At the Confluence of Two Cultures

William Bent traveled west as a young man in 1829 to build a life for himself and his future family. He and his brother Charles, in partnership with Ceran St. Vrain, built a trading empire in the Southwest during the early years of international trade on the Santa Fe Trail. William managed the construction and running of Bent's Fort, the only civilization between the Missouri frontier and Santa Fe, the capital of Mexico's northern province. William loved the west and its indigenous people. He married a Cheyenne woman and had five mixed blood children. By the time his children were grown the racially diverse west of the frontier had given way to a time when the United States wanted to take western land from the Indians for exploitation and white settlement. The challenges for William's children were very different from what he had faced. His son George personifies the struggles of the clash of cultures between the Indians and the whites. Of William's five children George best learned to live in two worlds despite making the choice to live among and honor the Cheyenne tribe and other natives. The Bent family struggles and triumphs came at a high cost, but they persevered epitomizing the strengths this country was built upon.