American West: 1861-76

Lesson 1: Treaties, Gold Rushes, and Native Americans

The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851

Fort Laramie, Wyoming, 1876

Until the 1850's “The Great American Desert” was considered undesirable for cultivation, and deemed only suitable for Indians to exist upon. Except for a few missionaries traveling to Oregon Country and fur companies crossing to the Rockies in the 1830s it saw few white persons. In the 1840s a few wagon trains crossed the Plains, headed for Oregon. And there was some migration to California.

Covered Wagon

By 1851 it was felt that restraint should be put on the Indians who lived in this vast area. At least, as it was voiced, the westward traveling routes should be cleared of marauding savages. And so it began.

In September of 1851 some ten thousand Plains Indians were gathered at Fort Laramie in present-day Wyoming by white negotiators. There ,these native people of a free-roaming way of life, signed away their freedom.

They agreed to relocate to reservations. The Sioux would dwell north of the North Platte River, the Crows in the Powder River Basin of present-day Montana, and the Cheyennes and Arapahos on a wide space of land reaching from western Kansas to the foot of the Colorado Rockies—where gold had yet to be discovered. This was not all they agreed to, and for a very good white reason.

North Platte, Wyoming map

Previously, due to the war with Mexico and an agreement with Great Britain over the boundaries of Oregon, the United States had gained vast areas of land. The possibilities for settlement were unlimited. Safe routes had to be established to induce settlers to move to these areas. It was necessary for the United States to retain claim to these areas. Therefore, in addition to agreeing to residing on the reservations, the Indians were required to give unrestricted traveling rights along the trails that whites would use. The government would also be allowed to establish forts along these routes.

The payment to these Indians would be $50,000 in goods each year for fifty years. That comes to about $5.00 per Indian per year. The fifty years was later reduced to fifteen years without the Indians’ consent.

Not all the chiefs signed, and those who did sign could only speak for those members of their own bands, a situation that would be repeated many times, and that the whites never seemed to understand. There was another facet of this situation that would reoccur.

Usually it was the older men that signed the treaties. The younger Indians did not. Often it was the young men who dreamed of war. War was their path to glory and achieving status among their own. Among this wide group of young men was one in particular whose name would be remembered by both whites and Indians, far beyond the great battle yet to come, on the banks of the Little Bighorn.

At the time of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 this young person, of the Hunkpapas Sioux, had only reached his nineteenth or twentieth year. Like his peers he desired war honors and had already achieved status among his people. The world would remember him as Sitting Bull.

Want to learn more about Sitting Bull? Explore this article:

Sitting Bull By Elizabeth Gibson http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/old_... Sitting Bull was born in 1831 at Grand River, South Dakota. He was the only son of Hunkpapa Sioux Returns-Again. At first his name was Slow because he was very deliberate and careful as a youngster.

Chief Sitting Bull

If the student would like to learn more about the Fort Laramie Treaty and the life of Sitting Bull, please explore:

The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull, by Robert M. Utley, Henry Holt and Company, New York. 1993.

An additional source for this section is:

Utley, Robert M. The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. 1984.

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