According to Thomas James, an associate of Colter’s, the fight with the Blackfeet, mentioned by Brackenridge as occurring on Colter’s Yellowstone journey, did not actually occur until the summer of 1808, near the Three Forks of the Missouri. On this occasion Colter was wounded in the furious battle between the Blackfeet and Flatheads. Still later in 1808 Colter and John Potts (another Lewis and Clark veteran) were captured by Blackfeet on Jefferson River. Potts was killed and dismembered. Colter was stripped naked and told to run for his life. The Indians, who were to have great sport with Colter in this way, were enraged when he managed to escape his tormentors and kill one of them. He finally made his way back to Manuel’s Fort, greatly emaciated. After this fabulous feat of endurance, Colter remained in the wilderness until 1810, when he guided Colonel Menard to Three Forks, where a new fort was built, which was subject to constant Blackfeet harassment. Vowing never to return to the mountains, Colter returned downriver to St. Louis, arriving in May 1810 after six years of perils which well entitle him to claim as “The American Ulysses.” Colter settled at the village of Charette, a few miles above the mouth of the Missouri River, and married a girl named Sally. According to Washington Irving, in 1811 Wilson Price Hunt of the Astorian expedition attempted to persuade Colter to join him but this Colter declined to do after “balancing the charms of his bride against those of the Rocky Mountains.” In 1813 he died, ingloriously, of “jaundice.” Thus passed the phantom discoverer of the Teton-Yellowstone region, to whom James pays this tribute: [Colter was] five feet ten inches in height and wore an open, ingenious, and pleasing countenance of the Daniel Boone stamp. Nature had formed him, like Boone, for hardy indurance of fatigue, privation and perils.... His veracity was never questioned among us and his character was that of a true American backwoodsman. [Illustration: Upper Geyser Basin from the cone of Old Faithful. W. H. Jackson photo. 1871] [Illustration: WHISKEY KEGS] IV. “Colter’s Hell”: A Case of Mistaken Identity One of the most venerable old axioms of fur trade history is that of Colter’s Hell, which may be formulated thus: “After John Colter discovered what is now Yellowstone National Park, he told others of the scenic wonders there. No one believed him, and his listeners derisively dubbed the imaginary place Colter’s Hell.” No item of Yellowstone history is more widely believed, more universally beloved, and more transparently incorrect.