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.
