Fort Laramie: Military Bastion of the High Plains
by Douglas C. McChristian, The Arthur H. Clark Company, Norman, Okla., 2009, $45.
Fort Laramie scores mention in frontier-related articles and books as much as any post west of the Mississippi, but until now this Wyoming bastion had not received the full historic treatment. Author Douglas McChristian, a former National Park Service field historian at the Fort Laramie National Historic Site, does justice to the fort’s military history and other stages of its existence. In 1834 fur traders built a green timber post, dubbed Fort William, at the confluence of the Laramie and North Platte rivers; they soon took to calling it “Fort Laramie.” Then in the early 1840s, traders built a more substantial adobe structure, naming it Fort John. Finally, in 1849 the U.S. government transformed Fort Laramie into a garrison to protect the emigrant road. “It was not surprising,” McChristian writes, “that many emigrants recorded their arrival at that milestone, most of them likening Fort Laramie to an oasis in the desert where they could rest and refit, trade for fresh animals, catch up on news from the States and, if they were lucky, find mail awaiting them from back home.”
For 41 years, this quintessential frontier Army post served as what the author calls “a virtual hub of the West.” California gold rushers passed through with early emigrants, and later came the overland mail (including, briefly, the Pony Express) and the transcontinental telegraph. The garrison had run-ins with the Lakotas and Cheyennes, but the Army overoptimistically hoped the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie (also called the Treaty of Horse Creek) would bring peace to that stretch of the Plains. Three years later, conflict resumed after Brevet 2nd Lt. John L. Grattan left the fort with orders to arrest a Lakota cow killer. The young officer handled the job poorly, leading to what has become known as “the unfortunate affair,” or the Grattan Massacre. The Army responded by having Colonel William Harney lead a retaliatory expedition against the Indians. Ten years later, the fort served as the base for the unsuccessful first Powder River Expedition. In 1868 another Treaty of Fort Laramie again offered short-lived hope for peace on the Plains.
McChristian covers these events and more in his thoroughly researched, well-crafted narrative. While much of the material will be familiar to anyone with an interest in the Indians wars, some is fresh (such as the deaths of Lieutenant Levi Robinson and Corporal James Coleman in 1874). In any case, it’s useful to have this information packaged in context with a fort at the center of so much frontier activity. The author made good use of firsthand accounts, including the diaries of area businessman John Hunton, but few of the men stationed at the fort had much to say. Ordnance Sergeant Leodegar Schnyder, for instance, served at Fort Laramie from 1849 until 1886 yet didn’t leave a single word about his experiences. After the Great Sioux War of 1876–77, garrison life settled into a routine, and the Army abandoned the post in 1890. Though the ravages of weather and time claimed much of the original structure, enough remained to add Fort Laramie to the National Park System in 1937.
Originally published in the October 2009 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here.
