Christopher “Kit” Carson said Bent and St. Vrain had no equals in the mountains for the kindness they showed him. Charles Bent led trade caravans across the sometimes hostile prairie for sixteen years, and his ties to the Mexican community, his public service, and his reputation led to his appointment as New Mexico’s first American governor in 1846. Just months later, an angry mob with ties to Pueblo Indians and the previous Mexican regime murdered him in his Taos home. Ceran St. Vrain, described as square-hewn and black-headed, was a savvy businessman who never shied away from a fight, and though far removed from the courts of France where his grandfather reportedly advised the King, he brought gentility and hospitality to frontier operations and presided over the table at Bent’s Fort with memorable grace. William Bent, one of two brothers from Missouri, managed the fort and supervised field operations, and his courage became marked even in a trade where physical bravery was a staple. He also had a knack for establishing harmonious relations with neighboring tribes, and once, at his own peril, hid two Cheyenne from a band of Comanches, winning the twenty-year-old William the gratitude of the Cheyenne.