About William Wells Bent William Wells Bent (1809–1869) was a
frontier trapper, trader, and rancher in the American West who
mediated among the Cheyenne Nation, other Native American tribes
and the expanding United States. With his brothers, Bent
established a trade business along the Santa Fe Trail. In the
early 1830s Bent built an adobe fort, called Bent's Fort, along
the Arkansas River. Furs, horses and other goods were traded for
food and other household goods by travelers along the Santa Fe
trail, fur-trappers, and local Mexican and Native American
people. He participated in negotiations for peace among the
Plains tribes, as well as between the Native American and the
United States government. In 1835 Bent married Owl Woman, the
daughter of White Thunder, a Cheyenne people chief and medicine
man. Together they had four children. Bent was accepted into the
Cheyenne tribe and became a sub-chief. In the 1840s, according
to the Cheyenne custom for successful men, Bent took Owl Woman's
sisters, Yellow Woman a