1. George Bent was the mixed-race son of Owl Woman, daughter of White Thunder, a Cheyenne chief and keeper of the Medicine Arrows, and the American William Bent, founder of the trading post named Bent's Fort and a trading partnership with his brothers and Ceran St Vrain.
George Bent's mother was Owl Woman, daughter of White Thunder, a Cheyenne chief and keeper of the Medicine Arrows, and he was born into her clan under the matrilineal kinship system.
George Bent learned much about Cheyenne culture from his mother and her family, and in their culture was considered Cheyenne.
George Bent died about 1847, by which time his father had already taken her two younger sisters as secondary wives, in the Cheyenne traditional way of successful men.
Yellow Woman had a son by William George Bent; Charles George Bent, a half-brother to the others, was born in 1845.
George Bent married the 20-year-old Adaline Harvey in 1869, the educated mixed-race daughter of a fur trader friend from Kansas City.
When George Bent was 10 years old, his father sent him to Kansas City, to an Episcopal boarding school for a European-American education.
George Bent served in the Missouri State Guard with the Confederate Army.
George Bent saw fighting at the Battle of Wilson's Creek near Springfield, Missouri, on August 10,1861; and at the First Battle of Lexington near Lexington, Missouri, on September 20,1861; both were Confederate victories.
George Bent returned to his father's ranch in Colorado Territory, but anti-Confederate sentiment was intense there.
From that time on, George Bent lived among the Cheyenne and identified with them.
George Bent had helped draft the letters sent by Cheyenne chief Black Kettle to Major Edward Wynkoop at Fort Lyon in Colorado to propose a return of settler hostages if discussions would take place about a peace treaty with Black Kettle's band.
George Bent was at Black Kettle's camp of Cheyenne and Arapaho at Sand Creek about 35 miles north of Lamar, Colorado, on November 29,1864.
George Bent was among the Indians who fled upstream and found shelter in sandpits dug in the creek bed beneath a high bank.
George Bent was found there by his friend Edmund Guerrier, who accompanied him back to the Bent Ranch at Big Timbers, where Bent recovered.
George Bent later wrote about this period, saying he believed that the "savages" in the conflict were the US soldiers.
George Bent participated in 27 Cheyenne war parties, but never gave many details about his personal role in the Indian wars.
George Bent began his return to a peaceful world as an interpreter at the Medicine Lodge Treaty Council of October 1867.
George Bent impressed the US soldiers and officials with his negotiating skills.
In 1868, George Bent was hired by the US government as an interpreter, first at Fort Larned and later for the newly created Indian Agency headed by Brinton Darlington, the first US Indian Agent for the Cheyenne and Arapaho.
George Bent lived on the Cheyenne and Arapaho reservation near the town of Colony and worked as a US government employee for most of the rest of his life.
George Bent learned that, as a half-breed or mixed-race man, he was an outsider to both.
George Bent developed a serious problem with alcohol during this period.
George Bent became prosperous by assisting European-American cattlemen to obtain grazing leases on Indian land.
George Bent had stopped drinking, but his influence with the Cheyenne was largely gone, as was his earlier prosperity.
George Bent's meeting with the anthropologist George Bird Grinnell was beneficial for both.
Grinnell realized that George Bent, who spoke both Cheyenne and English, was literate, and could write passable English, would be invaluable for his research into Cheyenne culture.
George Bent wanted the story of the Cheyenne told in a book.
George Bent wrote 340 letters to Hyde between 1904 and 1918.
Hyde and George Bent's collaboration is the principal source for the Cheyenne side of the wars of the 1860s and subsequent events.
George Bent died on May 19,1918, at Washita, Oklahoma in the 1918 flu pandemic.