missouri Historical Society Archives, St. Louis, MO. Oregon Territory in the Years 1841–2 (New York: Edward Eberstadt, 1921), 88.

“Meat as a Matter of Form” 41 Bison was the most important item in the travelers to gain acceptance as veteran prairie trader’s commissary. Teamsters and travelers relied hands.25 on a monotonous diet of bacon, beans, crackers, James Josiah Webb’s experience is a fine example and dried fruit until they reached the Kansas bison of the transformation from greenhorn to grizzled range—hopefully within two weeks of leaving westerner. When he and a friend announced that Council Grove. Not only did the meat provide an they were going hunting, the veterans scoffed that appreciated respite from these other foods, but they would eat the “horns, hoofs, etc.” of any bison laying in a good supply was a prudent hedge the tenderfeet shot. Webb and his friend wounded against lean times along the trail. Bad weather, a bull and tracked it for over a mile. When another especially in winter, could make the herds hard member of their caravan rode up and shot it to find, and starvation was a grim possibility.22 dead, an argument ensued over who could claim Greenhorns especially looked forward to their first the meat. Webb lost. When he eventually killed taste of bison. Tongue, udder, and marrow were a bison, he was ecstatic. “The triumph and joy of considered delicacies that compared well to the killing the first buffalo after one or two ridiculous fare served at fancy eastern restaurants. The search failures,” he recalled, “no one can realize who has for the choicest cut, however, helped undermine not experienced it.” Collecting tails, tongues, and the long-term viability of the herds’ reproductive choice cuts of meat allowed hunters to accrue capacities. During the traveling season, bull meat trophies and offer visible proof of either their long- was considered “uneatable,” while cow was highly standing expertise or newfound skill.26 esteemed. Some men remained skeptics about It was not enough, however, to simply kill a bison meat, but they were rare.23 bison; men also judged one another’s technique unting bison was also important to and daring. There were two styles of hunting. the acquisition of masculine social “Running” bison was “the more violent and dashing power in the Santa Fe Trail caravans. mode” on the Santa Fe Trail. With the help of a good TheH trip west was an opportunity for many men buffalo runner, Francis Parkman claimed that a to live adventurous lives that set them apart from white hunter could drop five or six cows in one go. stodgy clerks and accountants back home. Killing The risk inherent in running bison allowed men to bison represented a triumph of the American demonstrate their heedlessness of danger. Trying male over a savage wilderness and contributed to load rifles and pistols at a full gallop, charging to emerging narratives of national exceptionalism over rough terrain pockmarked with prairie dog in the West. Hunting was a public spectacle in burrows, choking on dust, and parrying charging which men performed heroic feats and sometimes bulls was an intoxicating experience. The image of the mounted white hunter was a powerful one, failed humiliatingly. They constantly judged one fusing as it did glamor, sportsmanship, skill with another’s manly abilities.24 The first bison sighting weapons, and mastery over nature. The approach often set off a pell-mell dash for the herds. “The technique, while not as flashy, also required skill hunting fever soon became an epidemic,” one to execute. The easiest method was to ambush the man observed. The hunt was a good way for new animals as they came to water, but this might require crawling great distances over sharp rocks and

22. Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, 24, 67; and Webb, Adventures in the Santa Fe Trade, 121. 23. Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, 24, 38–39, 48, 368–69; Magoffin, 25. Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, 38; and Frederick A. Wislizenus, Memoir Down the Santa Fe Trail, 43; George F. Ruxton, Adventures in Mexico and the of a Tour of Northern Mexico, Connected with Colonel Doniphan’s Expedition in Rocky Mountains (London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1861), 266–67; 1846 and 1847 (Washington, DC: Tippin & Streeper, Printers, 1848), 9. and Edwards, A Campaign in New Mexico, 11. 26. Webb, Adventures in the Santa Fe Trade, 48–49, 52–53; and Parkman, 24. Bryan, The American Elsewhere, 210–13. The Oregon Trail, 330.

