The Great Pow Wow

Some 36 miles from Laramie at Horse Creek, gathered the greatest group of Indian tribes in all history in September 1851.  The Sioux were meeting peacefully with chiefs of the Arikara, Cheyenne, Crow, Assiniboine, Araphao, and Gros Ventre.  In all, the 10,000 men engaged in days of council, ceremony and feasting with white representatives from Washington.  The purpose?  To agree to a permanent passageway for wagon trains through the Indian hunting grounds.

Since the discovery of gold in 1848 the white man had left little but devastation, shooting thousands of buffalo and forcing the Plains Indians to hunt farther and farther away from their hunting grounds.  The Indians had so far tolerated the white man, but the fear was that if the tribes were driven much farther, they would attack the pioneers traveling west.

There were suggestions to pay the tribes for  the passage through their land.  So the pow wow was called to set the amount of the compensation and the terms would be $50,000 worth of supplies each year for a period of 50 years. In return, each tribe would elect a primary chief to negotiate with the other Indians and the white man.  The territory of the Great Plains would be divided between the tribes, each tribe hunting only within it assigned area and they would be responsible for disciplining those who broke the peace.

The crucial part of the treaty and the one that led to disaster in the end, allowed the government to build roads and forts in Indian country.  It is unlikely that the Indian representatives understood the full consequences of the governments demands.  This would prove to result in devastation in the Indian way of life.

Next time...The End of Indian way of life
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On September 25,  1867, the pioneering cattleman Oliver Loving dies from gangrene poisoning in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. A few weeks before, Loving had been trapped by 500 Commanche braves along the Pecos River. Shot in the arm and side, Loving managed to escape and reach Fort Sumner. Though the wounds alone were not fatal, Loving soon developed gangrene in his arm, a common infection in the days before antibiotics. Even then he might still have been saved had his arm been removed, but unfortunately the fort doctor “had never amputated any limbs and did not want to undertake such work.”