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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
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FORT LARAMIE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE
Wyoming
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Location: Goshen County, on a county road off U.S.
26, about 3 miles southwest of the town of Fort Laramie; address: Fort
Laramie, Wyo. 82212.
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Fort Laramie, situated amid the rolling prairie of
eastern Wyoming near where the Laramie River blends into the North
Platte, was of outstanding significance in the history of the Rocky
Mountain region and the West. From 1834 until 1890, it was a center of
trade, supply-transportation, warfare, and diplomacy on the northern
Plains. Its long and varied history epitomizes the successive stages by
which Americans conquered and settled the immense territory stretching
from the Missouri River to the Pacific. Through its gates passed
trappers, traders, mountain men, overland emigrants, missionaries,
adventurers, explorers, homesteaders, Mormons, forty-niners, and
soldiers.
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Frederick Piercy's sketch of
Fort Laramie in 1853. (National Park Service) |
Located in the buffalo country of the Sioux, during
the period 1834-49 the fort was a major fur trading post and
Indian-trader rendezvous. In the years 1834-41, it was also known as
Fort William and Fort Lucien, a log stockade; and in 1841-49 as Fort
John, an adobe, walled fort. From the 1840's until 1869, when completion
of the Union Pacific Railroad augured the end of the covered wagon
migrations, Fort Laramie was a key landmark and stopping point on the
Oregon-California Trail; a division point on transcontinental stage and
mail routes; a base for civil and Army freighters; and for a time a Pony
Express relay station. As a military post during the period 1849-90, it
protected emigrants and was closely associated with some of the treaties
and many of the campaigns designed to pacify the northern Plains tribes.
Its role in the fur trade, transportation-communications and the
overland migrations will be treated in detail in the appropriate volumes
of this series. The following discussion is limited to the last phase of
the fort's history.
One of the largest posts in the West, Fort Laramie
was active longer than most. Its strategic location made it an effective
command headquarters and logistical-transport center for the many forts
farther West and the troops that funneled in to man them or participate
in the various campaigns. The fort originated as one of the first three
posts founded by the Regiment of Mounted Riflemen to guard the
Oregon-California Trail, the other two being the second Fort Kearny,
Nebr. (1848-71), and Cantonment Loring, Idaho (1849-50) The increase in
travel over the trail had demonstrated the need for military bases to
serve as supply centers and provide protection from the Indians, who
were venting their alarm over the stream of westbound caravans and the
disappearance of grass and game from the vicinity of the trail by
occasionally raiding wagon trains. As soon as the Mounted Riflemen
purchased Fort Laramie from the American Fur Co. in 1849, the garrison
inaugurated a building program, temporarily utilizing the existing adobe
post. Within a decade, Fort Laramie became a sprawling military
installation.
For the first half of that decade the Indians were
relatively quiet, particularly after the Fort Laramie Treaty (1851),
comparable to the Fort Atkinson Treaty (1853) with the southern Plains
tribes. In the summer of 1851 one of the largest assemblages of Indians
in the history of the West gathered around Fort Laramie9,000
Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahos, and Crows. Because of the better forage
along Horse Creek, 35 miles to the east, the councils were held there.
The Indians, in exchange for annuities, agreed not to raid the
Oregon-California Trail or to war with one another and promised to
permit the construction of military posts and roads.
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Fort Laramie in 1876, at time of
maximum occupation. (National Archives) |
An incident in the summer of 1854 shattered the
comparative peace and marked the beginning of 3-1/2 decades of warfare
between the Plains Indians and the Army. Not far from Fort Laramie, the
Sioux reacted to the rashness of Lt. John L. Grattan, trying to arrest
one of them for a minor offense, by annihilating his detachment and
going on the warpath. Although seriously undermanned, the fort was not
attacked by the Sioux and allied Cheyennes, who focused on stagelines
and emigrant trains.
The tempo of assaults accelerated during the Civil
War, when the fort's Regular garrison was withdrawn and the men
available sometimes numbered less than 100. In the years 1864-67 the
post commander maintained a small stockaded subpost, Fort Mitchell (Camp
Shuman), Nebr., about 50 miles down the North Platte River just above
Scotts Bluff. In the first half of 1865 the Sioux and Cheyennes launched
a string of attacks on the Oregon-California Trail northwest of Fort
Laramie.
The decade following the Civil War was a critical
one. The campaigns of Generals Sibley and Sully in the years 1863-65 had
inflamed the Sioux, Cheyennes, and Arapahos west of the Missouri River.
Further aggravating them, in the summer of 1865 Brig. Gen. Patrick E.
Connor led a 2,600-man force in three columns from Fort Laramie and
Omaha into the Powder River country of Wyoming, partly in an attempt to
still the public clamor for better protection of the Bozeman Trail. The
Powder River Expedition marched long distances and endured many
hardships. On the headwaters of the Tongue River one of the columns
surprised and wiped out an Arapaho village. Otherwise, because of lack
of coordination between the columns, the campaign failed dismally. By
annoying but not intimidating the Indians, it aroused them to strike
back.
