347.-Fort Laramie. An important station on the Oregon trail, situated on the North Fork of the Platte River, in the eastern part of the present state of Wyoming.

Yankton Sioux, in 1858, also agreed that the whites might make roads across their country.

A treaty with the eastern Shoshoni, of Utah, reestablished friendly relations between that tribe and the whites in 1863,1 and much of its text related to the subject of the overland travel then in progress or in prospect. It said in Article II: "The several routes of travel through the Shoshone country, now or hereafter used by white. men, shall be and remain forever free and safe for the use of the government of the United States, and of all emigrants and travellers under its authority and protection .. and the safety of all travellers passing peaceably over said routes is hereby guaranteed by said nation.” The same article provided for the establishment of ferries and inns. Article III said: "The telegraph and overland stage lines having been established and operated through a part of the Shoshonee country, it is expressly agreed that the same may be continued without hindrance, molestation, or injury from the people of said nation; and that their property, and the lives of passengers in the stages, and of the employees of the respective companies, shall be protected by them." For these concessions the government paid $200,000, and an additional $10,000 for "the inconvenience resulting to the Indians in consequence of the driving away and destruction of game along the routes travelled by whites." Substantially identical treaties, for the same purpose, were negotiated during the same year with the Northwestern Shoshoni and the western Shoshoni. The first named of these tribes was paid an annuity of $5,000 for its signatures, and the second received no less than $1,000,000, divided in twenty

installments of $50,000 each. The continued hostility of the Indians in question could have stopped a large part of the travel whose continuance they were thus induced to tolerate.

By this time the government had definitely committed itself to the building of a transcontinental railway, and in order to secure the good-will of the Shoshoni-Goship tribe to that undertaking a treaty was concluded' with the tribe in question which said: "It being understood that provision has been made by the Government of the United States for the construction of a railway from the plains west to the Pacific Ocean, it is stipulated by said bands that the said railway or its branches may be located, constructed, and operated, and without molestation from them, through any part of the country claimed or occupied by them." The Indians were paid $20,000 for their consent. Two years later, in 1865, the Osage nation of Kansas gave a right of way to railroads, as well as to "all roads and highways" through "the remaining lands of said Indians."

At about this date the Federal government added another feature to the policy by which it was seeking to secure additional travel and traffic facilities to the Pacific, and the innovation may well be indicated by quoting Article IV of the treaty signed by the Miniconjou Sioux, of Dakota, on October 10, 1865. It read:

"The said band, represented in council, shall withdraw from the routes overland already established through their country; and in consideration thereof the Government of the United States agree to pay the said band the sum of ten thousand dollars annually for twenty

1 October 12, 1863.

2 Treaty of September 29.

years. . . ." This plan of inducing the natives to remove from the neighborhood of overland travel routes, and of paying them large sums for so doing, was put into extensive operation in the north, and was attended with. advantages. The Comanche and Kiowa tribes signed another treaty in 1865 permitting the United States to build roads or highways in their countries and providing that the "injury sustained by reason thereof by the Indians" should be compensated.

3

When the United States, in 1866, approached the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations with desire to obtain the privilege of building railroads through their territories, those advanced and still independent commonwealths conceded the request, but laid down certain conditions far more extreme than had previously been named by any other tribe. The treaty, in its finished form, provided that their own legislatures, as well as the United States, might charter railways. It also stated that the two red nations might subscribe to the stock of such roads built by the whites, which stock so owned by them should have the force and effect of a first mortgage bond on all that part of the roads and their equipment in the nations' limits, and be a perpetual lien on the enterprises. In this unusual treaty the United States also again acknowledged the selfgovernment of the two native parties to it, for, in Article VII, it was declared that whatever legislation was enacted by the United States in relation to the Indian Territory, "shall not in any wise interfere with or annul their [the Choctaws' and Chickasaws'] present tribal organizations, or their respective legislatures or judiciaries, or the rights,

1 Other Sioux tribes paid for like action, with the sums they received: Lower Brule, $120,000; Two Kettle, $120,000; Blackfeet, $140,000; Upper Yanktonai, $200,000; Ogalalla, $200,000.

* October 18.

Treaty of April 28.