Fort Laramie National Historic Site

"Fort Laramie National Historic Site lies along the Laramie River at its confluence with the North Platte River in southeastern Wyoming. Originally the homeland of the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes, the “fort” was established as a private fur trading post in 1834. From 1849 to its abandonment in 1890, Fort Laramie evolved into the largest military post on the Northern Great Plains. For 56 years, successive waves of American Indians, trappers, traders, missionaries, emigrants, soldiers, miners, ranchers, and homesteaders interacted with, and left their mark on, a place that would become famous in the history of America’s westward expansion. Fort Laramie stood witness to strong Indian resistance to encroachment on their homelands, and played an important role as host to treaty negotiations, including the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. Today, park visitors are immersed in the historic scene and complex history through a variety of experiences: exhibits and video in the visitor center; interpretive waysides placed at known sites and ruins; living history demonstrations; and access to restored and furnished structures of the military period. Scholars and researchers enjoy access to an extensive collection of museum objects and archives housed at the park. The historic site, which encompasses 833 acres, hosted 51,980 visitors in 2015." - taken from a National Park website. The words "Fort Laramie stood witness to strong Indian resistance to encroachment on their homelands..." is a sort of bland way of saying that the Fort provided military protection to white emigrants and settlers who were robbing the indigenous popuations of their ancestral land. "In the late 1860s, the fort was the primary staging ground for the United States in the Powder River Country during Red Cloud's War. In 1868 the parties reached a peace agreement codified as the second Treaty of Fort Laramie. The discovery of gold in the Black Hills touched off another period of conflict with the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne, as the United States violated their previous promise to keep the hills limited to the Sioux. Miners invaded the territory, and US forces came into conflict during the Great Sioux War of 1876. Fort Laramie served as a major staging point for supplies and troops." "(from Wikipedia). Visiting sites like these is always an ambiguous experience. Fort Laramie is part of a tragic history which does not yet get honestly narrated in its displays. We have visited other sites where contemporary tribal leaders have beeen involved in framing the displays and providing a very different perspective on the history, e.g., the Little BigHorn N.H.S. That does not seem to be happening here at Fort Laramie. It would be interesting to know more about how contemporary tribes in Wyoming feel about this N.H.S. (Cf. my blog "Another Perspective on Fort Laramie.")

A photo I took of a display near the Visiitor's Center - a typical conestoga wagon.

Some buildings open to the public - we didn't go in.