The Bozeman Trail proved a tempting target, on which
the Oglala Red Cloud and his allies intensified their assaults. In the
summer of 1866 Red Cloud stormed out of a conference at Fort Laramie
concerning use of the trail when troops marched in on their way to build
a chain of protecting forts. Devastation followed in the region for 2
years, during which time Fort Laramie provided logistical and personnel
support to the beleaguered Bozeman Trail forts of Phil Kearny, Reno, and
C. F. Smith; and dispatched a relief expedition to Fort Phil Kearny
after the Fetterman Disaster (December 1866).
The Fort Laramie Treaty (1868) ended hostilities for
a time. Actually a series of generally similar but separate treaties
with the northern Plains tribes, it was negotiated by the same Peace
Commission that the previous October had concluded the Medicine Lodge
Peace Treaties with the southern Plains Indians. Various northern Indian
groups signed the treaty at Fort Laramie in April and May 1868, and
those of the upper Missouri at Fort Rice, N. Dak., in July. But,
frustrating the commissioners, Red Cloud did not sign until November,
the month following the commission's disbandment, by which time the
treaty's provisions had already been put into effect.
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The Fort Laramie post trader's
store, hub of social and business activity, about 1875. (National
Park Service) |
In the Fort Laramie treaties the U.S. Government and
the northern Plains tribes declared peace. In the treaty with the Sioux
the Government bowed to the demands of Red Cloud and other chiefs and
agreed to close to white occupation and travel the Bozeman Trail region
and the rest of an area designated for an indefinite period as "unceded
Indian Territory." This territory embraced the area north of the North
Platte River, east of the summits of the Bighorn Mountains, and in
effect extending as far north as the Yellowstone River. The United
States also granted the Sioux hunting privileges for an unspecified time
in the region along the Republican Fork of the Smoky Hill River, in the
lands north of the North Platte River, and in essence reaching northward
to the Yellowstone River. In the hunting grounds the Sioux agreed not to
obstruct white settlement, railroad construction, travel, or military
operations.
Finally, the Government created for exclusive Sioux
use in perpetuity the Great Sioux Reservation, roughly the western half
of South Dakota beyond the Missouri River; and agreed to provide varied
medical, educational, agricultural, and other facilities, as well as
annuities and food. Relinquishing all claims to lands outside the Great
Sioux Reservation, the Sioux agreed in time to settle down on it and
live by agriculture rather than by hunting. The treaties with the
Northern Cheyennes, Crows, and Northern Arapahos created reservations
for each tribe or allowed its members to utilize existing reservations;
and specified hunting grounds.
On the southern Plains the tribes initiated
hostilities within a year of their signing the treaties of Medicine
Lodge, but the Fort Laramie treaties brought for a time a considerable
degree of peace on the northern Plains. It lasted until the 1875-76
mining invasion of the Black Hills, in the Great Sioux Reservation,
infuriated the Sioux and Cheyennes and set off a war that lasted until
1877. During the Black Hills rush, hundreds of prospectors en route to
the goldfields stopped at Fort Laramie, for a time a station on the
Deadwood-Cheyenne stageline. In the extensive campaigns of 1876-77 the
fort was a major base.
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Fort Laramie today. "Old Bedlam"
dominates the scene. (photo Ray M. Littler, National Park
Service) |
During the 1870's and 1880's ranchers began occupying
the surrounding country and the post's mission changed. The garrison,
helping to maintain law and order, apprehended cattle rustlers and
highwaymen and escorted stages. Appropriately enough, the same year Fort
Laramie was inactivated, 1890, the Census Bureau noted the passing of
the frontier and the Army smashed the last Indian hopes for freedom in
the Battle of Wounded Knee, S. Dak.
Fort Laramie National Historic Site preserves the
surviving features of the military fort, and carries out restoration and
archeological programs. The remains of 21 buildings and ruins may be
seen. Some of the buildings have been restored or partially restored and
many are furnished in the styles of different periods in the fort's
history. Interpretive markers tell the story of extant buildings or
foundations and indicate the sites of others.
The most historic building is the frame officers'
quarters known as "Old Bedlam" (1849), which has been restored in its
entirety, including the kitchen wings. The first military structure and
the oldest standing military building in Wyoming, it was the scene of
many gala affairs and long the administrative and social center of the
post. Also significant is the post trader's store. It consists of adobe,
stone, and lime-concrete sections, built between 1849 and 1883, and
served at various times as a store, sutler's office, post office,
officers' club, and enlisted men's bar. Other especially interesting
structures are the lime-concrete lieutenant colonel's quarters (1884),
two frame double officers' quarters (1870 and 1875), and the stone
guardhouse (1866).
No remains have survived of Fort Laramie's subpost,
Fort Mitchell, Nebr., but a marker is located on the west side of a
secondary road about 1 mile south of Nebr. 92 some 3 miles northwest of
the headquarters of Scotts Bluff National Monument, Nebr., and outside
its boundaries. The actual site is on the east side of the road about
where a ranchhouse now stands.
Archeological excavation has revealed the site of the
Fort John fur post, but not that of the earlier Fort William.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/sitea29.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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