42 Kansas History through cactus patches. Stealth, observation, and a away” with a log post, Bent’s men eventually built knowledge of animal habits were crucial. Approach a new stone structure and continued trading with hunters studied topography and tested the wind as the Southern Cheyenne. The scale of business at they lined up for the best shot. These men took great Bent’s New Fort never matched that of the famous pride in their skill and resented getting lectures adobe post upriver.29 The old adobe fort was “well- from greenhorns on proper technique. In the years known for its hospitality,” wrote British adventurer after the Civil War, dismounted hunters working George Frederick Ruxton. Whenever possible, one their stands acquired an unsavory reputation. of the Bent or St. Vrain brothers greeted high-status Cody, a paragon of mythic Western guests personally. Robert Bent entertained the manhood, certainly never represented them in his 27 party of journalist and poet Matthew Field, sharing Wild West Show. the “hoarded luxuries” of the post. Ceran St. Vrain Casual conversation around the campfire at the was especially noted for presiding over “the best end of a long day allowed Santa Fe Trail travelers to of food” with invariably gracious manners.30 The compare notes and gain recognition of their manly company’s reputation stretched beyond the fort to abilities. In the early days of the trip, inexperienced Taos and the trading posts and encampments of the travelers peppered experienced plainsmen with South Platte and Arkansas Rivers. Bent relatives as questions about what to expect. More danger meant more excitement and more opportunities well as luminaries such as John C. Frémont attested to prove themselves. In a relaxed atmosphere of to the fine treatment and accommodations they 31 joking and drinking, men talked expansively. They received. told whoppers, exchanged experiences, and offered The diet at Bent’s Fort revolved around bison advice. The most self-aware of inexperienced men meat, but the post also offered a range of other knew they should keep quiet during these times. dining options. Alexander Barclay, an Englishman But killing a bison could change matters. Now who clerked at the fort for several years, informed the greenhorn was transformed, ready to join the his brother that “our chief dependency here is on charmed circle of rough-and-ready westerners.28 the Buffalo for meat.” In addition to offering a ent’s Fort in present-day Colorado fascinating account of social life on the southern was the most famous landmark on the plains, Barclay’s letters allow a brief but revealing look at the shrinkage of the bison herds of the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail Arkansas River Valley. In 1838, Barclay wrote that andB a welcome destination for travelers craving hunters needed to travel at most thirty miles to sociability after weeks on the plains. Constructed find the animals. Seven years later, the herds had in the early 1830s, the fort was a trade hub for some of the powerful Indigenous nations whose range the Santa Fe Trail bisected. Abandoning the post in 29. David Lavender, Bent’s Fort (1954; repr., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972), 339–40; and James F. Milligan, James F. Milligan: 1849, William Bent eventually moved his operations His Journal of Frémont’s Fifth Expedition, 1853–1854: His Adventurous Life down the Arkansas River. After rats “entirely ran on Land and Sea, ed. Mark J. Stegmaier and David J. Miller (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1988), 161. 30. Ruxton, Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains, 201; 27. Elizabeth Vibert, “Real Men Hunt Buffalo: Masculinity, Race, and Matthew C. Field, Matt Field on the Santa Fe Trail, coll. Clyde and Mae Class in British Fur Traders’ Narratives,” in Cultures of Empire: Colonizers Reed Porter and ed. John E. Sunder (Norman: University of Oklahoma in Britain and the Empire in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: A Reader, Press, 1960), 144; Lewis Garrard, Wah-to-Yah and the Taos Trail; or, Prairie ed. Catherine Hull (New York: Routledge, 2000), 281–97; Parkman, The Travel and Scalp Dances, with a Look at Los Rancheros from Muleback and the Oregon Trail, 327–29, 333, 335, 343, 346; Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, Rocky Mountain Campfire(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955), 373; Magoffin, Down the Santa Fe Trail, 44; and Louis S. Warren, Buffalo 13; and Boggs, “The W. M. Boggs Manuscript,” 67. Bill’s America: William Cody and the Wild West Show (New York: Vintage 31. Boggs, “William Montgomery Boggs Narrative,” 36; and John Books, 2005), 53–57, 130–34. C. Frémont, Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains 28. Edwards, A Campaign in New Mexico, 5; Abert, Abert’s New Mexico in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843–44 Report, 31; Bryan, The American Elsewhere, 215, 219–20. (Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, 1845), 31.

