Within two months of setting out on their overland journey, emigrants arrived at Fort Laramie, a third of the trip accomplished. The fort represented the last trace of civilization — the last place to mail a letter home or hear from loved ones, trade in worn-out stock for fresh animals, rest up before tackling the arduous mountain passes and load up on supplies. Colonel Henry Carrington’s wife, Margaret, characterized the sutler’s store on the post in 1866: ‘The long counter of Messrs. Bullock and Ward was a scene of seeming confusion not surpassed in any popular, over crowded store of Omaha [Nebraska] itself. Indians…mingled with soldiers of the garrison, teamsters, emigrants, speculators, half breeds and interpreters. HERE, cups of rice, sugar, coffee, or flour were being emptied into the looped-up skirts or blankets of a squaw; and THERE, some tall warrior was grimacing delightfully as he grasped and sucked his long sticks of peppermint candy. Bright shawls, red Squaw cloth, brilliant calicos, and flashing ribbons passed over the same counter with knives, and tobacco, brass nails and glass beads, and that endless catalog of articles which belong to the legitimate border traffic. The room was redolent of cheese and herring and heap of smoke….’

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Gold fever lured many travelers west. Joseph Price, whose dream of riches enticed him from his homestead in Missouri to the California fields in 1850, wrote to his wife, Elizabeth, on June 8: ‘We are now 200 and 80 miles from fort cearny [Kearny] and about 26 from Fort Laramie will reach there some time to morrow…as to the emigration to californa it is very large but from what I can learn we are in advance of at least three forths of the emigration and are all cheerfull at least tolerable cheerfull…as to indians I do not believe that we have been in the least danger as yet we are now in the country of the Souix [Sioux] they say they are entirely friendly we have seen 4 viliges of them some distance back they ware on the South Side of the [Platte] river came in I suppose to trade with the emigrants.’ Price spent the next two days at Fort Laramie before resuming his journey.

The Sioux and other Plains Indians would not remain so friendly. Tensions between the Indians and whites would escalate with the growing number of emigrants on the Oregon and California trails, the would-be prospectors on the trails to what would become Montana, the appearance of Pony Express riders, and then the arrival of telegraph lines and the railroad. In February 1851, the U.S. Congress authorized $100,000 ‘for expenses of holding treaties with the wild tribes of the prairie and for bringing delegates on to the seat of government.’ The treaty council with the Plains Indians took place in September of that year. More than 10,000 representatives of the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Shoshone, Crow, Assininboine, Gros Ventre, Hidatsa, and Arikara nations gathered at Fort Laramie, along with 270 dragoons, Indian commissioners and statesmen, to forge a peace treaty that would allow emigrants to cross safely through Indian land on their way west.

The number of horses quickly overwhelmed the available grass, and the negotiations had to be relocated to the mouth of Horse Creek near current Lyman, Neb., where better grazing was available. Bringing together enemy Indian tribes naturally caused a few tensions, as did the arrival of Chief Washakie of the Shoshones. A Lakota warrior sought to avenge his father’s death at the hands of Washakie; however, a French interpreter successfully intervened. The flare-up ended quietly.

In the end, the First Treaty of Fort Laramie was concluded amiably. In exchange for emigrants traveling unmolested over the Oregon Trail and rights to construct military posts, the U.S. government promised it would pay the tribes an annual annuity of $50,000 worth of manufactured goods and provisions for 50 years as compensation for disturbing the tribes’ hunting grounds and the loss of grass. The treaty also established territorial boundaries for the Indian nations that signed the treaty and set up a system for providing restitution for depredations made by Indians or whites. Although the treaty contained a clause outlining punishment in the form of withholding all or part of an offending tribe’s annuity for violations of the treaty, nothing was said about penalizing the whites for their transgressions.

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