The treaty signed in September 1851 near Fort Laramie is often remembered by the name of the place where the great council actually gathered: Horse Creek, a short distance downstream on the North Platte River in present-day western Nebraska. Because the assembled camps and horse herds were far too large to be supported at the fort itself, the meeting moved to broader bottomlands where grass and water were plentiful. For this reason the agreement is sometimes called the Horse Creek Treaty.
A vast gathering
The 1851 council was one of the largest gatherings of Northern Plains nations ever recorded. Thousands of people from many nations came together, bringing enormous herds of horses and setting up encampments across the river bottoms. Representatives of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota, along with the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Apsáalooke (Crow), Assiniboine, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara, attended. Some of these nations were longtime allies, others were rivals, and their presence together in one place was itself a remarkable event.
Provisioning such a multitude was a challenge. A promised wagon train of goods arrived late, and feeding the assembled people strained available resources. Yet the gathering proceeded with ceremony, feasting, and days of formal speech-making as leaders and United States commissioners set out their positions.
What the parties sought
The United States wanted safe passage for the growing stream of emigrants crossing the Plains on the overland trails, along with the right to build roads and posts. In exchange, the government offered annual payments of goods and recognized specified territories for each nation. The treaty also attempted to define boundaries among the nations themselves, an effort to reduce conflict along the trails.
For the Plains nations, the council was an opportunity to address the disruptive pressures brought by emigration, including the effect of wagon traffic on the buffalo and on grass and water along the rivers. Leaders came prepared to speak for their peoples and to weigh what the agreement might mean.
A fragile beginning
The Horse Creek council produced a signed treaty, but its promises proved fragile. The United States Senate later altered the terms, and the annuities pledged for many years were reduced. Boundaries drawn on paper did not always match how nations actually used the land, and pressures on the Plains only intensified in the years that followed.
Still, the 1851 gathering remains a landmark. It brought many nations into a single negotiation and set the stage for the better-known 1868 treaty. To learn more, see our articles on the U.S. commissioners and their aims and the eight nations and the 1851 map, or browse the 1851 treaty history category.
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