| In much of Wyoming and Montana, the natural landscape is still
much as it has been for hundreds, even thousands, of years. As you stand in the vast
territory between the North Platte River and Yellowstone River Valley, and the Black Hills
and Bighorn Mountains, a cool breeze moves down the mountains on a summer night, the
grasses are lush, and herds of buffalo graze upon the plains as they did for centuries
before. The streams and lakes are full of fish and the land abounds with game. You can easily imagine that there are no modern roads, and that unless you
are a member of an American Indian tribe who calls this land home, you've arrived by
horseback or wagon---slow, uncomfortable, tedious. With no rapid means of communication,
you are virtually cut off from civilization. If you are white, you live primarily on
flour, bacon, coffee and other foods you have brought with you; if Indian, you eat
buffalo, berries, and native plants. Most of the modern comforts of life are unknown or
unavailable to you here.
What we call the Bozeman Trail today is a historic transportation
corridor with uses dating back to animal migratory routes and Paleo-Indian trails. This
corridor was used by historic Indian tribes, trappers and traders, exploration
expeditions, American emigrants, the military, and settlers. Today it is the major
transportation corridor in this area.
The history of the peoples in what we now define as the Bozeman
Trail corridor is first recorded for us in pictographs, petroglyphs, and ledger art, or
passed down through oral histories. It then comes to us through accounts of Euro-American
explorers, some who entered the area a half a century before Lewis and Clark came into the
northwestern portion of the Bozeman Trail corridor. Then, from the diaries of 1860s
emigrants to the gold fields of present Montana; military records; diaries of army wives;
letters, diaries, and reminiscences of soldiers, civilian contractors, and miners; and
later, accounts and photos of early settlers in the territory.
Today, you---the resident, traveler, or scholar---can explore and
study the history along the Bozeman Trail corridor and imagine yourself a part of the
historical events that have shaped and defined who we are as a people and a nation.
---Mary Ellen McWilliams
|
