The influx of emigrants and settlers into Wyoming Territory has led to more encounters with the native tribes, resulting in an increase of military presence along the trails.

Military posts such as Fort Laramie had been established to maintain order in the area.

In 1851, the first Treaty of Fort Laramie had been signed between the United States and representatives of American Indian nations to ensure peace and the safety of settlers on the trails.

The 1850s had subsequently been quiet, but increased settler encroachment into lands promised to the tribes in the region has caused tensions to rise again, especially after the Bozeman Trail had been blazed in 1864 through the hunting grounds of the Powder River Country, which had been promised to the tribes in the 1851 treaty.

The Powder River country encompasses the numerous rivers (the Bighorn, Rosebud, Tongue and Powder) that flow northeastward from the Bighorn Mountains to the Yellowstone.

The Cheyenne had been the first tribe in this area, followed by bands of Lakota.

As more of the northern plains become occupied by white settlement, this region becomes the last unspoiled hunting ground of the Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho and several of the seven bands of the Lakota.

The route later known as the Oregon Trail had already been in regular use by traders and explorers in the early 1830s.

The trail snakes across Wyoming, entering the state on the eastern border near the present day town of Torrington following the North Platte River to the current town of Casper.

It then crosses South Pass, and exits on the western side of the state near Cokeville.

In 1847, Mormon emigrants had blazed the Mormon Trail, which mirrors the Oregon Trail, but splits off at South Pass and continues south to Fort Bridger and into Utah.

Over three hundred and fifty thousand emigrants had followed these trails to destinations in Utah, California and Oregon between 1840 and 1859.

The discovery of gold in 1863 around Bannack, Montana, has encouraged white settlers to find an economical route to the gold fields.

While some emigrants go to Salt Lake City and then north to Montana, pioneer John Bozeman and John M. Jacobs have developed the Bozeman Trail from Fort Laramie north through the Powder River country east of the Bighorn Mountains to the Yellowstone, then westward over what is now Bozeman Pass.

The trail passes through the Powder River hunting grounds of the Lakota or Western (Teton) Sioux.

A second trail, the Bridger Trail, passes west of the Bighorns but is longer and therefore less favored.

With the formation of the Montana Territory from the existing Idaho Territory in 1864, the southeastern section of the Idaho Territory (most of modern Wyoming) becomes briefly part of Dakota Territory once again, although a strip of land along the western border of what will become Wyoming remains part of the Idaho Territory.

The population begins to grow steadily in the Wyoming Territory, which is established on July 25, 1868, after the arrival of the railroad.

Unlike Colorado to the south, Wyoming will never experience a rapid population boom in the nineteenth century from any major mineral discoveries such as gold or silver.

The Union Pacific Railroad had reached the town of Cheyenne, which will later become the Wyoming state capital, in 1867.

The railroad will eventually span the entire state, boosting the population, and creating some of Wyoming's largest cities, such as Laramie, Rock Springs, and Evanston.

The name Wyoming is used by Representative J. M. Ashley of Ohio, who introduces a bill to Congress to provide a "temporary government for the territory of Wyoming".

The name "Wyoming" had been made famous by the 1809 poem Gertrude of Wyoming by Thomas Campbell.

The name is derived from the Delaware (Munsee) name meaning "at the big river flat", originally applied to the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania.

Red Cloud's War ends in a victory for the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Lakota, and Dakota.

Peace commissioners had been sent to Fort Laramie in the spring of 1868, but only after the army had evacuated the forts in the Powder River country and the natives had burned down all three of them, does Red Cloud travel to Fort Laramie in November 1868, where the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) is signed.

Northern Arapaho representatives also sign the treaty.

It establishes the Great Sioux Reservation, which includes all South Dakota territory west of the Missouri river.

It also declares the Powder River country as "unceded Indian territory", as a reserve for the natives who choose not to live on the new reservation, and as a hunting reserve for the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho.

The treaty also accords the natives continued hunting rights in western Kansas and eastern Colorado.

Most importantly, the treaty specifies what Red Cloud sought: "no white person or persons shall be permitted to settle upon or occupy any portion" of the Powder River country "or without the consent of the Indians first had and obtained, to pass through" the Powder River country.

Fort Laramie Treaty--1868" http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/four/ftlaram.htm, accessed 28 Oct. 2012)

The U.S. government had increasingly sought a peaceful rather than a military solution to Red Cloud's War despite the military successes in the Hayfield and Wagon Box Fights.

The successful completion of the transcontinental railroad takes priority, and the Army does not have the resources to defend both the railroad and the Bozeman Trail from native attacks.

The military presence in the Powder River Country is both expensive and unproductive, with estimates that twenty thousand soldiers might be needed to subdue the natives.

The U.S. government had come to the conclusion after the Fetterman Fight that the forts along the Bozeman Trail are expensive to maintain (both in terms of supplies and manpower) and do not bring the intended security for travelers along the Road.

However, Red Cloud had refused to attend any meeting with treaty commissions during 1867.

Wyoming becomes the only territory in the U.S. giving women the right to vote, the first such law in the world, granted by the Wyoming territorial legislature on December 10, 1869, a year after its founding.

Yellowstone National Park (once laughingly dubbed "Colter's Hell" after John Colter, of the Lewis & Clark Expedition) is established by the U.S. Congress as the world's first national park and signed into law by President Grant on March 1, 1872.