“Meat as a Matter of Form” 43 Bent’s Fort in present-day eastern Colorado on the Arkansas River was a key landmark destination on the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail and an important trade hub for Indigenous peoples. In 1859 Daniel Jenks made this sketch of Bent’s New Fort that was established about thirty miles east of the original. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. contracted eastward so that a hunter from Bent’s however, noted a greater variety of foodstuffs Fort had to travel up to two hundred miles for a at Bent’s Fort, including goats, pigs, and turkeys. good hunt. Only the cows were “worth killing,” Coffee was the universal beverage. The Bents Barclay informed his brother. Hunters dried the also experimented with agriculture. They dug an meat, which they “frizzled in the fat.” This was irrigation ditch and planted fields, but Natives standard fare, but the clerk hoped that “custom destroyed the crops.33 will reconcile me” to this western diet.32 Travelers, The hospitality and sociability provided by the Bents and St. Vrain had a strong class component. In 32. Alexander Barclay to George Barclay, October 14, 1838, box 1, this sense, they appropriated ideas of “vernacular Alexander Barclay Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California– Berkeley. Barclay eventually struck out on his own as a trader. Although gentility” circulating in broader American society. still employed by the Bents in 1845, he informed his brother that he This concept was a republican, middle-class “had some idea of turning my attention to the overland trade between modification of older, aristocratic ideas about taste New Mexico and the .” He traveled extensively in the New Mexico–Colorado borderlands before settling for a time near Mora, New Mexico, to construct his own trading post. See Barclay to Barclay, December 1845, Barclay Papers; and Janet Lecompte, Pueblo, 33. Abert, Abert’s New Mexico Report, 14; Jacob S. Robinson, A Journal of Hardscrabble, Greenhorn: Society on the High Plains, 1832–1856 (Norman: the Santa Fe Expedition under Colonel Doniphan, introduction and notes by Carl University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 205, 210–15. L. Canon (1848; repr., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1932), 17.

44 Kansas History and refinement. The new gentility was reliant on a and employees did not mingle socially, he wrote. He “proper environment” and was highly performative. could not put his finger on it, but “a sort of restraint Hosts and guests judged one another based on which prevents . . . full social enjoyment” among taste and presentation. Although no one would the residents prevailed. Although Barclay had no mistake the dining room or recreational spaces at intention of mingling with the “hired hands”—he Bent’s Fort for an eastern parlor, the foodways and found them an “uneducated and reckless class”— entertainment patterns of the post were very much he resented the fact that the proprietors of Bent’s in keeping with a developing, often exclusionary, Fort lorded it over their workers. Barclay griped class-conscious ideology that was increasingly to his brother that circumstance alone elevated widespread in the United States.34 The partners men such as the Bents above their clerk despite were especially attuned to the wants and needs of the Englishman’s “superiority” in matters of the best-heeled clientele. education and culture.36 When the U.S. Army made Food and drink served as a marker of status and occasional appearances, the officers dined with the social differentiation at Bent’s Fort. This was not partners. Special travelers were treated to well- unusual. Trading posts and forts across the West stocked tables set with white cloths, silver castors, displayed similar dynamics. From Fort Union on and fine cutlery. Enlisted men ate with their messes, the Missouri to the Arkansas River, post proprietors as did the Santa Fe Trail freighters whose caravans set themselves and their elite guests apart from the camped nearby. Only the caravan proprietors, it employees during and after dinnertime. Francis seems, were invited to the fort’s most intimate Parkman left a description of mealtime customs social spaces.37 at Fort Laramie. The post’s dining room served ine spirits and elite recreational space two meals, the first for “the bourgeois and superior allowed the Bents and St. Vrain to dignitaries” and the second “for the benefit accumulate social capital in the form of certain trappers and hunters of an inferior of mostlyF glowing reviews by high-status guests. standing.” The food at table differed during these Bent’s Fort had an icehouse and access to a bountiful meals. The post’s senior officials had “the luxury of supply of wild mint gathered from the canyon of bread,” while the diners at the second meal did not. the Purgatoire River. As a result, the partners were The Canadian engagés, the men lowest on the fort’s famed for their mint juleps. Trade ledgers from the St. social ladder, ate simple meals in their quarters. Louis firms that supplied the company also reveal Similar customs likely prevailed at Bent’s Fort. The that the principals ordered substantial quantities quality of the food at the main table was certainly of high-quality liquor and wine, including claret, of a different caliber. Charlotte Green, an enslaved brandy, shrub, and gin. It is likely that they used member of the Bent household, was well known in these beverages for postprandial entertainment. the region for her cooking skills. Lewis Garrard, a They also purchased fine cigars from Missouri, tourist who traveled widely in the region, marveled probably for the same purpose. Choice cuts of the that she was “the culinary divinity” responsible for the fort’s delicious comestibles.35 bison harvested by the firm’s hunters and Cheyenne Alexander Barclay, who so despised “frizzled” business partners found their way east. In 1848, bison, attested to the class divide at the post. Bosses Bent, St. Vrain and Company delivered a load of bison tongues to the Planter’s House, one of the

34. Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), xiii, xviii; 256–74. 36. Alexander Barclay to George Barclay, May 1, 1840, box 1, Barclay 35. Barton Barbour, Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade Papers, UC-Berkeley. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), 126; Parkman, The 37. Lemuel Ford, “Journal of an Expedition to the Rocky Mountains,” Oregon Trail, 102; Enid Thompson, “Life in an Adobe Castle, 1833–1849,” ed. Louis Pelzer, Mississippi Valley Historical Review 12 (1926): 567; Colorado Magazine 54 (1977): 15–16; and Garrard, Wah-to-Yah and the Taos Parkman, The Oregon Trail, 307; Garrard, Wah-to-Yah and the Taos Trail, Trail, 73–74. 42; and Thompson, “Life in an Adobe Castle,” 16, 22.

“Meat as a Matter of Form” 45 swankiest establishments in St. Louis.38 The billiard Euro-American trade goods, Indigenous people room at Bent’s Fort, a “small house on the top of provided Americans with thousands of tanned the fort, where the bourgeoise and visitors amused bison robes, the basis of the company’s profitability. themselves,” was the entertaining space that drew Protocol dictated, however, that white traders give the most attention from visitors to the post. Not all gifts to demonstrate their continued recognition of guests approved of this leisure space. Methodist the relationships that bound the groups together. minister Joseph Williams wrote, “These people Gifts were “customary” to business. Feeding the are wicked and would play cards and billiards Native families of the company’s traders was on the Sabbath.” To be sure, Williams was not an essential because without food, gifts, and hospitality, impartial witness. The list of his dislikes extended the Cheyenne might threaten to take their valuable well beyond pool to include deists, universalists, robes to competitors of the Bents. American Englishmen, Roman Catholics, and mountain man observers moaned that the company was being Thomas “Broken Hand” Fitzpatrick. Williams exploited by Cheyenne freeloaders, but this was tolerated Baptists. Nonetheless, he admitted that the price of commerce and a necessary prerequisite the Bents “were very civil and kind to me.” He was to the fulfillment of familial obligations.41 For their also happy to report that “there was not as much part, the Cheyenne reciprocated with food and swearing and drunkenness as at other places I hospitality. Francis Parkman wrote that he ate a bit have passed.”39 Although dances were a time when of “meat as a matter of form” before conducting social divisions briefly broke down—Charlotte any trade or important talks with leading men. Green was the “grand center of attention, the Lewis Garrard reported that the Natives gave belle of the evening” at a dance attended by Lewis gifts of meat and water to American travelers and Garrard—Bent’s Fort was a highly class-conscious traders on the simple assumption that “a tired man institution where food and entertainment played a needs refreshment.” Gifts of food thus greased the role in highlighting social distinctions.40 wheels of trade in the lands traversed by the Santa ent, St. Vrain and Company’s wealth Fe Trail.42 was based on trade with Native peoples, The effectiveness of diplomacy began to and food figured prominently in the diminish, however, as war between the United interactionsB that structured the firm’s business. States and Mexico stimulated a dramatic increase At the heart of the Bents’ success were intimate in traffic over the Santa Fe Trail in the late 1840s. To personal relationships. Especially by forging marital ties with Southern Cheyenne women, William Bent entered a social world defined by 41. Mark L. Gardner, “Where the Buffalo Was Plenty: Bent, St. Vrain and Company and the Robe Trade of the Southern Plains,” Museum of mutual obligation and reciprocity. In exchange for the Fur Trade Quarterly (2007): 22–36; Abert, Abert’s New Mexico Report, 14, 18; and Garrard, Wah-to-Yah and the Taos Trail, 35, 60. followed the same strategy of intermarriage in New Mexico for the 38. Magoffin, Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico, 60–61; George same purposes. His family alliance with the Jaramillo family of Taos, Rutledge Gibson, Journal of a Soldier under Kearny and Doniphan, 1846– along with broader connections in the region, opened up commercial 1847, ed. Ralph P. Bieber (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1938), 168– opportunities and expanded the company’s political and economic 69; Bent, St. Vrain and Company Invoice, Ledger Z, 426–33, Fur Trade power in the borderlands. Unfortunately for Bent, these actions created Ledger Collection, Missouri Historical Society Archives, St. Louis, a violent backlash from New Mexicans and Pueblo Indians who feared MO; and June 1, 1848, book EE, 189, roll 9, Papers of the St. Louis Fur growing foreign influence on the frontier. Charles Bent became the first Trade, Part 2: Fur Trade Ledger and Account Books, 1802–1871, Bizzell governor of New Mexico after the U.S. conquest of 1846 but died in an Memorial Library, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK. uprising in January 1847. See David C. Beyreis, Blood in the Borderlands: 39. Magoffin, Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico, 61; Garrard, Conflict, Kinship, and the Bent Family, 1821–1920 (Lincoln: University of Wah-to-Yah and the Taos Trail, 43; and Williams, Narrative of a Tour, 86. Nebraska Press, 2020), 49–77. 40. Hyde, Life of George Bent, 84; and Garrard, Wah-to-Yah and the Taos 42. Parkman, The Oregon Trail, 321; and Garrard, Wah-to-Yah and the Trail, 74. Taos Trail, 49.

