Fort Laramie Goshen Wyoming United States
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However, the Cheyenne and many bands of Lakota Sioux have been steadily migrating westward across the plains for two centuries, and are still pressing hard on the Crows.
Treaties are negotiated by a commission consisting of Fitzpatrick and David Dawson Mitchell, U.S. Superintendent of Indian Affairs, with the tribes of the northern plains.
The California Gold Rush had opened the newly-won American West, in the space of two years increasing by eight-fold the population of the vast former Mexican territory.
The westward migration of Oregon- and California-bound settlers has caused friction with the nations of the Central Plains.
The United States sponsors a ‘Big Talk’ in 1851 at Fort Laramie.
To reduce intertribal warfare on the Plains, the government officials "assign" territories to each tribe and have them pledge mutual peace.
Representatives of the most powerful plains nations—the Crows, Lakotas, Cheyennes and Arapaho, as well as the Assiniboins, Gros Ventres, Arikaras and Shoshones—define their respective territories and agree to stay clear of the Oregon Trail, which begins at Independence, Missouri and follows the North Platte-Sweetwater complex through Nebraska and into Wyoming, both unorganized territories.
The Fort Laramie treaty is meant to ensure peace forever between all nine partakers.
In addition, the government secured permission to build and maintain roads for European-American travelers and traders through Indian country on the Plains, such as the Emigrant Trail and the Santa Fe Trail, and to maintain forts to guard them.
The tribes are compensated with annuities of cash and supplies for such encroachment on their territories.
A weak point in the treaty is the absence of rules to uphold the tribal borders.
This territory includes what is now Colorado, east of the Front Range of the Rockies and north of the Arkansas River; Wyoming and Nebraska, south of the North Platte River; and extreme western Kansas.
This group has trading and family ties to Mono Lake Paiutes from the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada.
They annually burn the vegetation on the Valley floor, which promotes the California Black Oak and keeps the meadows and forests open.
This protects the supply of their principal food, acorns, and reduces the chance of ambush.
At the time of first European contact, this band is led by Chief Tenaya (Teneiya), who had been raised by his mother among the Mono Lake Paiutes.
The first non-natives to see Yosemite Valley were probably members of the 1833 Joseph Walker Party, which was the first to cross the Sierra Nevada from east to west.
The first descriptions of Yosemite, however, will come nearly twenty years later.
The 1849 California Gold Rush has led to conflicts between miners and natives, and the state has formed the volunteer Mariposa Battalion as a punitive expedition against natives in the Yosemite area.
In 1851, the Battalion is led by Major Jim Savage, whose trading post on the Merced River the Awaneechee had raided.
This and other missions result in Chief Teneiya and the Awaneechee spending months on a reservation in the San Joaquin Valley.
The band will return the next year to the Valley but will take refuge among the Mono Paiutes after further conflicts with miners.
Most of the Awaneechee (along with Teneiya) will be chased back to the Valley and killed by the Paiutes after violating hospitality by stealing horses.
While the members of this first expedition of the Mariposa Battalion had heard rumors of what could be found up the Merced River, none are prepared for what they see on March 27, 1851, from what is now called Old Inspiration Point (close to the better-visited Tunnel View).
Dr. Lafayette Bunnell will later write:
The grandeur of the scene was but softened by the haze that hung over the valley -- light as gossamer -- and by the clouds which partially dimmed the higher cliffs and mountains. This obscurity of vision but increased the awe with which I beheld it, and as I looked, a peculiar exalted sensation seemed to fill my whole being, and I found my eyes in tears with emotion.
Camping that night on the Valley floor, the group agrees with the suggestion of Dr. Bunnell to call it "Yo-sem-i-ty", mistakenly believing this is the native name.
Bunnell is also the first of many to underestimate the height of the Valley walls.
The U.S. has attempted to negotiate new treaties with the Lakota, who are legally entitled to the Powder River country, through which the Bozeman Trail leads, due to increasing demand of safe travel along the Trail to the Montana gold fields.
Several treaties had been negotiated with Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho leaders in autumn 1865.
The treaties provide monetary compensation for the natives in exchange for their agreement to withdraw from the overland routes, established and to be established, in the Powder River country.
However, the signatories to these treaties are "Laramie loafers"—natives who live near Fort Laramie and live off handouts.
For a treaty to be effective, the natives who had fought Patrick Connor, especially Red Cloud, must be engaged.
No white man can be found to undertake a dangerous mission to find Red Cloud and bring him to Fort Laramie for negotiations, so several of the loafers undertake the task and on March 12, 1866, Red Cloud and his Oglala ride into Fort Laramie.
Red Cloud commits to remain peacefully at the Fort until such time as the U.S.'s chief negotiator, E. B. Taylor, arrives with presents for the assembled Indians.
Negotiations between Red Cloud and other native leaders and the United States' representatives begin in June 1866.
On June 13, however, with the worst possible timing, Colonel Henry B. Carrington, commanding the 18th Infantry, arrives at Laramie with the two battalions of the regiment (approximately thirteen hundred men in sixteen companies) and construction supplies.
He has orders to establish forts in the Powder River country using the 2nd Battalion of the 18th Infantry.
The 3rd Battalion is to garrison posts along the old Oregon Trail, now the Platte Road.
Carrington has chosen the 2nd Battalion because it contains two hundred and twenty veteran soldiers consolidated after the American Civil War.
When Carrington appears at the negotiations the following day, Red Cloud refuses to acknowledge him and accuses the U.S. of bad faith in the negotiations.
Red Cloud, Young Man Afraid Of His Horses, and others withdraw from the negotiations and depart Fort Laramie.
Negotiations continue with a reduced number of native leaders.
The US offers a substantial inducement for their cooperation: seventy thousand dollars per year for the Lakota and fifteen thousand dollars per year for the Cheyenne, although the natives may have been aware that promises in treaties for annuities are often not honored.
On June 29, Taylor reports to Washington that a treaty has been concluded and that a "most cordial feeling prevails" between white and Indian.
He says that only about three hundred warriors, led by Red Cloud, object to the treaty.
Red Cloud's War ends with victory for the Lakota Sioux.
The Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) with the United States confirms the Lakota control over all the high plains from the Black Hills of the Dakotas westward across the Powder River Basin to the crest of the Big Horn Mountains.
Hereafter bands of Lakota Sioux led by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gall and others, along with their Northern Cheyenne allies, will hunt and raided throughout the length and breadth of eastern Montana and northeastern Wyoming, which had been for a time ancestral Crow territory.