Dr. Ferdinand V. Hayden, director of the United States Geological Survey, had finally been able to make another attempt to explore the region now known as Yellowstone Park, eleven years after his failed first effort.

With government sponsorship, Hayden had returned to Yellowstone region with a second, larger expedition, the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871.

He has compiled a comprehensive report on Yellowstone, which includes large-format photographs by William Henry Jackson, as well as paintings by Thomas Moran.

Moran's vision of the Western landscape is critical to the creation of Yellowstone National Park.

Hayden had invited Moran, at the request of American financier Jay Cooke, to join Hayden and his expedition team into the unknown Yellowstone region.

Hayden was just about to embark on his arduous journey when he received a letter from Cooke presenting Moran as.. "an artist of Philadelphia of rare genius.."

Funded by Cooke (the director of the Northern Pacific Railway), and Scribner's Monthly, a new illustrated magazine, Moran agreed to join the survey team of the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871 in their exploration of the Yellowstone region.

During forty days in the wilderness area, Moran had visually documented over thirty different sites and produced a diary of the expedition's progress and daily activities.

Chinese immigration to the United States at this time is neither uniform nor widespread.

The vast majority of the nearly one hundred thousand Chinese immigrants reside within the American West: California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington Territory, as stated by the U.S. Minister to China, George Seward, in Scribner's Magazine ("Seward's 'Chinese Immigration'," Scribner's Monthly, April, 1881, no. 6.)

The first jobs Chinese laborers had taken in Wyoming were on the railroad, working for the Union Pacific company (UP) as maintenance-of-way workers.

Chinese workers had soon become an asset to Union Pacific and work along UP lines and in UP coal mines from Laramie to Evanston.

Most Chinese workers in Wyoming end up working in Sweetwater County, but a large number settle in Carbon County and Uinta counties.

Most Chinese people in the area are men working in the mine.

Racism against Chinese immigrants is widespread and largely uncontroversial at this time.

In 1874–75, after labor unrest had disrupted coal production, the Union Pacific Coal Department had hired Chinese laborers to work in their coal mines throughout southern Wyoming.

Even so, Chinese population had risen slowly at first; however, where there are Chinese immigrants, they are generally concentrated in one area.

At Red Desert, a remote section camp in Sweetwater County, there are 20 inhabitants, of whom 12 are Chinese.

All 12 are laborers who work under an American foreman.

To the east of Red Desert is another remote section camp, Washakie.

An American section foreman lives there among 23 others, including 13 Chinese laborers and an Irish crew foreman.

In the various section camps along the main line of the Union Pacific Railroad, Chinese workers far outnumber any other nationality.

Though the 79 Chinese in Sweetwater County in 1870 represented only 4% of the total population, they were, again, concentrated.

In Rock Springs and Green River, the largest towns along the UP line, there were no Chinese residents reported in 1870.

Throughout the 1870s, the Chinese population in Sweetwater County and all of Wyoming had steadily increased.

During the decade, Wyoming's total population had risen from nine thousand one hundred and eighteen to twenty thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.

In the 1870 U.S. Census, what the government today calls "Asian and Pacific Islander" had represented only one hundred and forty-three members of the population of Wyoming.

The increase during the 1870s is the largest percentage increase in the Asian population of Wyoming of any decade since; the increase represents a five hundred and thirty-nine percent jump in the Asian population.

By 1880, most Chinese residents in Sweetwater County lived in Rock Springs.

At this time, Wyoming is home to mine hundred and fourteen "Asians”.

Although most Chinese workers in 1880 are employed in the coal mines around Wyoming and Sweetwater County, the Chinese in Rock Springs work mostly in occupations outside of mining.

In addition to Chinese laborers and miners, a professional gambler, a priest, a cook, and a barber reside in the city.

In Green River, Wyoming, there is a Chinese doctor.

Chinese servants and waiters find work in Green River and in Fort Washakie.

In Atlantic City, Miner's Delight, and Red Canyon, Wyoming, Chinese gold miners are employed.

However, the majority of the one hundred and ninety-three Chinese residing in Sweetwater County by 1880 work in the coal mines or on the railroad.

Bitterness from the white miners in Rock Springs has increased as more Chinese arrive.

By 1883, when a "Whitemen's Town" is established in Rock Springs, the Knights of Labor have organized a chapter here.

The Knights are one of the major groups which spearhead opposition to Chinese labor during the 1880s; in 1882, the Knights had worked for the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The white miners at Rock Springs, being mostly Cornish, Irish, Swedish, and Welsh immigrants, believe lower-paid Chinese laborers drive down their wages.

The Chinese at Rock Springs are aware of the animosity and rising racial tension with white miners, but have not taken any precautions, as no prior events had indicated there would be any race riots.

Underlying the coming outbreak of violence are racism and resentment of the policies of the Union Pacific Coal Department.

Until 1875, the mines in Rock Springs had been worked by whites; in that year, a strike had occurred, and the strikers had been replaced with Chinese strikebreakers less than two weeks after the strike began.

The company had resumed mining with fifty white miners and one hundred and fifty Chinese miners in its employ.

Notices had been posted from Evanston to Rock Springs in August 1885, demanding the expulsion of Chinese immigrants, and on the evening of September 1, 1885, white miners in Rock Springs hold a meeting regarding the Chinese immigrants.

It will be rumored that threats had been made that night against the Chinese, according to immigrants then residing here.