46 Kansas History be sure, travel along the route between Missouri took any meat at all.45 Shooting bison, especially and New Mexico was never without hazards. Since cows, for only the choicest pieces of meat was not a 1829, the American military had offered on-again, new practice. Civilian travelers had often left tons off-again protection to traders who feared Native of meat for and other scavengers, although raids. Observers noted a clear connection between they also reported wastage when observing Native larger numbers of travelers and spiking violence. hunting practices.46 The robe trade, the basis of Raiding was traditionally lowest during winter financial wealth for Americans such as the Bents, months, when unpredictable weather made travel Comanche paraibos, and Cheyenne headmen, more hazardous. Thomas Fitzpatrick, the first U.S. further degraded the long-term viability of the Indian agent on the upper Arkansas River, drew bison herds as a food and economic resource. Bison a clear line between the international conflict and cows also provided the thinnest, most pliable hides, violence along the Santa Fe Trail. “I can say,” he which Indigenous women turned into trade robes.47 wrote his superiors in 1847, “that the country is at Drought, fire, wolf predation, and diseases that present in a far less state of security and tranquility jumped from domestic animals to bison combined than before the commencement of the Mexican with these human factors to deal the herds a sharp War or before the marching and countermarching blow by the end of the 1840s.48 of United States troops to and from New Mexico.”43 Trade in alcohol also stimulated overhunting Now, in addition to ordinary commercial traffic, on the southern plains. Whether imported from dispatch riders, government contractors, and the United States or the distilleries of northern soldiers clogged the most important artery of travel New Mexico, liquor had the potential to cause a in the southern plains. More travelers increasingly tremendous amount of trouble. Circumstantial meant more violence.44 evidence implicates established traders such as the The increased trail traffic exacerbated the Bents in this commerce, although they may have deterioration of food and environmental resources taken steps to limit the business from time to time. that were key to the survival of the region’s The New Mexican frontier suffered as well. In Native peoples. Thousands of humans and tens of 1843, one observer connected the desire for alcohol thousands of animals—oxen, mules, horses, and with unsustainable Native hunting practices. He bison—competed for diminishing grass, wood, and worried that as the bison population decreased, riverine camping sites. Wasteful hunting practices raiding parties would attack the settlements to continued unabated during and after the war. acquire new trade items.49 Soldiers and civilians noted diminishing numbers of bison along the route. One described the area around the Little Arkansas River as “a slaughter 45. Gibson, Journal of a Soldier, 153; and Abraham Robinson Johnston, pen,” while another lamented that fellow soldiers Marcellus Ball Edwards, and Philip Gooch Ferguson, Marching with the blazed away at the herds “as long as they are Army of the West, 1846–1848, ed. Ralph P. Bieber (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1936), 130–31. within his reach,” taking only the best cuts, if they 46. Parkman, The Oregon Trail, 320, 341, 352; and Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, 369. 47. Flores, “Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy,” 483; and Ford, “A Summer upon the Prairie,” 290. 43. David D. Mitchell to William Madill, June 1, 1849; Mitchell to 48. Flores, “Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy,” 470, 481–82. Orlando Brown, August 27, 1849; and Thomas Fitzpatrick to Thomas 49. Gardner, “Where the Buffalo Was Plenty,” 26; Manuel Alvarez Harvey, December 18, 1847, all in Record Group 75, Records of the Bureau to Secretary of State, July 1, 1843, Record Group 59, General Records of of Indian Affairs, Letters Received, Upper Platte Agency, 1846–1856, the Department of State, microcopy 199, reel 1, NARA; Benjamin Clapp microcopy 234, roll 889, National Archives and Records Administration, to Pierre Chouteau, Jr., March 7, 1843, roll 28, frame 509, Papers of the Washington, DC (hereafter UPA-NARA). St. Louis Fur Trade, Part I: The Chouteau Collection, Bizzell Memorial 44. Bernard DeVoto, The Year of Decision: 1846 (1942; repr., New York: Library; and Antonio José Martínez to Antonio López de Santa Anna, St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 251; and Mitchell to Madill, June 1, 1849, UPA- November 28, 1843, in Condition of the Indian Tribes, 39th Cong., 2nd NARA. Sess., S. Rep. No. 156, 359–62.

