They Liked It Out There

Several men of the Lewis and Clark Expedition apparently liked the rough living in the Rockies, and at least seven we know of returned—most for the rest of their (short) lives.

John Colter didn’t even get home before returning to the mountains. When the Corps of Discovery met some fur traders heading upriver in August 1806, Colter asked for an early discharge to join them. The captains agreed, and off he went. Two years later, he and John Potts (see below) were trapping on Montana’s Jefferson River when they were attacked by Blackfeet. For sport, Colter was stripped of his clothing and moccasins and given a head start to outrun warriors who fully expected to kill him. Running across prairie covered with prickly pear cactus, Colter managed to kill one of the warriors and reach the Madison. He hid in the water under driftwood until dark, then hiked to a fur post at the confluence of the Bighorn and Yellowstone rivers, 200 miles away. What took him 11 days became famous in mountain man lore as “Colter’s Run.” Colter also was the first white to tell of the amazing sights now in Yellowstone National Park, but bubbling pots of mud, and springs in rainbow colors, and boiling water spouting into the sky were received merely as tall tales. Mountain men (for a while) referred to the seemingly imaginary locale as “Colter’s Hell.”

John Boley of the return party was back in St. Louis in 1805 after a winter at Fort Mandan. The next year, he volunteered for another army expedition west: Zebulon Pike’s trip to Colorado.
John Collins trapped for William Ashley’s fur company, and was killed by Arikaras
in 1823.

George Drouillard, already an Upper Missouri traveler before the Corps hired him, partnered with Manuel Lisa in the Missouri Fur Company, and built a post at the Three Forks of the Missouri, where Blackfeet killed him in 1810.

John Newman trapped on the Missouri, and was killed in 1838 by the Yankton Sioux, who had been friendly to the Corps.

John Potts was back in Montana by 1808, when he was killed in the fight Colter barely survived.
Peter Weiser worked for fur traders Lisa and Drouillard (see above), and may have been killed in 1810 in the raid that got Drouillard.