Bozeman Trail - Post-Civil War Travel

Post-Civil War Travel

In 1866, following of the American Civil War, more settlers traveled the trail, mostly to search for gold. The Army called a council at Fort Laramie, which Lakota leader Red Cloud attended. The Army wanted to neogotiate a right-of-way with the Lakota for settlers' use of the trail. As negotiations continued, Red Cloud became outraged when he discovered that a regiment of U.S. infantry was already using the route without receiving permission from the Lakota nation. Thus Red Cloud's War began.

That same year, Nelson Story, a successful Virginia City, Montana, gold miner originally from Ohio, used the Bozeman Trail to successfully drive about 1000 head of longhorn cattle into Montana. The U.S. Army unsuccessfully tried to turn Story back to protect the drive from Indian attacks, but Story brought cattle through to the Gallatin Valley and formed one of the earliest significant herds in Montana's cattle industry.

The Army established Fort Reno, Fort Phil Kearny and Fort C. F. Smith along the route, staffed with troops meant to protect travelers. However, Indian raids along the trail and around the forts continued. When the Lakota annihilated a detachment under William J. Fetterman at the Fetterman Fight the same year near Fort Phil Kearny, civilian travel along the trail ceased. On August 1, 1867 and August 2, 1867, US forces resisted coordinated attempts by large parties of Lakota to overrun Fort C. F. Smith and Fort Phil Kearny. In the Hayfield Fight and Wagon Box Fight, Indian attacks on outlying parties failed.

Later, by the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, the US recognized the Powder River Country as unceded hunting territory for the Lakota and allied tribes. Most was located on the Crow Indian Reservation. For a time the government used the treaty to shut down travel by European-American settlers on the Bozeman Trail. President Ulysses S. Grant ordered the abandonment of forts along the trail.

Red Cloud's War could thus be said to be the only Indian war in which Native Americans achieved their goals (if only for a brief time) with a treaty settlement essentially on their terms. By 1876, however, following the Black Hills War, the US Army reopened the trail. The Army continued to use the trail during later military campaigns and built a telegraph line along it.