John Potts
Private John Potts was a German-born soldier from Pennsylvania who served in the Corps of Discovery. A capable and reliable member of the expedition, he was frequently assigned to hunting and scouting parties. Potts became a fur trapper after the expedition, partnering with fellow Corps veteran John Colter in the upper Missouri country. In 1808, while trapping on the Jefferson River near Three Forks, Potts and Colter were ambushed by Blackfeet warriors. Potts was killed in the confrontation, while Colter was stripped naked and forced to run for his life in the famous "Colter's Run."
Biography
John Potts (1776-c. 1808) was a German immigrant who served as a private in the Corps of Discovery. A skilled miller by trade, Potts was a steady, reliable member of the expedition.
Potts is best known for his tragic death after the expedition. In 1808, while trapping with John Colter on the Jefferson River near Three Forks, Montana, they were ambushed by a party of Blackfeet. Potts, wounded by arrows, shot and killed one warrior before being killed himself — his body was dragged ashore and “hacked to pieces,” according to Colter, who narrowly escaped with his life in his famous naked run.
Potts’s death underscored the dangerous legacy of the Lewis and Clark Expedition for the Blackfeet, who remained hostile to American trappers for decades after Lewis’s violent encounter with their people in July 1806.
Cross-Narrator Analyses
AI-assisted scholarly analyses that cite or discuss John Potts — showing 7 of the most recent matches.
Parting at Travelers’ Rest: Four Voices on a Pivotal Division
On the day the Corps of Discovery split into two reconnaissance parties at Travelers' Rest, four journalists recorded the same departure with…
A Conic Mound of Stones: Four Voices on the Bitterroot Summit
On June 27, 1806, four expedition narrators describe the same harrowing snowbound ridge crossing — but each filters the scene through a…
Smoke in the Valley: Three Witnesses to a Single Day’s Signal
On 20 July 1805, three expedition journalists watched a column of smoke rise from a distant valley. Their differing interpretations — and…
Silas Goodrich: The Expedition’s Fisherman
Private Silas Goodrich served as the Corps of Discovery's most dedicated angler, contracted syphilis at Fort Clatsop, and was among the small…
William Bratton: Hunter, Saltmaker, and Patient of the Corps of Discovery
A Virginia-born private whose journey through the journals traces a path from messmate and marksman to gravely ill convalescent — and finally,…
John Colter: The Hunter Who Walked Away From Home
From Pryor's mess at Camp Dubois to a solitary parting on the upper Missouri, John Colter emerges in the journals as one…
Court-Martial at St. Charles: Discipline on the Eve of Departure
While three enlisted men reduce the day to weather and waiting, Clark's journal and Ordway's orderly book document a court-martial that tested…
