Fort Union Trading Post Historic Structures Report (Part II) Historical Data Section

Over the forty years of its history, a considerable number of deaths occurred at Fort Union, including the disastrous smallpox epidemics of 1837 and 1857. The first reference to a burial was by Prince Maximilian in 1833. An Assiniboin killed a Blackfoot, and the body, in a coffin made by the fort's carpenter, was buried "near the fort." However, most Indian "burials" were in coffins placed in trees both above and below the fort. The bourgeois felt some concern about these scaffold graves, and there is one reference (Larpenteur, diary, 1835) to building a strong fence around one "for fear that the enemies might Come and pull the Coffin down."

At least six of the soldiers at Fort Union, 1864-65, died in the spring of 1865 (one from Indian arrows, five from scurvy). It seems probable that the Army buried these dead in the area already used by the fort. The only specific reference to the cemetery is found in the reports of Dr. Washington Matthews, U. S. A., Fort Buford: "About one hundred paces east of the ruins of Union and separated from them by a little ravine may now be seen the remains of the cemetery--empty graves, and overturned paling and head-boards." After the Army built Fort Buford, it moved at least some of Fort Union's dead to the new post.