Here came a frontiersman, John Bozeman, pioneering a wagon road which followed buffalo, Indian and trapper trails. His time and energy-saving short cut led to the booming mining fields of western Montana. This interloper was followed by others whose habitual frontier callousness easily stifled any scruple over trespass of an Indian passageway. Faint wheel marks soon became a beaten road know as the Bozman Trail.

High plains and mountain Indians notably Sioux and Cheyenne, watching this transgression, resented both the physical act and the implied contempt of solemn treaty. They made war. The white transgressors called upon their army for protection. In the end the Indians won a brief respite—partly because a developing railroad far to the south canceled the Bozeman Trail’s short cut advantage.