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"William Wells Bent (1809–1869) was primarily known as a trader, and rancher in the American West, with forts in Colorado. He also acted as a mediator among the Cheyenne Nation, other Native American tribes and the expanding United States. With his brothers, Bent established a trade business along the Santa Fe Trail. In the early 1830s Bent built an adobe fort, called Bent's Fort, along the Arkansas River in present-day Colorado. Furs, horses and other goods were traded for food and other household goods by travelers along the Santa Fe trail, fur-trappers, and local Mexican and Native American people. Bent negotiated a peace among the many Plains tribes north and south of the Arkansas River, as well as between the Native American and the United States government.
In 1835 Bent married Owl Woman, the daughter of White Thunder, a Cheyenne chief and medicine man. Together they had four children. Bent was accepted into the Cheyenne tribe and became a sub-chief. In the 1840s, according to the Cheyenne custom for successful men, Bent took Owl Woman's sisters, Yellow Woman and Island, as secondary wives. He had his fifth child with Yellow Woman. After Owl Woman died in 1847, Island cared for her children. Each of the sisters left Bent and, in 1869, he married the young Adaline Harvey, the educated mixed-race daughter of a friend who was a prominent American fur trader in Kansas City. Bent died shortly after their marriage, and Adaline bore their daughter, his sixth child, after his death.
William Wells Bent was born May 23, 1809 St. Louis, Missouri, a son of Silas Bent and his wife. His father was later appointed as a justice of the Missouri Supreme Court. William was one of the Bents' eleven children. The first three were born in Charleston, Virginia (now West Virginia) and the remaining children were born in St. Louis after the family migrated there.
Three of William's brothers, George, Charles, and Robert, partnered with him in trading with Native Americans in the West. Charles was the oldest son, born in 1799, and the remaining brothers were born in or after 1806. Later based in Santa Fe, Charles Bent lived in Taos. He served briefly as the first territorial governor of New Mexico before being killed in January 1847 during the Taos Revolt.
By around 1832, although possibly as late as 1834, the partners built a permanent trading post called Bent's Fort. The elaborate adobe construction could accommodate 200 people, and had been built on the northern "Mountain Route" of the Santa Fe Trail, by then open for business. The partners picked this location after discussions with the Cheyenne; it was near La Junta and land occupied by the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. It became an important center of trade, principally in furs but also in numerous other goods, including horses and mules. It was the only privately owned, fortified installation in the west.
William and Charles operated the fort in partnership with Ceran St Vrain, a fur trader who had already established significant trading contacts in New Mexico. Sometimes referred to as Fort William, the post was in "the perfect place at the perfect time" for someone looking to make money from trading. For example, the Bents could buy a gallon of brandy in St Louis for US$2 and sell it at the fort for US$25.
The historian Anne Hyde has dated the moment when the Cheyenne chief White Thunder realized a common interest with Bent. In November 1833, they talked together as a meteor shower lit up the sky over the plains. Many Cheyenne believed that the celestial event was a signal of the end of the world; it was subsequently referred to as "the Night the Stars Fell". White Thunder saw it as a new beginning. He sought a truce with the Pawnee and the return of the four sacred arrows which they had captured in a battle with the Cheyenne earlier that year. To achieve this, White Thunder made a solo, unarmed visit to the Pawnee village to seek peace and returned with two of the arrows and an agreement.
White Thunder also arranged a formal marital alliance between Bent and his daughter Owl Woman. He believed that their children would represent another element of the new beginning, of peace for the Cheyenne and the region. By this time Bent had learned the language of the Cheyenne, and he was known as Little White Man by the native tribes. When the Bents first met with the Cheyenne, the Indians gave them names in the Cheyenne language. The Bent brothers' respect for the Cheyenne protocols during the convivial occasion created a relationship base for their future development of the fort and trading.
While on a supply trip from Colorado to Missouri in 1869, Bent stopped off to see his daughter Julia and son-in-law, R. M. Moore, a judge. They had built a house on his ranch land in Kansas City. Contracting pneumonia, Bent died on May 19, 1869. He is interred at the Las Animas Cemetery south of Las Animas, Colorado.
Adaline Harvey Bent gave birth to their daughter after his death. She lived most of her life in Colorado, where she died February 26, 1905 at the Pueblo Women's Hospital."