The first major white penetration into the Northern Plains was the Oregon
Trail. It eventually separated the great buffalo herds and divided such
tribes as the Cheyennes and Arapahos into northern and southern
branches. While fur traders blazed the trail in the mid-1830s, significant
use did not occur until 1843, when a thousand home seekers traveled the
route. In the next quarter-century, covered wagons were a familiar sight
following the Great Platte River Road across Nebraska and Wyoming,
eventually diverging onto trails to Oregon, Utah, and California. As mi-
gration increased, so did conflict. Travelers depleted the Indians' game,
an soon hunting became difficult in regions near the trail, fueling resent-
ment. In the late 1840s, the federal government ordered three military
posts built to guard the Oregon-Mormon-California Trail: Fort Kearny in
Nebraska, Fort Laramie in Wyoming, and Fort Hall in Idaho. As the pres-
sure increased, whites sought to make some legal accommodation with the
Plains Indians, a binding agreement concerning the use of this vast piece of
property.

In September 1851, Indian Commissioners D. D. Mitchell and Thomas
Fitzpatrick met with some ten thousand Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahos,
Shoshonis, and Crows at Fort Laramie to reach agreement concerning
travel through the area. In return for an annual payment of $50,000 in
trade goods, the Indians guaranteed whites safe passage and acknowl-
edged the permanence of military posts in their homeland. But as migra-
tion began to occur in larger numbers--in 1852, nearly forty thousand
persons traveled westward, at least ten thousand of whom were Mormons
bound for Salt Lake City--dissatisfaction increased.

Serious trouble with the Sioux began in 1854, when a young hotspur at
Fort Laramie upgraded a minor incident into a major happening. A recent

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