The Associated Press | Posted: Friday, July 30, 2004 12:00 am
FORT LARAMIE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE, Wyo. (AP) - A parks advocacy group says the history of the Plains Indians is not adequately told at Fort Laramie, even though it was one of the first bastions of white America thrust into the heart of Native American lands in the 1800s.
"The whole, difficult story about the U.S. government and American Indians must be told at Fort Laramie, because this is the place where important parts of that story took place," said Patti Borneman, Northern Rockies Program coordinator for the National Parks Conservation Association.
Established as an outpost for trading furs with tribes in 1834, Fort Laramie was later a refueling stop for emigrants and a military outpost during the Indian Wars.
It was also the site where several tribes signed two treaties, both of which were later breached to allow faster settlement of the West and gold mining on Indian lands.
The fort was incorporated into the National Park system in 1938.
A report from the conservation association recommends the Park Service establish relationships with tribes that were affected by the fort, and in particular, the Fort Laramie treaties of 1851 and 1868.
The report suggests doing so would allow the agency to better understand and interpret for the public the considerable influence of Fort Laramie on the fate of 19th-century tribes as well as contemporary Indian culture and politics.
The group said much of the visitor information at Fort Laramie focuses on restored buildings and ruins of the post's military history and does not offer the American Indian perspective even though Indians lived near the fort during its heyday and it continues to hold great significance in Indian culture.
"The National Park Service is entrusted by the nation to preserve our shared history and culture and must, even in the most difficult circumstances, do so," Borneman said.
The association launched its State of the Parks program in 2000 to assess the condition of natural and cultural resources in national parks around the country.
On the Net: hpp://www.npca.org/stateoftheparks
AP-WS-07-29-04 2020EDT