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.

They left Missouri about 1826 to explore what is now southern Colorado along the upper Arkansas River to trap for furs and establish a trade business.

St. Vrain and his older brother, Charles, made the round trips to St. Louis, a regional trading center, to sell furs and return with supplies.

The elaborate adobe construction could accommodate 200 people,[7][8] and had been built on the northern "Mountain Route" of the Santa Fe Trail, by then open for business.

[citation needed] William and Charles[11] operated the fort in partnership with Ceran St Vrain, a fur trader who had already established significant trading contacts in New Mexico.

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.

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.

Native tribes in the area for trading, such as the Sioux, Apache and Kiowa, as well as Comanche and Cheyenne also established temporary camps outside the fort.

Hyde writes in Empires, Nations and Families that Bent's Fort was the one spot on the Santa Fe trail where exchanges with Indians were welcomed and encouraged, and the effects of those conversations on both sides were far-reaching  ...  archaeological evidence tells us that people sat in the courtyard together and smoked—a lot".

[nb 3]Bent managed trade to and from the fort: he provided a safe zone in the area and a supply of goods for its store, as well as shipping buffalo robes back to St. Louis for sale.

The Bents had up to 100 employees, depending on the season, who had a variety of skills: clerks, guards, traders, teamsters, trappers, a tailor, blacksmith, carpenter and herders.

During that period, Bent often made the six-month round trip on the 500-mile-long (800 km) trail to and from Westport, Missouri (present-day Kansas City) to trade the furs and goods gathered over the previous winter.

[27] While Bent and the pack trains were away, the fort managed with a skeleton crew of herders, clerks, traders and laborers for Native Americans and travelers.

[30] Bent's Fort held dances regularly; Colonel Henry Inman described Charlotte as "the center of attention, the belle of the evening.

[31] George and William Bent freed Dick Green for his heroic efforts in an Indian revolt in 1847 at Taos, during which their brother Charles was killed.

In 1849 a cholera epidemic swept through the Cheyenne tribe, killing up to half of the people, including the children's maternal grandmother, Tail Woman.

That winter, William's oldest son George Bent, then age 11, was sent to Kansas City to attend an Episcopal boarding school.

This group of warriors formed to retaliate for the Sand Creek Massacre that year, when US forces attacked and killed numerous Cheyenne.

[31] When the son George Bent met his father's new wife, he recognized Adaline Harvey as having been a student at his school; she was five years younger than he.

[59] The children enjoyed pumpkin pie and pancakes made by Charlotte Green, an enslaved cook whose husband was also held by the Bents.

... Only constant renegotiation and the conscious creation of community through family ties, diplomacy, warfare, and dinner made it operate in a surprisingly stable way.

Although the Comanche continued to assert their power after Mexican independence, the influx of displaced tribes, the westward push of European-American settlers, and the development of the Santa Fe Trail generated new conflicts.

The trading environment improved after 1840, when Bent's Fort became the site of a truce between the Comanche, Apache and Kiowa tribes of the north and the Cheyenne and Arapaho of the south.

[76][77] Hyde has said that For William Bent, Owl Woman, and their families and business associates, the Arkansas River as border between Mexico and the United States was an abstraction.

[78]George Ruxton described in 1848 how the council room at the fort was used: "Chiefs of the Shain [sic], Kioway and Araphó sit in solemn conclave with the head traders, and smoke the calumet over their real and imaginary grievances.

They had amassed troops from Washington, D.C.[79] When Bent, who had lived among the Cheyenne for 40 years and had half-Cheyenne children, asked for peaceful resolution, Chivington told him it was not possible.

He stood in front of his lodge with his arms folded across his breast, singing the death-song: "Nothing lives long," he sang, "only the earth and the mountains.

Wearing the uniform of the United States, which should be the emblem of justice and humanity ... he deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre which would have disgraced the veriest savage among those who were the victims of his cruelty.

In the early twentieth century, he served as a major source or informant for James Mooney and George Bird Grinnell, anthropologists who went to the West to study the Cheyenne and learn about their history and culture.

Some of the tribe members did not approve of the treaty, which would limit them to a reservation south of the Arkansas River, rather than their traditional territory to the north, which was larger.