“Meat as a Matter of Form” 47 The scale and impact of bison hunting and trade is reflected in this 1874 photograph of approximately forty thousand piled hides in Dodge City, Kansas, which was located on the Santa Fe Trail. Men operating a hide baling machine are seen in the background. It is easy to see how these actions led to the destruction of the once massive herds and the people who depended upon them.

nvironmental decline set off a chain caravans gobbling up the region’s foodstuffs and reaction of intensified raiding and calls chopping down every tree in sight. Fitzpatrick and for more soldiers to protect the trail, his associates were cautiously optimistic about the whichE in turn further crowded the region and put prospects of a separate Cheyenne peace. Indeed, additional pressure on its resources. Officials such officials claimed that the nation was “eager to as Agent Fitzpatrick called for a larger military please” the Americans and recognized that as the presence on the southern plains, including a bison herds declined, forward-thinking Cheyenne cordon of forts, mounted troopers, and personnel would take up the plow and hoe to become yeoman who knew the area and its Native inhabitants.50 farmers. The decline of their greatest food resource, The Comanche were a particular source of concern it was hoped, would make them more amenable to to American officials. They intensified their raiding American policy initiatives.51 The agent, however, along the trail during the war and attempted to believed that those who attacked the caravans recruit the Southern Cheyenne to drive off the deserved a sound thrashing. The worst year for raiding along the trail was 1847, with scores of

50. Fitzpatrick to John W. Abert, August 23, 1847, and Fitzpatrick to Madill, August 11, 1848, both in UPA-NARA; and H. L. Routt to Robert 51. Abert, Abert’s New Mexico Report, 10; Fitzpatrick to Harvey, H. Miller, December 6, 1847, folder 2, Robert H. Miller Papers, Missouri October 19, 1847, and Fitzpatrick to Thomas Waggoner, February 13, Historical Society Archives, St. Louis, MO. 1848, Record Group 75, roll 889, both in UPA-NARA.

