People

Scotts Bluff was a landmark for emigrants traveling the Oregon, California and Mormon Pioneer Trails. The story of the man whom the striking geologic feature was named after, was told countless times by travelers on the Great Platte River Road. Eventually, the story of Scott took on a life of its own and became an integral part of the emigrant experience.

Western explorer and Scottish nobleman William Drummond Stewart spent the winter of 1834-1835 at Fort Vancouver.

Charles Bent, alongside his partner, Ceran St. Vrain, and younger brother, William Bent, established the Bent, St. Vrain, and Company along the Santa Fe Trail in 1833. This adobe-constructed trading post beside the Arkansas River in southeastern Colorado was the first outpost between St. Louis, MO and Santa Fe, NM in its day. Charles and William's close association with Cheyenne and Arapaho nations enabled the company to prosper as a result of the buffalo robe trade.

Part Odawa and part French, the highly respected and traditionally skilled Marie “Mo-nee” Bailly lived through rapidly changing times; she experienced shifting control over the Northwest Territory and the detrimental effects of manifest destiny on Indigenous American peoples. She resolutely oversaw the family and homestead on the Little Calumet River for more than 30 years after the death of her husband, raising their children and grandchildren in an ever-foreign world.

John Smith, one of Bent, St. Vrain & Co.’s best traders, was known to the Cheyenne's as Gray Blanket (poma), supposedly because gray blankets were a conspicuous item in Smith’s trading stock.

Eloisa McLoughlin grew up at the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Vancouver. Her life story is the story of the fur trade in North America - and spans from the Great Lakes, to Fort Vancouver, to Alaska and California.

Dr. Forbes Barclay operated the Fort Vancouver medical office and trade store from 1840 to 1850.

A former fur trader, George Washington Bush arrived at Fort Vancouver as an American settler in 1844. However, Oregon's discriminatory laws against African American settlement forced him to settle north of the Columbia River, in present-day Washington State.

A legend in his own time, Kit Carson was a trapper, scout, Indian agent, soldier and authentic legend of the West. Found out how he came to fame and the role he played in the Civil War by reading more here!

William Craft bravely escaped from slavery with his wife Ellen Craft by taking trains and steamships while in disguise.