One of the most famous of the western Indian forts of the United States is situated on the west bank of the Laramie River, one and a half miles above the junction of that stream with the Platte. Though deserted the post is still a picturesque figure, recalling the days when it administered authority for seven hundred miles around. The property now comprises part of the ranch of Mr. John Hunton.
Before the white man had established a habitation where Fort Laramie stands the whole of the country of the North Platte River was a hunting-ground and battle-field for different tribes of Indians. Countless herds of buffalo roamed the land and it was rich in fur-bearing animals, as well.
In 1834 William Sublette and Robert Campbell, coming to this part of the country to trap beaver, found themselves obliged to construct some sort of protection against the roving bands of vagabond Crows and Pawnees which occasionally swept along the Platte, stealing where they could. They built in that year upon the present site of Fort Laramie a square fort of pickets 18 feet high, with bastions at two diagonal corners, and a number of little houses inside for their employés. In 1835 they sold out to Milton Sublette, James Bridger and three other trappers, who went into partnership with the American Fur Company and continued the beaver trapping business.
In that year the American Fur Company sent two men named Kiplin and Sabille to the Bear Butte and Northern Black Hills to persuade the Sioux Indians to come over and hunt their game and live in the vicinity of the fort. Their ambassadors succeeded so well that they returned with over one hundred lodges of Oglala Sioux under Chief Bull Bear. This was the first appearance of the powerful Sioux nation in this part of the country, which they speedily overran, driving away Pawnees, Cheyennes, Crows and all others from its very borders.
Of course the fort speedily became a trading post where the Indians bartered a buffalo robe for a knife, an awl, or a drink of “fire water.” Anything that the company had to trade was at least of the value of one buffalo robe. An American horse brought fifty of them; any pony was worth twenty or thirty. Any old scrap of iron was of great value to an Indian and by him would be speedily converted into a knife. Fire-arms he had none and his arrow-heads were all made of pieces of flint or massive quartz, fashioned into proper shape by laborious pecking with another stone. The Sioux then had no horses, but herds of wild horses were abundant on their arrival and it was not many years before they learned their use.
In 1836 the picket fort began to rot badly and the American Fur Company rebuilt it of adobe at an expense of $10,000. The people who lived inside of the fort at this time called it “Fort William,” after William Sublette, but the name could not be popularized. The fort being built on the Laramie River, not far from Laramie Peak, the American Fur Company’s clerks in their city offices labelled it Fort Laramie and by that name it was destined to be called.
It seems that Laramie was a trapper, one of the first French voyageurs who ever trapped a beaver or shot a buffalo in the Rocky Mountains. He was one day killed by a band of Arapahoes on the headwaters of the stream which has ever since been called by his name.