48 Kansas History travelers killed and thousands of horses, cattle, and Cheyenne and Arapaho did not respond well mules stolen. By the end of the U.S.-Mexican War, when the Americans failed to deliver the goods. the political situation had stabilized somewhat The matter gained urgency by the middle of the thanks to Fitzpatrick’s diplomatic efforts and decade as hunger increasingly afflicted these possibly because of a couple of sharp encounters nations. Their territory was “almost desolate of between U.S. troops and the Comanche.52 The buffalo,” and Agent John Whitefield reported that respite was brief, however, for pressure on southern they had turned to raiding—New Mexican sheep plains food resources continued into the following flocks were a target—to make up the difference. The decades. possibility of withholding annuities as punishment American officials sought to use food as a tool for raiding was bandied about, but at least one to help mitigate political crises during the 1850s. agent worried that this measure might aggravate 55 Having acquired a massive swath of territory from an already tense situation. Mexico, the government policy objectives included Competition from New Mexico and nations protecting westbound travelers by limiting Indian removed to Indian Territory further contributed raiding along the overland trails and eventually to tensions over diminishing food resources on extinguishing Native land title through treaty the southern plains. To supplement the crops negotiations or armed force.53 Trying to reorient they raised, New Mexican bison hunters known the foodways of peoples such as the Cheyenne as ciboleros expanded their field of operations into 56 away from nomadic bison hunting to agriculture places where the herds were already stressed. seemed to offer great potential. In his assessment Matters came to a dramatic head in the autumn of the treaty signed between the United States and of 1853 and into the spring of 1854 when ciboleros the nations of the central and northern plains at clashed with Cheyenne hunters. The Cheyenne Horse Creek, near Fort Laramie, in 1851, Thomas complained to William Bent that “hundreds” of Fitzpatrick recommended providing livestock, Hispanos were hunting in territory the Indians seeds, and tools to mixed-race families and claimed under their 1851 treaty rights. When the encouraging them to settle among Indigenous hunting continued, the Cheyenne struck hard at nations as showpieces of American values. Their the New Mexican frontier, killing fourteen people example might help turn their relatives away and carrying off eleven captives. During the from the hunt, thereby clearing large areas of the negotiations that followed, the Cheyenne agreed territory for American settlement.54 These changes to make peace on the condition that the ciboleros often did not go smoothly. Plains nations ignored “leave them and their buffalo alone.” By the end the proposals to adopt agriculture, preferring to of the decade, New Mexican hunts were limited supplement traditional hunting practices with to Comanche country, where trade and exchange annuities from the government. Powder and ball became essential items, and nations such as the 55. John W. Whitefield to Alfred Cummings, August 15, 1855, and Robert C. Miller to Charles E. Mix, April 30, 1858, Record Group 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Letters Received, Upper 52. Fitzpatrick to Harvey, December 18, 1847, and February 13, 1848, Arkansas Agency, 1855–1874, microcopy 234, roll 878, NARA (hereafter and Fitzpatrick to Madill, August 11, 1848, Record Group 75, roll 889, all UAA-NARA). in UPA-NARA; and William Y. Chalfant, Dangerous Passage: The Santa Fe 56. James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins: , Kinship, and Trail and the Mexican War (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), Community in the Southwest Borderlands (Chapel Hill, NC: Published 48–53, 164–69, 186–95, 237–51, 259, 270–71. for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture 53. Robert M. Utley, The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846– by the University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 225, 316; David 1890 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 39–64. Meriwether to George W. Manypenny, August 10, 1853, Record Group 54. David D. Mitchell to Luke Lea, October 25, 1851, and Thomas 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Records of the New Mexico Fitzpatrick to Lea, November 24, 1851, in Annual Report of the Commissioner Superintendency of Indian Affairs, 1849–1880, microcopy 234, roll 546, of Indian Affairs (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1851), NARA (hereafter NMS-NARA); and Boggs, “William Montgomery 62, 74. Boggs Narrative,” 17.

