Colter took up a tract of bounty land on the south bank of the Missouri in the vicinity of Dundee village, Franklin county. There the great wanderer, with his bride Sally, turned to the prosaic routine of farming. Wilson Price Hunt’s expedition found him there and offered him a position as guide. Bradbury said he accompanied them for several miles, balancing in his mind the charms of his bride against those of the Rocky Mountains. However, the life of steady habits won, but not for long, as he died of jaundice in 1813. During the subsequent half century Colter’s reputation evolved by degrees through the following stages: bare-faced prevaricator, devil-take-care mountain roamer, accidental discoverer of Yellowstone National Park. From the present perspective he appears much more than a scout and explorer. He was something of an economist and prophet, because he is said to have told Henry M. Brackenridge that where he had been, “a loaded wagon would find no obstruction in passing over the Rocky Mountains.”[62] On Yellowstone maps a single conspicuous feature commemorates Colter’s work. It is Colter’s Peak near the southeastern point of Yellowstone Lake. May it ever stand aloof, towering and quite inaccessible; a fitting monument to a gallant scout. Such a man should never be forgotten because he was master of the untamed West. Chapter III INDIANS IN AND AROUND YELLOWSTONE A description of the Indian background is an integral part of all early American history. An appreciation of the “Old West” is impossible without an understanding of the Indian problem. Yellowstone was not the original homeland of any distinct Indian tribe. In comparatively recent time, probably about 1800, it became the refuge for a small and degenerate band of Tukuarika, or sheep-eating Indians. They had formerly lived in the Montana and Dakota country but had been driven into seclusion by the powerful Blackfoot nation. The several branches of Shoshones residing in Yellowstone environs were Bannocks, Snakes, Tukuarikas, and Flatheads. The Crows came from other Indian sources. All of these Indians possessed certain racial characteristics of the red race. In view of various conflicting ideas, a few observations about the people as a whole are expedient.