Alchemy & Indians

In 1808, John Colter was stripped naked by the Blackfeet and told to run for his life. Colter had already lived a hard life by then. He went west with Lewis and Clark, and when the expedition headed home in 1806, he asked to stay behind and trap. He spent that winter alone in country no white man had ever seen. He wandered through what is now Yellowstone and came back talking about boiling mud and water that shot out of the ground. People laughed at him. They called it Colter's Hell. In the fall of 1808, Colter and another trapper named John Potts were paddling up the Jefferson River in Montana when hundreds of Blackfeet warriors appeared on the bank. Colter surrendered. Potts grabbed his rifle, shot one of the warriors, and was killed on the spot. The Blackfeet took Colter's clothes and his moccasins. They talked it over. Then one of the chiefs walked him out onto the open prairie, pointed, and told him to go. It was a race, and the prize was his life. Colter ran barefoot across ground covered in prickly pear cactus. Behind him, young warriors with spears came pouring out after him. He ran so hard that blood came out of his nose and ran down his chest. After a few miles he looked back. Every warrior had fallen behind except one. Colter stopped and turned around. The warrior lunged at him with his spear, stumbled, and fell. Colter grabbed the spear and killed him with it. Then he kept running. He made it to the Madison River and dove in. Depending on who told the story later, he hid under a pile of driftwood or inside a beaver lodge, with only his face above the water. He heard the Blackfeet searching the riverbank above him for hours. When night came, he slipped out and kept moving. He had no clothes, no food, no gun, and no shoes. His feet were full of cactus spines. He was about 200 miles from Manuel Lisa's trading post on the Yellowstone. He walked there. It took him around 11 days. He ate roots and bark along the way. When he finally staggered into the fort, the men there didn't recognize him. And here's the part that tells you who John Colter was. After all that, he went right back into Blackfeet country to trap again. It took a couple more close calls before he finally gave it up, went home to Missouri, got married, and died on a farm a few years later.