Lenoir

Wyoming

Traveling through Pawnee country the men seemed additionally alert. They had heard that the Pawnee had recently attacked a wagon train on the North Platte. In reality a migrating rancher had allowed his cattle to graze in a Pawnee corn field, causing a fight over the damage. Men from a passing wagon train got involved and things got out of hand.

One of the wagon train's men shot the wife of the corn farmer when she came out of their shelter and startled him. The farmer fought back with his sons and they were all killed accepting one toddler still inside.

The wagon train took the baby with them. As well as much of the farmer's harvestable crops, any tools that looked useful, and anything that looked remotely valuable.

One of the ladies adopted the baby and raised him not much different than any other Christian boy, except constantly warning him that he was native in appearance and thus marked for attack and ridicule by the general public. She worried some man would shoot her adopted boy while mistaking him for the average savage.

The woman who adopted the Pawnee baby gave him a set of bow and arrows that she had set aside from that day, along with his baby shoes and clothes, as a wedding gift. He found love with a girl of questionable background. She was a beautiful but tragic mix of African, Central American, Seminole, and white slaver. Her ancestors were both slave and owner.

In the 1840s, skirmishes between the land's inhabitants and the encroaching Europeans were often misunderstandings. And meeting with natives might more often be about trade, barter, or treaty. The natives would start fighting back against the government and white settlers following the Oregon Trail in a more frequently violent and direct way in the 1850s after much abuse and many broken promises.

Fort Laramie, Wyoming had been found at the convergence of the North Platte and Laramie Rivers since the 1830s. Renamed a few times over the years, the Fort had gone from fur trade outpost to military garrison.

This was the place that Lenoir first saw Native Americans. They were Lakota and at the fort to trade buffalo robes for a variety of merchandise. One of their women was trading jewelry and baskets.

Fort Laramie had most recently been Fort John, but in 1849 the Army offered to buy it. The U.S. Government wanted a strong military presence on the trails out west. They built stables, a bakery, officers' and soldiers' quarters, a powder magazine and guardhouse, updating the structure.

After The Fort the group headed west again. Making 8 miles before their nooning. Another 5 hours along the trail they found camp for the night.

The wagon train needed to cross the North Platte some 150 miles after Fort Laramie, where the river curved to the south, then crossed the Sweetwater River towards South Pass.

The men had paused the wagons at a span of river that looked to be 10 ft deep and 90 ft across. Debating during the nooning, they chose not to cross, but to go on to Red Buttes in the west. Crossing there would allow the wealthier of their group to use decent ferries or tole bridges, and some of the poorer of the group hoped to find help and trade there.

Red Buttes was a place where the river narrowed and traveled through tall beds of brick red earth and stone. Historically it was near the boundary where the Lakota Sioux and Shoshone territories met. The Cheyenne and Arapahoe tended to stay south of the River and were sometimes seen 10 miles downstream at Reshaw's Bridge.

It was a beautiful place. They were passing just in time, for the spring melt that had swelled the river in June had somewhat subsided. The trail lead right into the river.

From here they would meander SW for the Sweetwater River. It was a never ending struggle between too much water and too little. But there group had been miraculously able to keep everyone from drowning so far.

Belongings had been lost. One wagon had to leave heavier things when two of their horses were stolen in the night. The wife of that wagon, Deborah, wailed as her husband unloaded her antique furniture. Her husband, Joshua King, gritted his teeth and let her cry, wishing he had sold that awkward rocking chair before they left. The hutch had made good use as shelving in the wagon, but weight had to go. The rest of his horses had to make it through the Rocky Mountains.

Lenoir shivered thinking about stories she had heard about South Pass. A hand passed protectively over her unborn. They would know the cold truth soon.