Hello everyone. This is Woody in the Woody Shop.

Being Friday and all, I thought I’d tell you another story.

So far in our Frontier Stories we’ve met some pretty tough characters.

But this week’s fellow may hold the record for having the worst possible day with the least possible equipment.

His name was John Colter.

Colter was already a seasoned frontiersman by 1808. He had traveled west with Lewis and Clark, crossed the continent to the Pacific, made it back to civilization —

and then, instead of staying there like a sensible person, turned around and headed west again.

That ought to tell you something about John Colter.

He became a trapper and explorer in the upper Missouri country, traveling through country that few Americans had ever seen.

And sometime around 1808 or 1809, Colter and another trapper named John Potts were working near the Three Forks of the Missouri in present-day Montana.

They were traveling by canoe when they encountered a large party of Blackfeet.

The men on shore ordered them in.

Colter complied.

Potts didn’t.

What happened next varies depending on which telling you read, but the result was the same.

Potts was killed.

Colter was captured.

And now things got interesting.

Colter was stripped of his weapons and clothing.

No rifle.

No knife.

No boots.

Not much of anything, actually.

The Blackfeet apparently decided they weren’t going to kill him right there.

They were going to give him a sporting chance.

One of the men asked Colter how fast he could run.

Colter, realizing what was coming, reportedly told him he wasn’t much of a runner.

Which may have been the first smart negotiation of the day.

They took him out onto the open prairie.

Then they gave him a head start.

And told him to run.

So he ran.

Behind him came a large group of armed men.

Colter was fast.

Very fast, as it turned out.

He ran across the plain until most of his pursuers began falling behind.

But one man stayed with him.

And kept getting closer.

Colter realized he wasn’t going to outrun him forever.

So he did something unexpected.

He stopped.

Turned around.

And faced him.

The warrior came at Colter with a spear, but in the scramble the shaft broke.

Colter got hold of the business end —

and pinned the man to the ground with his own broken spear.

In the space of a few seconds, the naked, unarmed man being hunted across the prairie had acquired a weapon and a blanket.

Then he started running again.

Eventually Colter reached the Madison River and hid inside a beaver lodge while his pursuers searched for him.

They didn’t find him.

When things finally quieted down, he crawled out and started walking.

Still mostly naked.

Still without food.

Still without a rifle.

And a very long way from anybody who might be happy to see him.

Several days later, after crossing rough country barefoot and surviving on whatever he could find, John Colter reached safety.

Alive.

The story became known as Colter’s Run.

Like a lot of frontier stories, some details changed in the telling. Colter himself left no written account, and what we know came through others years afterward.

But there’s not much disagreement about the important part.

John Colter was captured.

John Colter was given a head start.

And John Colter made mighty good use of it.

Which brings us to the knife.

Because while we admire Colter’s ability to get himself out of that particular predicament with practically nothing...

we’d rather send him back with a knife.

We started with one of our favorite useful patterns, the Weatherford Hunter, and took it back toward the frontier.

A 9-inch Primitive Drop Point.

1095 high-carbon tool steel.

Richly figured antique white oak scales.

Old Glory red, white and blue liners.

Brass hardware and our patriotic mosaic pin.

And a hand-stitched top-grain leather sheath made by Lonnie Hyatt.

Simple.

Useful.

And preferably attached to you when somebody tells you to start running.

So we called it:

THE ESCAPE

Sometimes a head start is all you need.

We don’t know what kind of knife John Colter carried in 1809.

For a little while there, he didn’t have one at all.

But if we were sending him back out there today?

We’d make Dee Double Dandy sure he had The Escape.

Next Friday, another story from the frontier — and another knife made to remember it by.

Until then, keep your knife close, negotiate the best head start you can —

and if somebody offers you half a day, take it.

— Frank