The Indians whose villages were located a few miles below the fort, or at least the chief men of the various tribes, passed much of their time within the shelter of the famous structure. They were bountifully fed, and everything they needed furnished them. This was purely from policy, however; for if their wishes were not gratified, their hunters would not bring in their furs to trade. The principal chiefs never failed to be present when a meal was announced as ready, and however scarce provisions might be, the Indians must be fed. The first farm in the fertile and now valuable lands of the valley of the Rio de las Animas[60] was opened by the Bents. The area selected for cultivation was in the beautiful bottom between the fort and the ford, a strip about a mile in length, and from one hundred and fifty to six hundred feet in width. Nothing could be grown without irrigation, and to that end an acequia, as the Mexicans call the ditch through which the water flows, was constructed, and a crop put in. Before the enterprising projectors of the scheme could reap a harvest, the hostile savages dashed in and destroyed everything. Uncle John Smith was one of the principal traders back in the '30's, and he was very successful, perhaps because he was undoubtedly the most perfect master of the Cheyenne language at that time in the whole mountain region. Among those who frequently came to the fort were Kit Carson, L. B. Maxwell, Uncle Dick Wooton, Baptiste Brown, Jim Bridger, Old Bill Williams, James Beckwourth, Shawnee Spiebuck, Shawnee Jake--the latter two, noted Indian trappers--besides a host of others. The majority of the old trappers, to a stranger, until he knew their peculiar characteristics, were seemingly of an unsociable disposition. It was an erroneous idea, however; for they were the most genial companions imaginable, generous to a fault, and to fall into one of their camps was indeed a lucky thing for the lost traveller. Everything the host had was at his guest's disposal, and though coffee and sugar were the dearest of his luxuries, often purchased with a whole season's trapping, the black fluid was offered with genuine free-heartedness, and the last plug of tobacco placed at the disposition of his chance visitor, as though it could be picked up on the ground anywhere. Goods brought by the traders to the rendezvous for sale to the trappers and hunters, although of the most inferior quality, were sold at enormously high prices. Coffee, by the pint-cup, which was the usual measure for everything, cost from a dollar and twenty cents to three dollars; tobacco a dollar and a half a plug; alcohol from two dollars to five dollars a pint; gunpowder one dollar and sixty cents a pint-cup, and all other articles at proportionably exorbitant rates.