PLATTEVILLE — American Indians in the vicinity of the Old Fort St. Vrain, west of present-day Platteville, dubbed the Fourth of July celebration there in 1843 the “Big Medicine Day” for the way fort employees and their white guests whooped it up.
“These guys knew that they were men without a country. Colorado was not even a territory then,” said Berthoud resident Diane Brotemarkle, a local history buff and author. “They didn’t have a place to go vote … and so they loved the Fourth of July. It was like their special celebration of who they really were and where their interests really were.”
That year, they hoisted a U.S. flag, fired a salute and feasted on buffalo meat, macaroni, fruit cake and ice cream made with snow from Long’s Peak, according to Brotemarkle’s 2001 book “Old Fort St. Vrain.”
Researching local fort history led to a second book released last year, “Hawkbells and Horseshoes on the Platte,” in which Brotemarkle documents the life of Elbridge Gerry — a Colorado pioneer credited with being the first permanent white settler in what became Weld County in 1861.
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