Person

Charles Bent

In a span of twenty years, Charles Bent rose from fur trapper, to trader, merchant, and trading post proprietor until meeting his untimely end while serving as the first territorial governor of New Mexico. His most well-known role was founding partner to the Bent, St. Vrain & Company, the trading post headquarters initially named Fort William. Built in 1833, the post was situated on the north bank of the Arkansas River, an acting boundary between the United States and Mexico from 1820 to 1846.

Charles was born in 1799 in present-day Charleston, West Virginia. His parents, Silas Bent Jr. and Martha Kerr Bent, had 11 children, of whom he was the eldest. In 1806, his father, Silas, received an appointment as deputy chief surveyor of upper Louisiana. This role took the Bent family to St. Louis where Charles grew up. His father’s occupations shifted from surveying and law to becoming a judge and Missouri state senator. Silas Bent’s connections in the St. Louis community influenced Charles’s future. His interest in the American West may well have been encouraged by his father’s collaborations with renowned map maker, Matthew Carey, as they worked on maps and surveys derived from the Louisiana Purchase.

Silas Bent Jr.’s continued association with men of means in St. Louis benefitted Charles financially. He was given access to people who would teach him the fur trading business and would invest in his expeditions. These men would also purchase the trade goods he secured. By 1822, Charles worked for the Missouri Fur Company trapping animals and preparing furs for sale. The company struggled to stay solvent during the 1820s due to competition with the American Fur Company. Job insecurity coupled with the overharvesting of beaver caused Charles to leave trapping altogether for a trader’s life in Santa Fe.

The path to the Santa Fe trade was established when Captain William Bucknell made the first successful venture into Mexico along the Santa Fe Trail. His 1821 trip coincided with Mexico’s independence from Spain and followed one month after Missouri’s statehood. Prior to Independence, Mexican officials arrested and sentenced all foreign traders. Afterwards however, the new Mexican government opened trade across borders. Charles Bent seized this new business opportunity and followed in Bucknell’s footsteps. Mercantile goods based in Missouri were now transported south to be sold or traded in Santa Fe. Furs and Mexican silver were transported for sale and trade north in St. Louis. Bent’s successful 1829 venture earned him the credibility to continue financing additional trips to and from Santa Fe.

In 1830, Charles Bent partnered with fellow fur trader, Ceran St. Vrain, and his younger brother, William. Charles spent the next five years financing and accompanying extensive wagon trains from St. Louis to Santa Fe while St. Vrain held down the Santa Fe office. William handled trade with the Native Americans at Fort William, referred to most often as Bent’s Fort.

In 1835, Bent settled in San Fernando de Taos with Maria Ignacia Jaramillo, the daughter of a prominent Taos family. The couple had five children, two of whom died in infancy. Though Bent lived many years in New Mexico, he didn’t become a Mexican citizen or convert to the prominent local practice of Catholicism. Likewise, he did not formally marry Maria Ignacia in a legal or church ceremony, nor did he legitimize his children. In the church baptismal registry, the father of Charles and Maria Ignacia’s children is listed as “unknown.” Unlike many other American or French Canadian fur traders, Charles chose not to comply with the regional conventions.

1835 was also the same year Texas gained independence from Mexico. Ten years later, the United States annexed Texas and added it into the Union. In so doing, the United States inherited Texas’ conflict with Mexico at the Texas-Mexico border. By 1846, political tensions fueled the United States declaration of war on Mexico. Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas River provided General Kearney’s Army of the West a covenient staging station before marching into Santa Fe and claiming New Mexico. On August 18^th of that year, reportedly without conflict, the New Mexican people became citizens of the United States.

To bring United States governance to New Mexico, Kearney implemented a new legal code, created three branches of government, mandated the separation of church and state, and imposed taxation. In spite of opposition by Secretaries of War, Marcy and Buchanan, Kearney appointed Charles Bent as the region’s first territorial governor. A plot to overthrow Bent materialized quickly in December 1846. Many New Mexicans were unhappy with the U.S. take-over, the continued presence of Americans, and the new laws of the land.

Trouble caught up with Bent the night of January 18, 1847, when he returned to his Taos home. An angry group met him to demand the release of three Puebloans jailed for theft. Bent ignored their demands. The following morning, the group reassembled, advanced on Bent’s home again and broke down his door, an act in a series of events known as the Taos Revolt. The women in the household used kitchen implements to dig a hole in the wall for safety in a room on the other side. Charles attempted to flee through the hole in the wall just as arrows were shot. He did not escape. After the assembly caught up with him, they shot him in the head with rifles and pistols. Maria Ignacio, his wife, also wounded in the gunfire, said that Charles died in her arms.

Text written by Volunteer Ellen Martin, 2024.