Established by trappers in the 1830s, but popularized in the years 1846-1869, the Oregon Trail and its many offshoots were used by over 400,000 settlers, farmers, miners, ranchers, business owners, and their families.

The tribes of the great plains made war with each other and against the immigrants moving west. The United States Cavalry was kept very busy trying to control all the waring among the tribes and predation against the settlers.

The Fort Laramie Treaty was signed on September 17, 1851 between United States treaty commissioners and representatives of the Cheyenne, Sioux, Arapaho, Crow, Assiniboine, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nations. The treaty was an agreement between nine more-or-less independent parties. Among other things the treaty set forth traditional Indian territorial claims of the tribes as among themselves.

The Indians soon adopted the name “The Holy Road” for the Oregon Trail, since they were no longer allowed to go near it.

At the same time, the treaty of 1851 set aside a tract of land 20 miles wide and 150 miles long on either side of the Minnesota River as a Sioux reservation. The rest of this land, the state of Minnesota, would be opened up for homesteads by the Europeans.

This was all well and good until in the spring of 1862 the annual annuity payment was late - the government was fighting the Civil War. The people were frustrated, hungry and angry.

There will be war!