“Meat as a Matter of Form” 49 thrived into the 1870s.57 Violence also raged The war that Bent predicted raged through the between the Cheyenne and emigrant nations such 1860s into the 1870s and ended conclusively when as the Shawnee and Delaware, who moved west the food resources of the southern plains nations onto the Great Plains in search of game. George were eradicated. Westward emigration accelerated Bent recalled that these peoples were “perhaps dramatically. Railroads pushed their iron tentacles the most dreaded Indians in the whole West,” and into the Great Plains, and new forts and towns their heavy government-provided armaments sprang up, increasing the pressure on peoples such and skilled marksmanship allowed them to inflict as the Cheyenne and Comanche. The to heavy casualties on the southern plains nations. Colorado ushered in a new settler population with During one particularly disastrous fight, Sac and little interest in accommodating Native peoples. Fox warriors killed or wounded over one hundred By 1864, tensions that had been building for years Plains warriors who had ridden out to avenge a bloodily exploded at Sand Creek. For the next fallen Kiowa chief.58 decade, the Cheyenne endured both the velvet The final blow of the long decade fell when glove of the U.S. government—as they gave up prospectors discovered gold in 1858 along the vast tracts of land at the treaty grounds of Fort Wise, Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, an event that the Little Arkansas, and Medicine Lodge Creek— squeezed Plains peoples and their food resources and its iron fist at the Washita River and Summit even more. Although the Cheyenne and Arapaho Springs. The Comanche, too, absorbed heavy body demonstrated tremendous patience with the tens blows during the 1850s as their most significant of thousands of emigrants bound for what became food supply contracted. The mid-1860s brought Colorado Territory, they grew increasingly worried a last reinvigorated florescence of Comanche as the rush continued unabated. William Bent power before the booming of the buffalo guns and warned of processes eerily reminiscent of the late persistent campaigning by the U.S. Army ended 1840s as nations increasingly lost hunting territory. their political independence in 1875. The killing This “goes rather hard with them,” he wrote to was particularly intense in western Kansas, where government officials in Washington. While some demand for bison hides to convert into belting for Cheyenne chiefs reported a willingness to take up industrial machinery, the expansion of railroad agriculture, this was not a widely popular view. lines, and advances in weapons technology created By the end of 1859, Bent grimly warned that “a a bloodbath. Observers estimated that a competent desperate war of starvation and ” was hunter could kill upward of twenty-five animals “imminent and inevitable, unless prompt measures per day. The result was that between 1872 and 1874, shall prevent it.”59 about a million animals were slaughtered. The vast herds that had awed travelers on the Santa Fe Trail 57. William Bent to Meriwether, February 15, 1854, NMS-NARA; and formed the backbone of Native power on the Meriwether to Manypenny, September 1, 1854, Annual Report of the southern plains had been reduced to bones.60 Commissioner of Indian Affairs (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Food was central to the acquisition of power Printing Office, 1854), 92, 175; Meriwether to Manypenny, May 30 and October 25, 1854, both in NMS-NARA; and Kenner, A History of New in the country through which the Santa Fe Trail Mexican–Plains Indian Relations, 112. passed. Men and women among the Comanche 58. Hyde, Life of George Bent, 89; John W. Whitefield to Manypenny, and Southern Cheyenne gained influence within September 4, 1855, Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1855), 117; and their societies by hunting successfully and Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire, 300–01. redistributing food to needy members of the 59. Elliott West, The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 99–112; William Bent to A. M. Robinson, December 17, 1858, roll 878, UAA- 60. Beyreis, Blood in the Borderlands, 109–52; Hämäläinen, The NARA; and William Bent to Superintendent of Indian Affairs, October Comanche Empire, 292–341; and Andrew Isenberg, The Destruction of 5, 1859, Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indians Affairs (Washington, the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920 (New York: Cambridge DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1859), 139. University Press, 2000), 130–40.

50 Kansas History community and visitors. For white travelers on gained economic power. But it was as a source the road between Missouri and New Mexico, of political and military tension that food was hunting was a way to demonstrate masculine most significant. Access to bison herds especially prowess in the eyes of their fellows, thereby shaped Native migrations and sparked bloody gaining acclaim as rugged frontiersmen. At posts conflicts between Indigenous groups and between such as Bent’s Fort, elite business proprietors Natives and whites. As food supplies dwindled in used meals and recreational spaces to accumulate the regions abutting the Santa Fe Trail, the balance social capital. Gifts of food solidified social bonds of power shifted slowly but irrevocably from the between groups and was often a prerequisite to Cheyenne and Comanche to the Americans. the trading negotiations through which people

“Meat as a Matter of Form” 51