One of the footnotes to the Bent Fort history concerns the story of Charlotte and Dick Green, whose subtle contributions as slaves to the Bent’s and their Fort’s success were inestimable.
Bent’s Fort highlighted in yellow. It was central to the flow of trade heading from west from St. Louis en route supply military forts, fur trappers in the mountains - and later miners - and to New Mexico and Mexican markets. The fort stood at the nexus of many currents. It sat in the seams of many tribes hostile to one another along east west and north south axis - the Comanche, Kiowa, Apache vs. Cheyenne and Sioux nations and the Plains vs. Mountainous tribes (Utes, Shoshones, Blackfeet) - who all benefitted from trade at the fort and suffered no signficant incursion to their territory. But so were many other forts that came and went - Bridgers, St. Vrains, the second Bent Fort - none of which made as deep a historical groove as the original.
Charlotte’s dancing and home cooking is called out in the official histories as a footnote for being a major draw to the Fort when it may in fact have been the key ingredients. Attractive women and good food were rarer than Gold in those times and that place on the plains and drew the conditioned to far-ranging mountain men and packers from all over in equal measure. By comparison, the culinary palettes of the plains Indians was pure Conan McDonald’s - buffalo meats and pan-fried bread. The texts treat the Greens and Charlotte’s contributions to the Bent empire as slaves in a shockingly folksy way. Then, as now, the valuations of the unpaid economy are incalculably part of the whole. Back to the history at hand, Dick and Charlotte left the life they lived for better part of their lives immediately after freedom to start over back east in Kentucky or other parts thereabouts lost to history’s lens. By the time the Greens were free, William Bent was the only one of the four brothers left. Surviving William Bent freed Dick and Charlotte for Dick’s valor in the Pueblo uprising that killed his owner, Charles Bent. That the Greens did not stay for a hot minute leaves a lot between the lines to read.
Based on the story of Kit Carson intervening to stake a losing Cheyenne woman with a string of pearls before she could lose her shirt and modesty with a bad hand.