What is the full name of the person that had his horse taken by the Blackfeet Indians?
In the early 19th century, the forest was visited by mountain men and explorers such as John Colter and Jim Bridger. Colter is the first white man known to have visited both the Yellowstone region and the forest, which he did between 1807 and 1808. Having been an original member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Colter requested permission from Meriwether Lewis to leave the expedition after it had finished crossing the Rocky Mountains during their return journey from the Pacific Ocean. Colter teamed up with two unaffiliated explorers the expedition had encountered, but soon thereafter decided to explore regions south of where his new partners wished to venture. Traveling first into the northeastern region of what is today Yellowstone National Park, Colter then explored the Absaroka Mountains, crossing over Togwotee Pass and entering the valley known today as Jackson Hole. Colter survived a grizzly bear attack and a pursuit by a band of Blackfeet Indians who had taken his horse. The explorer later provided William Clark, who had been his commander on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, with previously unknown information on the regions he had explored, which Clark published in 1814.Travels by fur trappers and adventurers, such as Manuel Lisa and Jim Bridger from 1807 to 1840, completed the exploration of the region. With the decline of the fur trade in the late 1840s and much of the prized beaver long since made scarce by over-trapping, few white explorers entered the forest over the next few decades. The first federally financed expedition which passed through portions of Shoshone National Forest was the Raynolds Expedition of 1860, led by topographical engineer Captain William F. Raynolds. The expedition included geologist and naturalist Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden and was guided by mountain man Jim Bridger. Though the Raynolds Expedition was focused on exploration of the Yellowstone region, several efforts to enter what later became Yellowstone National Park were impeded by heavy snows across the mountain passes such as Two Ocean Pass. The expedition finally crossed the northern Wind River Range at a pass they named Union Pass and entered Jackson Hole valley to the south of Yellowstone. Hayden led another expedition through the region in 1871. Hayden was primarily interested in documenting the Yellowstone country west of the forest, but his expedition also established that the forest was a prime resource that merited protection. Travels in the forest in the 1880s by later U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who was also a strong advocate of land conservation, as well as by General Philip Sheridan, provided the impetus that subsequently established the Yellowstone Timberland Reserve in 1891, creating the first national forest in the U.S.
John Colter