Montana Medicine Show: John Colter

Welcome to the Montana Medicine Show. I'm Derrick strong. Trapper Thomas James described John Colter like this nature informed him for a hearty and Durrance of fatigue privations and perils. He had a quick and ready thoughtfulness and presence of mind in a desperate situation from 18 0 4 to 18 06 Coulter accompanied Lewis and Clark on their cross-country expedition. The next year Coulter became the first white tourist to view today's Yellowstone National Park. His stories of spouting geysers and bubbling mud pots prompted skeptics to call the area. Coulter's hell in 18 08 Blackfeet Indians captured and stripped Coulter near the Missouri headwaters author JOHN BRADBURY recounted the ordeal he knew that he now had to run for his life with dreadful odds of five or six hundred armed Indians against him. The Blackfeet gave him a three hundred yard head start. The barefoot Colter raced across six miles of prairie. He hid under driftwood in the Madison River completely naked under a burning sun his feet filled with prickly pear thorns.

Coulter then made a two hundred mile seven day trek to Fort Raymond trapper Thomas Jane's throat his face and whole body were thin and I'm ACA did by hunger. His limbs and feet swollen and sore. The company at the fort did not recognize him in this dismal plight until he made himself known. Two years later Coulter floated solo down river to St. Louis. He settled on a Missouri farm and died of jaundice and 1813. From KTLA studios. I'm Derrick strong. Montana medicine shows supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. A private corporation funded by the American people.