Fort Phil Kearny State Historic Site is hosting two Native student rangers this summer at the site in the northeast corner of the state. They’re helping highlight how different Indigenous tribes were connected to the area and remain connected today.
Fort Phil Kearny was built along the Bozeman Trail in 1866 for miners heading to gold fields up in Montana. At that time, no treaty had been signed with any tribes in the area. The fort was the site of battles between the U.S. government and the Lakota, Arapaho and Northern Cheyenne tribes, as they defended their unceded homelands. Two of the most prominent battles were the Fetterman Fight in 1866 and the Wagon Box Fight in 1867.
Noah Tsotigh is a member of the Kiowa tribe based in Oklahoma and he’s part of the historic site’s American Indian Student Interpretive Ranger program. He said the people intersecting at the fort were all fighting for what they felt was right.
“The Indigenous peoples were just protecting their homes, where their children grew up and where they had history. Even the soldiers working at the forts – around half of the soldiers were first generation immigrants and they weren't coming in with a political inkling. They were just coming in trying to find ways to support their families or to escape prejudice,” he said.
Tsotigh said the main goal of his research is to help people understand that there were no “good groups” or “bad groups” when it comes to the area’s history.
“It's a lot of people fighting for ideas that they believe are just, fighting for causes that they believe will lead to a better tomorrow,” he said.
Tsotigh is giving a talk titled “Connections of Cultures: An Indigenous Perspective” on the evening of July 25. He said he plans to give background information about Indigenous ties to the site and the complex web of connections and communication at play at the time.
“I’ll speak on how turbulent these relationships were, how dynamic things were, how quickly borders shifted, and the relationships between Indigenous groups not only in the local area, but also how they interacted with and traded with groups across the entirety of North America,” he said.
Tsotigh got connected to the American Indian Student Interpretive Ranger program through his grandfather, who’s vice chairman for the Kiowa Tribe. Since much of Indigenous history and stories are passed down orally, Tsotigh said he’s had to work with a combination of written sources and online sources and input, as well as input from folks like his mentor Mark Roundstone, who’s Northern Cheyenne.
"It’s a lot of conflicting sources though, because depending on what side of history you're on, you're going to have a different version of the ‘bad guy,’” he said.
Fort Phil Kearny was closed after the signing of the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1868. The building was burned down shortly after, likely by Cheyenne warriors. Today, folks can check out the site’s visitor center and walk the fort grounds.
Sharie Shada is the superintendent at Fort Phil Kearny State Historic Site. She said bringing rangers to the site through the American Indian Student Interpretive Ranger program is crucial for telling a more complete history of the place.
“They bring in their tribal stories and oral histories, and educate visitors on a different way to look at these histories of people who were here for so many centuries before white Americans started moving out here,” she said.
The program is a collaboration with the U.S. Forest Service and is funded by the Wyoming Humanities Council. It’s in its second year. Participants spend a month at the Medicine Wheel / Medicine Mountain National Historic Landmark site in the Big Horn Mountains and a month at Fort Phil Kearny.
Student interpretive ranger and Crow tribal member Summeri Bass also gave a talk titled “Caring for our Land and our Communities” earlier this summer. Future talks will be posted about on the Fort Phil Kearny State Historic Site Facebook page.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated with Tsotigh's grandfather's title.