Another member of the expedition left the party that day. Dickson and Hancock had asked Private John Colter to join them in their Yellowstone venture. He accepted, subject to the captains’ approval. They gave it, on the condition that no other man ask for a similar change in the conditions of his enlistment (Colter’s enlistment would not expire until October 10, 1806). None did, and when the expedition set off downstream, Colter turned back upstream, back to the wilderness, back to the mountains, on his way into the history books as America’s first mountain man and the discoverer of
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